What do eParticipants think about eParticipation?

Some of you may remember the eParticipation Day 2009 - a conference and exhibition which took place in Brussels at the EC premises on 4th March. (By the way, a full video of the event and all the public speeches are now available at https://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/eparticipation/2009/index_en.htm).

Fewer perhaps are aware of the Istant Poll which was run during that event by Regione Toscana, using the same voting system as the one utilised during their Electronic Town Meetings (more info on this at https://www.ideal-eu.net/frontend/index.php).

In short, 81 visitors answered the poll - 52 of whom (or 64,2%) stating that they had eParticipated at least once in their own lives before. Two more single choice questions were raised in the poll:

1) What is eParticipation expected to achieve?

• Improve the quality of decision-making 34 (42%)
• Reduce the democratic deficit 20 (24.7%)
• Improve trust in government 10 (12.3%)
• Make politicians more accountable 7 (8.6%)
• Help increase voter turnout 5 (6.2%)
• Increase membership of political parties 1 (1.2%)
• Other 4 (4.9%)

2) How will eParticipation change the nature of public engagement and politics?

• Spread political power throughout society 32 (39.5%)
• Enable citizens to better scrutinise the work of politicians 23 (28.4%)
• Lead to direct democracy with no need for elected representatives 9 (11.1%)
• Give more power to unaccountable interest groups 4 (4.9%)
• Strengthen single issue politics 4 (4.9%)
• Allow all government proposals to be voted on by all citizens 3 (3.7%)
• Other 6 (7.4%)

Three comments from my side:

a) though the exhibition was mainly a practitioners event, the share of eParticipants among respondents looks extremely high - maybe some eParticipation solution provider has pretended to have eParticipated too?

b) the majority of answers to question #1 have little to do with decreasing voter turnout which has long been a “classical” motivation for eParticipation

c) improving the accountability of politicians seems of low interest in question #1 but ranks second in question #2 - where is truth?

I look forward to knowing what my fellow PEP-NET “fans” think about these results…