PARTERRE Project, mail@francescomolinari.it
Abstract: Institutionalisation of eParticipation is the next big challenge of the forthcoming years for Europe as a whole. After the wave of demonstration projects funded under the joint (EU Parliament and Commission) Preparatory Action on eParticipation, it is important to make one step forward by taking stock of the positive and getting rid of the negative outcomes, to avoid reinventing the wheel every time and to channel (presumably decreasing) resources towards future initiatives that really make a difference and have long term impact. To this end, it is recommended that the European Commission and Member States should focus more and more on technological (scaling-up) and institutional (sustainable change) aspects, particularly in the framework of the new eGovernment Action Plan’s implementation process.
Keywords: institutionalisation, sustainability, eParticipation Preparatory Action, eGovernment Action Plan Acknowledgement: This paper derives from a much shorter presentation I did on 7th December 2010 at an ePractice workshop on eParticipation in Brussels. I am very grateful for the comments received thereafter.
Errors are mine.
eginning of this year, the eParticipation Preparatory Action has come to an end. Launched in 2005 by the joint effort (and funding) of the European Parliament and Commission, the Action aimed to promote participation of EU citizens in parliamentary and decision-making processes, supported by ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), and through this to contribute to better legislation and policy-making at European, national and regional level. In three years of implementation (2006-2008), 20 trial projects have been funded, covering a wide range of domains, such as climate change and energy, consumer protection, environment and planning, plus the MOMENTUM support action, which helped coordination and collaboration amongst those 20. In a nutshell, the trial projects have represented:
• 30 pilot sites
• 18 EU Member States
• 100,000 citizens engaged
• 50 public sector entities
• 70 MEPs
(Chrissafis & Rohen 2010, p. 92).
In terms of investment, we can estimate a fall-out of about 20 Million Euros of public and private resources, or about 200 per citizen engaged. This together with other flagship initiatives of the EU, notably the PEP-NET network of eParticipation practitioners and a number of FP5-6-7 and CIP
(formerly eTen) projects in related ICT domains, has certainly contributed to creating, developing and consolidating the “embryo” of a European market for quite a few leading tools, applications and services – notably ePetitioning in the UK and Germany (Panagiotopoulos & Al Debei 2010, Public-i 2011, Lindner & Riehm 2010), moderated online discourses and participatory budgeting / planning in Germany and elsewhere (Luehrs & Molinari 2007, Luehrs et al. 2009, Demos-Plan 2011), online visualization of political arguments, mostly in the UK (ODET 2010, Debategraph 2011), and Electronic Town Meetings in Italy, particularly in Tuscany (Molinari 2010a, Avventura Urbana 2011)1.
Social impact has also been relevant, with an average calculation of
• 3,300 citizens per pilot
• 2,000 per public sector entity
• 1,400 per MEP involved
derived from the figures summarised before. Finally, it is worth mentioning as a side product of EC policy action - yet probably not unintended, as the rationale of the DEMO-NET NoE is there to demonstrate - the characterization of a nascent socio-technical discipline, namely eParticipation research (Sæbo et al. 2008), which has been gaining visibility and value among academics and practitioners alike. The growing number of international conferences that have dedicated a section to eParticipation also testifies this.
Several studies and reports concerning the participatory processes and technologies adopted in the Preparatory Action trials have already been published. Some of them are stored online in the MOMENTUM knowledge base. However, available information is more focused on the technology trials description rather than the impact they had on the underlying public sector processes. By far, the question of how participatory processes can be permanently established during the follow-on phase subsequent to trial completion, i.e. during the setup of what would ideally be a participatory policy cycle (comprising agenda setting, policy formation, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reformulation), has yet to be systematically addressed.
In this paper, we would like to focus on the (normative: see Rose et al. 2007) issue of how to ensure better policy impact of future and prospective eParticipation initiatives, particularly at the level of EU Member States. It is now rather undisputed amongst researchers and professionals that the deployment of tailored ICT solutions is a key prerequisite for successful involvement and engagement of people in public policy and decision-making. It is then high time that the debate concerning eParticipation should move away from the discourse of whether, and start addressing the question of how. This is a pretty new development, which we propose to call institutionalisation of eParticipation within the political and administrative processes (or procedures / proceedings, depending on the cases) of a given public sector organisation or governance system. It somehow takes a distance from the recent focus set on sustainable eParticipation by another relevant strand of literature (see Luehrs & Molinari 2010 for an overview). There, the conditions are reviewed and analysed that facilitate adoption and repeated (sustainable) usage of ICT tools, applications and services. It is a descriptive goal, but also instrumental to project appraisal, i.e. to assessing, in a structured way, the case for progressing any further with a proposed method, channel or tool for
1 A small remark is perhaps required. We did not include eVoting technologies in this shortlist, although they deserved it, only because we are complying with the “strict” definition of eParticipation, the one introduced by Ann Macintosh (2004), which makes a distinction between ICT for voting and citizens engagement. Likewise, we are not touching upon the eLegislation domain, which we see as quite distinct from eParticipation, though there may be overlaps between the two: for instance, when citizens are engaged in the legislative process by means of ICT supported tools. For an (old) review of eLegislation state of the art, see Luehrs & Molinari (2007).
E-Democracy & E-Participation 73 eParticipation (Molinari 2010b). Here, the more ambitious target is to explore which legal, political and/or administrative infrastructure could/should be created that would facilitate sustainability, i.e.
the establishment of eParticipation, not as a one-off exercise, but an integral dimension of some (if not all) policy and decision-making cycles.
The remainder of this discussion is structured as follows. Section 1 briefly overviews and makes comments on the results and outcomes of the eParticipation Preparatory Action, based on existing information available via the MOMENTUM portal and on collateral project and policy publications.
Section 2 frames the proposed challenge of “institutionalising eParticipation” within the scientific literature and the professional (consultancy) work that deals with related issues. Section 3 draws some recommendations for future action by the European Commission and partly the EU Member States, in the framework of the recently launched eGovernment Action Plan 2011–2015.
The reader is cordially invited to moderate her or his expectations regarding this paper, which can only be taken as a very preliminary approach to an issue that, if adequately cultivated, requires far more theoretical reflections and pragmatic actions than those modestly proposed here. What is nevertheless our ambition is to provide a rationale for further intelligence into and stock taking out of the results of the eParticipation Preparatory Action, to see what can be durably learnt without dampening too much the enthusiasm of those who imagined a faster and deeper transformation of policy making practice as a result of that experience.
A joint EC and Member States initiative remains crucial in that direction; this is why we will start by commenting on the most recent EU policy document (published on 15th December 2010) that is directly referring to this domain: the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011–2015.
1. Paving the ground
The word ‘eParticipation’ is quoted only once in the eGovernment Action Plan, which may not be that bad at all. This occurs in the section on ‘User Empowerment’, a header that means “increasing the capacity of citizens, businesses and other organisations to be pro-active in society through the use of new technological tools” (European Commission 2010, p. 6). Among other things, like public service reform, transparency and open data policy recommendations, empowerment also means
“that governments should … allow effective involvement of citizens and businesses in the policy making process” (European Commission 2010, p. 6).
Member States are committed to so doing. Over the period of coverage of this Action Plan (i.e.
2011-2015), together with “the Commission and other representative institutions such as [national and the EU?] parliaments”, EU27 central governments “should develop services that involve stakeholders in public debates and decision-making processes building on pilots and demonstration” (European Commission 2010, p. 9).
Service is a different word than pilot or trial. In this context, it has to be understood as an eGovernment, or ‘tGovernment’ (transformational Government2), service, i.e. as a public service
2 According to Wikipedia (2011): “Transformation programmes differ from traditional e-Government programmes in four major ways:
They take a whole-of-government view of the relationship between the public sector and the citizen or business user.
They include initiatives to e-enable the frontline public services: that is, staff involved in direct personal delivery of services such as education and healthcare – rather than just looking at transactional services which can be e-enabled on an end-to-end basis.
They take a whole-of-government view of the most efficient way managing the cost base of government.
They focus on the “citizen” not the “customer”. That is, they seek to engage with the citizens as owners of and participants in the creation of public services, not as passive recipients of services”.
For the Whole of Government view, see OECD (2007).
provided via electronic means, aimed at strengthening participation, building on the results of prior experimentation.
Unfortunately, in the Action Plan there is no explicit reference to the results of the eParticipation Preparatory Action. Is that enough to discard them as irrelevant to the purpose? We are tempted to say no, for the reasons stated in the Introduction, and also because, where the Action Plan speaks about the need for “further exchanges of knowledge and best practice” building upon existing and upcoming FP7 and CIP projects, this might not be reasonably interpreted as a wish to put the process of “service building” on hold, for at least two reasons:
• The institutional competence of “governing” FP7 and CIP projects lies more with the Commission than with the Member States;
• The “exchanges of knowledge and best practice” belong to the demonstration, not to the service engineering phase.
So our argument here is that whatever lessons we can learn and stock we can take (for both good and bad) out of the 20 trial projects of the Preparatory Action, it is everybody’s interest to stay focused and elaborate further on them.
1.1. Where do we stand?
Following this line of reasoning, the next question becomes: what findings should be highlighted after the trial results? On the basis of the information contained in MOMENTUM knowledge base, and particularly Deliverable 2.7 consolidating the results of all 20 projects, EU27 countries can be broadly divided into three groups (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Participation of Member States in the Preparatory Action trials (Charalabidis et al., 2010) A. Countries with no participation: BG, CY, DK, FI, HU, LU, LV, MT, RO. Here, the urgent need is apparent: to complement the information from the Preparatory Action with eParticipation trials from other (European, national and regional) programmes and projects. For instance, Denmark and Finland have a long-standing tradition of civic participation and a number of notable initiatives are known to be in place, involving extended ICT usage.
B. Countries with intense participation: DE, EL, ES, IE, IT, NE, SK, UK. Again, due to lack of counterfactual or complementary information, we might be tempted to award a trophy of activism to countries where the reality of eParticipation is quite on the opposite side: in fact, apart from the recurrent presence of a few “usual suspects” (or “champions” of European eParticipation) coming
E-Democracy & E-Participation 75 from these countries, an over-representation in the technology demonstration trials may also mean
“absence of an established (Government) marketplace” for these tools, applications and services.
C. Countries with medium participation: AT, BE, CZ, EE, FR, LT, PL, PT, SI, SE. Staying in the middle, as a residual group, these countries are even harder to interpret, particularly at this highest (bird’s eye) level and without making more specific reference to the in-house situation of each.
It is also important to note the kind of User Empowerment activities that have been put in place by the various trials. As the next Figure shows, one out of three projects (notably from the 2007 and the 2008 “waves”), have focused on these all along the participatory processes established. Of course, there are several overlaps between stages that are due to the very nature of the processes themselves.
Figure 2: Stages of User Empowerment3 in the Preparatory Action trials (Charalabidis et al., 2010) Unfortunately, country-specific detailed information is missing from this analysis, which could also be a commitment for future research — provided that the caveats mentioned above are taken into account.
Another important source of inspiration to assess state of the art activities may be the European Study on eParticipation carried out in 2008–2009 on behalf of the European Commission by three leading research institutions in this domain (see Millard et al. 2009). The following two diagrams are taken out of a public presentation of the Study results delivered by Nielsen (2010).
3 Key: according to Charalabidis et al. (2010, pp. 129-130): “Informing: represents one-way communication channel between decision-makers and the citizens. It is implemented through information provision from government to citizens (governmental websites) Consulting: is a limited two-way communication channel between government and citizens, aiming at opinion gathering. Citizens get acquainted of specific issues by decision-makers and provide them the potential of contributing their opinion. Engaging: is a more enhanced two-way channel of communication, compared to consulting. In this context, discussion on policy proposals between citizens and decision-makers takes place aiming at policy formation. Empowering: constitutes citizens engagement in policy-making on a partnership basis”.
Figure 3: Type and scale of eParticipation initiatives in Europe (2008) (Nielsen, 2010)
Although this evidence cannot be strictly compared to the Preparatory Action, due to both the date of collection and the different statistical basis, one important and unequivocal message comes out of it, which could also be confirmed by a deeper inspection of the EU funded trials: namely that eParticipation is a matter of local relevance. Thus, the commitment taken by the Member States (i.e. the respective central governments) in the eGovernment Action Plan to “develop services that involve stakeholders in public debates and decision-making processes” would remain generic and unfulfilled, without a substantial effort in the direction of lower-tier public administration (national, regional and/or sub-regional, depending on the predominant structuration of competences in each governance system and on the size of the country itself).
That effort might well not be of financial nature, particularly in these times of crisis. As the next diagram shows, EU level funding was already making a big difference for the promotion of eParticipation in Europe in the year 2008; and we would not be surprised to see that this biased distribution of funding sources was also maintained in the following years.
Figure 4: Funding sources of eParticipation initiatives in Europe (2008) (Nielsen, 2010)
On the other hand, it would be unfair — not only unfeasible — to commit to EU funding as an exclusive or prevailing incentive to institutionalising eParticipation at national level, again for two reasons:
• By definition, FP7 and CIP funding awards European level projects, not national ones;
E-Democracy & E-Participation 77
• Focusing on services at Member State level requires national funding, or a renovated attention to the “business model” of eParticipation (Al-Debei et al. 2010).
1.2. Where should we go?
In light of the above considerations, a strategy for institutionalising eParticipation should be made up of two concurrent aspects, that we call Scaling Up and Sustainable Change.
A Scaling Up strategy should be aimed at enforcing and stimulating the potential of the nascent marketplace of eParticipation tools, applications and services at Member State level in Europe.
The main instrument should be the migration from one-off small pilot projects to city level, regional and nationwide services. This would create reciprocal advantages not only for the solution providers (obviously) but also for the public sector organisations involved, in terms of access to reliable, tested and also possibly cheaper solutions that would not need to be developed from scratch, but could come up with a track record of past successful implementations and a clear transferability profile, focused more on the accompanying actions (e.g. community building, dissemination) than on technology take-up, requirements analysis and validation.
A Sustainable Change strategy should be aimed at “embedding” eParticipation, like a permanent add-on, in the current setup of public decision-making processes and administrative procedures.
Here the main instrument should be to explore (theoretically) and assess (pragmatically) what the conditions are that make eParticipation a firm component of an open policy architecture (Millard et al. 2009). There are many possible directions to take that could help achieve this, and for some of them the reader is referred to Section 3 of this paper. However, three recommendations are clearly emerging, from a cross reading of the Preparatory Action trials, to make eParticipation sustainable:
1. Public processes are important. These are the natural “loci” where policy action (and change) take place;
2. Institutions are important. By these, we do not only mean existing laws and regulations, but also traditions, cultural and social norms, which equally contribute to shape the instantiated forms of participation;
3. Technology take-up is also important. There is a big mismatch between availability and usage of (process) technology in the EU national and regional public sector, which has to be taken care of somehow.
4. To clarify this two-pronged strategy even further, the example could be made of the ongoing CIP project entitled PARTERRE. The European Union has made it compulsory for planning authorities to involve statutory consultees and the general public on all plans and programmes that require e.g. an Environmental Impact Assessment, or a Strategic Environmental Assessment, according to several directives that have been duly transposed into the national legislative frameworks of all EU27 Member States. This implies conducting unavoidable consultation exercises that are costly and require specific expertise to be carried out. Currently, there is no obligation to use ICT tools in order to execute them.
The PARTERRE project, started in September 2010, is taking two ICT prototypes that have successfully addressed these issues in two previous Preparatory Action trials and is piloting them in five European countries, according to the CIP (formerly eTen) “logic”, i.e. by taking into account the specificities of the respective legal, cultural, political and socio-technical systems:
• DEMOS-Plan, developed by TuTech in Germany and deployed across the board in the federal state of Hamburg, allows planning authorities to conduct online consultations with statutory consultees and the general public, and automates the consultation process. This saves money by not sending paper documents by post and offers new innovative ways for the consultees to submit their opinions and formal objections.
• The Electronic Town Meeting, brought to Europe by the Italian company Avventura Urbana and repeatedly trialled in the Region of Tuscany, is a standardised procedure for conducting high quality deliberation events with large numbers of participants in several locations simultaneously.
This allows an informed judgement and a clear prioritisation of issues by the (representative)
This allows an informed judgement and a clear prioritisation of issues by the (representative)