Research Article
Using Structured e-Forum to Support the Legislation Formation Process
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-11631-5_3, author={Alexandros Xenakis and Euripides Loukis}, title={Using Structured e-Forum to Support the Legislation Formation Process}, proceedings={Next Generation Society. Technological and Legal Issues. Third International Conference, e-Democracy 2009, Athens, Greece, September 23-25, 2009, Revised Selected Papers}, proceedings_a={E-DEMOCRACY}, year={2012}, month={5}, keywords={e-participation e-consultation public policy structured e-forum Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS)}, doi={10.1007/978-3-642-11631-5_3} }- Alexandros Xenakis
Euripides Loukis
Year: 2012
Using Structured e-Forum to Support the Legislation Formation Process
E-DEMOCRACY
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-11631-5_3
Abstract
Many public policy problems are ‘wicked’, being characterised by high complexity, many heterogeneous views and conflicts among various stakeholders, and also lack of mathematically ‘optimal’ solutions and predefined algorithms for calculating them. The best approach for addressing such problems is through consultation and argumentation among stakeholders. The e-participation research has investigated and suggested several ICT tools for this purpose, such as e-forum, e-petition and e-community tools. This paper investigates the use of an advanced ICT tool, the structured e-forum, for addressing such wicked problems associated with the legislation formation. For this purpose we designed, implemented and evaluated two pilot e-consultations on legislation under formation in the Parliaments of Austria and Greece using a structured e-forum tool based on the Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS) framework. The conclusions drawn reveal the advantages offered by the structured e-forum, but also its difficulties as well.