Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

eVoting is a challenging approach for increasing eParticipation. However, lack of citizens’ trust seems to be a main obstacle that hinders its successful realization. In this paper we propose a trust-centered engineering approach for building eVoting systems that people can trust, based on transparent design and implementation phases. The approach is based on three components: the decomposition of eVoting systems into “layers of trust” for reducing the complexity of managing trust issues in smaller manageable layers, the application of a risk analysis methodology able to identify and document security critical aspects of the eVoting system, and a cryptographically secure eVoting protocol. Our approach is pragmatic rather than theoretical in the sense that it sidesteps the controversy that besets the nature of trust in information systems and starts with a working definition of trust as people’s positive attitude towards a system that performs its operations transparently.

Two-stage voting procedures, where registration for voting and actual vote casting are separated, are considered a viable way to ensure voter secrecy and anonymity in casting votes. This, however, comes at a price; a media has to be constructed to bridge these two phases and to ensure that the media cannot be abused. This contribution reports about an e-voting test among Austrians abroad conducted in 2006, which focused on the usability issues of such two-stage procedures.

The participation of citizens in government issues can bring to life the principles of democracy, making use also of the electronic channels. However, when the citizens are asked to participate in consultative and deliberative processes, they individually receive information from different communication media. Thus, it is not possible to verify whether the individuals have reached maturity in the issues discussed on the Web. The purpose of this paper is to show our proposal to evaluate the degree of maturity during the democratic decision-making process on the Web, engaging citizens by using a virtual community. The ‘Democratic Citizenship Community’ (DCC) was specified based on an investigation of a Government-Citizen Interaction Model, oriented toward discussion and voting. The Degree of Maturity Method (DMM), used to evaluate the DCC, is structured into levels: Immature, Poorly Mature, Mature and Sufficiently Mature, using a set of metrics to verify the effectiveness of the e-Participation process.

This paper presents some future possibilities for eDemocracy tools and considers how these new technologies might conflict with our basic assumptions about what democracy should be. I hope this paper will contribute to discussion of under what situations different forms of eDemocracy are appropriate. The possibilities and repercussions of user profiling, voting outside of polling booths, longer decision-making periods, changeable election results and weighted voted are considered. Although none are necessarily advisable, this paper suggests they might be interesting to consider.

The local dimension of e-Administration is not usually well developed in the literature. This paper contributes to the knowledge on the various issues raised by local e-Administration and proposes an analytical framework for the evaluation of the potential local online service offerings. Examination of how local public administration has developed in France is based on evidence from a dedicated survey of a sample of French communes. The analysis will enable us to identify the relative effort and performance in the development of local e-Administration based on the particular socio-economic characteristics of the communes. The analysis benefits from information derived from a survey designed particularly to address the issues raised in this paper.

In this paper we presented an empirical insight into interdependences between selected national performance indicators and e-government indicators at national level in the European Union. Results show that the level of economic development has a moderate impact on the e-government development, while national competitiveness and innovation play quite a strong role. There is also a low correlation between overall government efficiency and e-government. It confirms that e-government projects are predominantly politically and not economic or socially driven. However, the most economically advanced Nordic countries and UK have all very high e-government readiness. On the other hand, there is surprisingly low correlation between e-government usage by enterprises and individuals, which indicates very different incentives for business and the public. The relatively low performance of new EU member states was also noted.

It is widely perceived that the nature of ICT is changing and so is the scale of the resulting economic and societal impact around Europe. Continued and accelerating technological progress, market changes arising from globalization and convergence, and a growing societal acceptance of the new technologies, amount to a step-change in what it is able to be achieved with ICT. This paper tries to identify the current status and the progression achieved so far in EU with regards to the eGovernment area. Specific reference is being made to the EU-10 case, attempting to pinpoint the level of eReadiness progression achieved in recent years. It further detects accomplishments and shortcomings as well as further drivers and barriers shaping the current situation towards the apt EU alignment.