Web Platform for Public E-Participation Management

Abstract

The e-participation can be considered an area under constant focus. This paper presents a brief analysis of e-participation and e-democracy, and proposes a platform for electronic participation based on social media principles, designed to gather teachers and unions in a shared deliberative space. Interaction and collaboration are supported through questions, answers, suggestions, comments, votes, surveys and live debates. This proposal is intended to narrow the communication gap between teachers and unions and encourage teachers to become involved and participate in educational debates and important topics about the profession. The platform presented enables effective participation in formal and informal decision-making processes via the Internet, either as standalone or widgets with full integration into any Website. It is under constant development and will be improved along with this project. The actors in this study were chosen from the National Federation of Teachers due to its representativeness regarding associate teachers and provide an opportunity to assess the platform potential to support participation in a union context. The platform will be used in a trade union linked to teachers of several grade levels to understand their participation in this organization.

E-Voting vs E-Trust: A test bed for e-Democracy in a World in Crisis

“…In a population that has often been deprived, either by distance or due to politics, from engaging with their government and the governance of their land the level of trust should be easily gained if the right services were to be established before e-voting was introduced. If this does not take place then the same level of disappointment that can be observed in European countries (Quental and Borges Gouveia, 2014) will be encountered in Palestine and more Palestinians will disassociate themselves with e-services and e-voting. The authors do not believe that the outcomes of this first survey can convey a definitive message / conclusion as to the acceptance of and / or suitability of e-voting as a solution to elections in Palestine.…”

“…This indicates that these respondents are accustomed to accessing secure systems and that they have developed a considerable level of trust to such systems. Hence they will be more likely to accept the use of e-voting systems and participate in online elections (Quental and Borges Gouveia, 2014). The graphical representation of the responses in figure 5 shows the willingness of the respondents to use e-government services.…”

“…In the case of e-government services the benefit has to be considered along with the potential for performance improvement and that of an increase in citizen participation and engagement. Quental and Borges Gouveia (2014) highlight a further issue that might upstage the whole concept of e-participation and e-democracy; that of citizen disappointment in the representative government. These authors express the view that citizens believe that in the era of digital services they should be offered more opportunity to engage with decisionmaking and to participate more actively in government planning and actions that affect present life and the future of a country or a small local entity.…”

“…al., 2015). Such trade-offs can have a direct impact on real cases where citizen participation is low and the governments or other authority needs to enhance citizen engagement as a measure of their acceptability and to ensure that any decision reached will be received favourably by the public (Quental and Borges Gouveia, 2014). Examples of such cases could be the preliminary evaluation of a law or a reform, a political party poll, a satisfaction survey, a primary election, just to mention a few.…”

e-Consultation as a tool for participation in teachers' unions: The greater the focus, the greater the number of visits

“…Due to the crisis in the representative democracy, clearly visible in the declining participation in the elections [10], there is a considerable increase in the use of Internet tools for public consultation and citizen engagement.…”