JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
Not a member yet
288 research outputs found
Sort by
Editorial
Get PDFThis issue of JeDEM is based on a selection of extended and updated versions of papers presented at EDEM 10 (Conference for Electronic Democracy and Open Government, Krems, Austria). It compromises the papers receiving the best reviewer scores and the keynote talks of the conference
Studie: E-Partizipation in Deutschland
Get PDFThis contribution presents the results of a study on “E-Participation – Electronic Participation of Citizens and Economy at E-Government” which was ordered by the German Ministry of the Interior in 2007. The authors of this article also co-authored the study. In the study, state of the art and chances of electronic participation in Germany are described and recommendations for action as well as proposals for projects and measures for the national program “E-Government 2.0” are given. This article describes the understanding of “e-participation” and the methodology of the study including results of surveys conducted in Germany. Then, the results of a strengths-and-weaknesses analysis are presented comparing the German with the international state of the art of eParticipation. Finally, some recommendations on the basis of this comparison are made
Ein PKI-basiertes Protokoll für sichere und praktikable Onlinewahlen
Get PDFWir stellen ein Protokoll für Onlinewahlen vor, welches auf dem Schema von Ohkubo et al. [13] basiert. Besonders an diesem Protokoll ist, dass der Auszähler nicht vertrauenswürdig sein muss. Der geheime Schlüssel des Auszählers wird am Ende der Wahl veröffentlicht und ermöglicht so die universelle Verifizierbarkeit der Stimmauszählung. Wir diskutieren die Sicherheit des Protokolls angesichts der allgemein anerkannten Sicherheitsanforderungen für elektronische Wahlschemata
Paper Records and Electronic Audits: A Step Towards Regaining Voter Trust
Get PDFThe shortcomings of the voting systems used in the 2000 presidential election raised the awareness of the need to replace these systems. As a result, with the funds of Help America Vote Act (HAVA), many US states switched to Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems before the 2004 elections. Unfortunately these paperless voting machines were not as secure and efficient as state officials had hoped. Since their implementation, many studies have shown the threats of these systems and their flaws. While some data security experts tried to improve these voting systems, many discouraged their use and recommended more transparent methods.Although, several countries in Europe and around the world have successfully utilized E-voting, many US districts and states still don’t trust this technology and are returning to paper ballots. In this paper, we will propose a new system as a solution to the current problems. This approach combines the advantages of both paper ballots and Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems while avoiding the major flaws of these systems
Web 2.0 and Participatory Governance
Get PDFBy integrating a Geographic Information System (GIS) into a web portal, we allow a multi-way dialog between Hong Kong's citizens and planning officials. Alternative development plans for Lantau (Hong Kong's largest island) can be analyzed through interactive maps, which allow citizens to compare and comment on specific geo-referenced features. Lantau Island's extensive nature reserves, which offer protected nesting grounds for numerous bird species and other ecological and recreational services, are being weighed against extensive economic development. This experiment in open governance within China will also serve as a laboratory to study qualitative differences in citizen learning, between online dialog and face-to-face group deliberation. Our experiments will explore resolutions to a classical economic paradox from social choice theory, and point to potential improvements in contemporary efforts to bring open and responsive government through information technology
Second issue of the international, peer-reviewed Open Access eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM)
Get PDFA community of fans, friends and power-users
Get PDFEstonia is recognised as a beacon of E-Government achievement and is making strides in using technology to include citizens in democratic processes. The key to sustainable E-Participation is to ensure that all E-Participation initiatives contribute to establishing an overall community of Wikipedia-like users who believe that their commitment and investment of time really makes a difference. Over time, citizens’ roles and contributions may vary a lot, but this essential public infrastructure and policy has to be provided systematically for E-Participation to become a reality - whatever new technology comes along, and however successful individual projects are. This is the real meaning of sustainable E-Participation
Deliberation and Collaboration in the Policy Process: A Web 2.0 approach
Get PDFThis paper is a summary of a PhD thesis proposal. It will explore how the Web 2.0 platform could be applied to enable and facilitate the large-scale participation, deliberation and collaboration of both governmental and non-governmental actors in an ICT supported policy process. The paper will introduce a new democratic theory and a Web 2.0 based e-democracy platform, and demonstrate how different actors would use the platform to develop and justify policy issues
Procedures and Methods for Cross-community Online Deliberation
Get PDFIn this paper we introduce our model of self-regulated mass online deliberation, and apply it to a context of cross-border deliberation involving translation of contributions between participating languages, and then to a context of cross-community online deliberation for dispute resolution, e.g. between opposing ethnic or religious communities. In such a cross-border or cross-community context, online deliberation should preferably progress as a sequence of segmented phases each followed by a combining phase. In a segmented phase, each community deliberates separately, and selects their best contributions for being presented to all other communities. Selection is made by using our proposed mechanism of mutual moderation and appraisal of contributions by participants themselves. In the subsequent combining phase, the selected contributions are translated (by volunteering or randomly selected participants among those who have specified appropriate language skills) and presented to target segments for further appraisal and commenting. Our arguments in support of the proposed mutual moderation and appraisal procedures remain mostly speculative, as the whole subject of mass online self-regulatory deliberation still remains largely unexplored, and there exist no practical realisation of it
Making Sense of Gov 2.0 Strategies: “No Citizens, No Party”
Get PDFOne of the main factors contributing to the limited impact of eParticipation projects is the presence of a high level of social complexity that has been identified by Macintosh as one of the five challenges in the implementation of eParticipation practices. How to make sense of social complexity is still an open issue as well as the way governments can take benefit from the wealth of information that is already available on their constituencies’ collective behaviour. In this paper, we contend that the presence of a considerable variance in terms of political interests, educational level and technological skills makes it very difficult to design workable and effective systems to support participation. A modular strategy is then recommended requiring policy designers to make a step towards citizens rather than expecting the citizenry to move their content production activity onto the “official” spaces created for ad hoc participation