What is E-Participation Initiatives

The past decade has witnessed an increasing trend of information and communication technologies (ICT) exploitation by governments around the world to enhance citizen participation. This is reflected in the emergence of a plethora of terms associated with the phenomenon, such as e-consultation or online consultation (Whyte & Macintosh, 2002), online rule-making (Charlitz & Gunn, 2002), online deliberation (Price & Cappella, 2006), online public engagement (Coleman & Gotze, 2001), and e-participation (Macintosh, 2004). In this chapter, we will use the term “e-participation” initiatives to refer to government’s use of ICT to engage citizens in democratic processes. The term “e-participation” is chosen because it is sufficiently general to encompass all such efforts by governments. Instances of e-participation initiatives can be found globally, such as Denmark’s Nordpol.dk (http://www.nordpol.dk), U.S.’s Regulations.gov (http://www.regulations.gov), and Singapore’s REACH portal (http://www.reach.gov.sg). Table 1 presents a list of e-participation initiatives that are sampled from around the globe.