The SIG Community rather represents a more heterogeneous group of stakeholders such as representatives of the general public, civil society, and the informal or third sector. From an organisational or institutional perspective these actors are mostly active in NGOs, public interest groups, citizen panels or juries, as well as in ‘public’ associations (e.g. chambers, unions).
To establish a platform and SIG with a dual core function:

• integrating perspectives, knowledge and reflections from the general public, citi-zens and civil society into eParticipation development (covering issues such as practical demands, views, experiences, knowledge etc.)
• and for transferring DEMO-net results into civil society practice

in order to contribute to the overall engagement of practitioner experts from community interest groups in the ePCoP and, hence, in DEMO-net.
It is the principal purpose to raise awareness of and enable participation in DEMO-net research activities. Apart from that, the co-operation among “community interest groups” and DEMO-net shall facilitate vivid exchange. Moreover, knowledge transfer from DEMO-net (knowledge of best practice cases, tools, evaluation results, other resources) to SIGs shall be enabled and promoted.
Through direct input from potential users and user side perspectives, the DEMO-net research agenda shall be enriched by communicating relevant practically grounded research demands. This will involve elements of user participation in the process of identification of research demands (agenda setting), tool development, user feedback and evaluation.