Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper addresses the important aspect of democracy at the local community level and the need for e-democracy tools. Communities require easy to use ways of accessing and sharing information and ideas, responding to consultations and participating in policy formulation. In this paper we focus on Community Councils which are the smallest local tier of the statutory framework of democracy in Scotland. The councillors live in the community they serve, know personally many of the issues and can readily judge the impact of new or changed policies and suggestions from government. Currently they represent their communities as best they can, relying on word-of-mouth and may therefore not be as inclusive as they otherwise might be.

The rapidly expanding public access to the internet and the increasing popularity of weblogs offer an opportunity for both the councillors and the communities to discuss issues together and lobby government for policy changes.

Current research in e-democracy has so far focused on the early stages of political decision making. Information- and communication technology (ICT) has been shown to facilitate participation in agenda setting and alternative selection. But ICT also has the potential to facilitate evaluation of existing policies. This paper examines policy evaluation from local politicians view. What web-based tools are useful for policy evaluation, and what kind of information do these tools provide?

Public participatory geographic information systems (PP GIS) aim at enlarging citizen’s involvement and participation in decision-making processes. In this paper we review existing online PP GIS applications and present the framework of our analysis. We concentrate on the aspects of interactivity of such applications and the GIS functionalities needed for their operation. First results of ongoing research exhibit that a vast majority of applications only deliver information to the citizen in a one-way communication process. Although the technology is available, only few applications fulfill criteria of our analysis to be classified as two-way communication tools. We conclude the paper with directions for our further research.

Democracy is based on freedom of voting but also on meaningful discussions about matters that are put to the vote or about people who wish to be elected. E-democracy cannot therefore be reduced to e-voting. It should also include Internet-based services that facilitate online interaction between voters, candidates and supporters of various opinions. This paper presents a series of interactive tools that can be used to support such a virtual dialogue. A matrix is proposed to categorize these tools. Examples of such tools used in Switzerland are given. The most sophisticated tools and websites recently developed for Swiss elections or referendums are described in some detail. Possible future research on the impact of these tools is outlined.

The potential of the internet has been recognised to enhance government initiated citizen communication. Despite limited experience so far, some lessons for designing online-participation have been learned: Ensuring the external and internal relevance of online consultation processes seems crucial. Some measurements to ensure the external and internal relevance will be set out in a description of an e-participation process in Esslingen, Germany, the first project to use web-based discussion forums as an instrument to inform and consult the public about the municipal budget.

The transition process from E-government to e-democracy involves a number of complex government changes, among which one of the important reforms for China, lies in the fundamental transform of its public finance regime from a “secret tradition” which has been holding for centuries long, towards a modern democratic open process. From 2003, Chinese government decided to release the Audit Report of its central and local budget to the public; this unprecedented event had stirred a so-called “Audit Storm” in the country. This paper therefore explores the significant meaning of fiscal transparence in China, analyzes the relationship between fiscal transparency and government accountability. Hereby argues that fiscal transparence can service as a catalyst both to e-government and open government process. Finally the paper points out China should follow the Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency edited by IMF, enhancing e-democracy via fiscal transparency.

Governments often embrace the Web as a means of delivering joined-up, citizen-centric services efficiently and cost-effectively. In the UK, despite significant investment both provision and usage of e-services have fallen short of target. In this article the current status of UK e-government is analysed in relation to ‘New Labour’ Third Way governance. It is concluded that the inherent contradictions of Third Way ideology and the government’s favoured command and control style are hindering the development of egovernment. It is proposed that greater devolution to local councils may accelerate the provision of participatory, partnership-based e-services. If this is to be successful however, central government must move beyond the popularly prescribed model of transaction-based, bilateral e-services and reconceptualise e-government as an instrument of devolved, communitarian governance.

This paper presents a comparative study on digital divide between a region and its main metropolitan area. The exercise shows how barriers to technology access and usage may vary in terms of both nature and intensity. The paper also proposes a taxonomy of the different types of digital divides that may be present inside a region.

The State of the Art in Electronic Government is the delivering of public services to the Citizen by means of integrated web portals, comprising the public agencies in the different levels of government, aiming to hide from the final user the complexity of the State bureaucracy. Ideally, these portals should be designed according to the mental patterns of the individuals, with their navigation oriented by the life events, and not by the logic of bureaucracy. Besides, the services to be provided must match both the Citizen’s and the State’s interests. Considering that many e-Government portals do not follow these principles, this article proposes an inversion in the policy of access to public services. By breaking paradigms, it presents the organized society as the drive engine behind the construction of integrated portals, with contents and shape to match citizen’s interests, rather than waiting for the government action.

We present a methodology for proving in Zero Knowledge the validity of selecting a subset of a set belonging to predefined family of sets. We apply this methodology in electronic voting to provide for extended ballot options. Our proposed voting scheme supports multiple parties and the selection of a number of candidates from of these parties. We have implemented this system and provide measures of its computational and communication complexity. We prove that the complexity is linear with respect to the total number of candidates and the number of parties participating in the election.