An Evaluation Framework for E-participation in Parliaments

E-Participation is a relatively new approach, so it is necessary to evaluate it carefully, in order to understand it better, acquire more knowledge about it and identify the advantages and benefits it offers, and also its disadvantages, shortcomings and problems, so that we can finally improve eparticipation proctice. However, even though many countries invest significant amounts of money in e-participation in order to engage citizens in public decision-making using information and communication technologies (ICT), they do not pay corresponding attention in evaluating these efforts. In this direction, this paper describes a new framework that has been developed for evaluating a number of e-participation pilots in the legislation development processes of parliaments that will be implemented as part of the LEX-IS project (‘Enabling Participation of the Youth in the Public Debate of Legislation among Parliaments, Citizens and Businesses in the European Union) of the ‘eParticipation’ Preparatory Action of the European Commission. The proposed framework is based on a) the objectives and basic characteristics of the ‘traditional’ public participation, the e-participation and the legislation development processes, and b) existing frameworks for the evaluation of information systems, e-participation and traditional public participation. It includes three evaluation perspectives: process, system and outcomes evaluation; each of them is analysed into a number of evaluation criteria.