Ontology

The concept of ontology is not a new concept as such. It has been used by philosophers (e.g. Aristotle) since ancient times to analyse and categorise what exists. With the increasing use of sophisticated information and communication technology, ontologies have become a concept of interest for structuring information in a way which is close to the human understanding. In respect to e-participation, ontologies can help to structure the complex area thereby creating the natural links among application of ICT and the context of citizen engagement in the discourse with politicians and governments. This way, a proper understanding of the field can be provided, which is at the same time machine-readable and computable. In more advanced e-participation implementations, ontologies can represent the basic underlying concept of structuring domains, lines of argumentation etc. where intelligent reasoning and knowledge extraction may be facilitated. The recent technologies to digital ontology descriptions even enable the exploitation of reasoning and inference mechanisms, consequently providing innovative means for knowledge management and personalised and customised tools and services in a wide range of e-participation.

• Semantic web