This one day workshop to map the emerging field of eParticipation will be taking place in conjunction with MCIS 2006 (the 7th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems).

Date: October 5, 2006

Location: Venice, Italy

Overview

The research community is involved in many efforts to understand political participation in the internet age, and to broaden and deepen citizen participation in the political decision making process using information and communication technologies. Advances in research in this area involve not only IS researchers but researchers from other disciplines such as communications, sociology, political science and political administration. In addition the field is an applied field which interests many government practitioners and political interest groups. This workshop sets out to co-ordinate these diverse research initiatives and to help scope this cross-disciplinary area.

Objectives

The goal of this workshop is to map the emerging field of eParticipation. The workshop has the following objectives

• to facilitate close and sustained co-operation between eParticipation researchers from different academic disciplines, in order to improve the quality of research and understanding on all sides,
• to assess and compare research already made on eParticipation in cities, regions and countries across Europe,
• to identify eParticipation research challenges for both researchers and government,
• to structure the core research themes and related concepts of as a taxonomy or ontology.

Submissions

This is an exciting and challenging research area, which requires a novel combination of technical, social and political measures. This workshop seeks research white papers on issues such as:

• drivers and opportunities for eParticipation across Europe,
• analysis of public eParticipation policy,
• approaches for defining and understanding eParticipation,
• research discourse analysis techniques to explore agenda setting, and alliance building at different levels,
• current and emergent eParticipation technological infrastructures,
• current and emergent eParticipation methods,
• emerging criteria which allow evaluation of eParticipation initiatives to be undertaken in a systematic and standardised way.

The workshop will combine short presentations of white papers with co-operative discussion and development of taxonomies and ontologies, and the workshop organisers will intend to develop and publish the results of the discussions at a later date.

Authors must submit a 2-page white paper for presentation at the workshop to the conference organizer (Jeremy Rose, jeremy@cs.aau.dk). White papers should sketch a topic of interest to the community in a brief form using the conventions of scientific writing, such as abstracts, literature references and logical argument, and may be regarded as prototypes for future development into full papers. Authors may be asked to revise their white paper. The final papers will be published as a workshop brochure. Co-operation and further development of the workshop papers for submission to conferences and journals will be facilitated.

Funding for travel and subsistence may be available from Demo-net in cases where funding is not available from conventional sources.

Important dates

July 30, 2006:              Deadline for submission of white paper

August 31, 2006:        Authors of accepted and rejected papers notified

September 20, 2006:  Deadline for submission of camera-ready copy

Program Committee

Main contact: Dr Jeremy Rose, Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Frederik Bajers Vej 7, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark
E-mail: jeremy@cs.aau.dk

Dr. Åke Grönlund, Professor of Informatics, Ørebro University, Sweden
E-mail: ake.gronlund@esi.oru.se

Dr. Maria A. Wimmer, Professor of eGovernment, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
E-mail: wimmer@uni-koblenz.de

Dr. Kim Viborg Andersen, Professor of IS, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
E-mail: kva.inf@cbs.dk

Dr Anna Carola Freschi, Department of Economics, University of Bergamo, Italy
E-mail: anna.freschi@unibg.it