eParticipation: Where to look for cases, tools and service providers? 20. April 2010 – 18:08 by Rolf Luehrs

The first step for governments or public administrations considering setting up an eParticipation project or making use of social media for the public sector is to see what others have put in place already. But where can you find information about existing cases, tools that fit your project or even a service provider?

Here are some entry points:

ePractice.eu

ePractice.eu is a portal created by the European Commission which offers services for the professional community of eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth practitioners. It is an interactive initiative that empowers its users to discuss and influence open government, policy-making and the way in which public administrations operate and deliver services.

Part of the portal is a database providing descriptions of cases from the different domains. If you look for cases dealing with eParticipation, eDemocracy or eVoting you have to choose the right filters (Browse by domain: eGovernment; Browse by topic: eParticipation, eDemocracy and eVoting). After that you will be presented with about 130 cases from numerous EU countries, some of which are definitely worth reading.

e-participation.net & e-participation.it

e-particpation.net was initiated by PEP-NET founding member politik digital together with the British Council. The idea was to cover cases in Germany and the UK in the first place and more than 200 projects have been listed. Unfortunately the database has not been updated since the BC funding ran out in 2009. However, it is still an interesting archive and a source of inspiration: PEP-NET member Francesco Molinari set up a copycat covering only Italian cases in Italian language. He has since collected more than 150 cases.

ParticipateDB

ParticipateDB is a collaborative catalogue of online participation tools initiated by Tim Bonnemann’s Intelletics. Although still in the “closed alpha“ phase, 134 tools, 166 projects and 70 references can be browsed by any visitor.

Participedia

Participedia is a wiki page collecting “narratives and data about any kind of process or organization that has democratic potentials”. It is not at all limited to eParticipation but quite a lot of the described cases belong to this domain.

PDF’s “who to hire”

The US based personal democracy forum (PDF) recently published the “Who to Hire” guide providing an in-depth look at 40 firms offering technology tools to clients across the political spectrum. The guide has up-to-date descriptions of each company’s software and services. It contains examples of current political clients and the results of a survey of their network of online politics professionals that the initiators used to rate each company’s pricing, software and service. The online guide is only free for PDF members – others have to pay 75$. However, PDF provides a free executive summary.

Tiago Peixoto’s participatory budgeting map

In case you are interested in participatory budgeting you should have a look at the Google map Tiago has set up. This is to my knowledge the most comprehensive collection of case studies both with and without online support

PEP-NET
Last but not least we have collected quite a lot of blogposts introducing cases and tools. Just browse by category:

tools

projects

good-practice

Does anybody know other sources? Would be happy to get some hints in the comments…..

Tags: cases, databases, eParticipation, Tools