E-participation and transparent policy decision making

Authors:
Soon Ae Chun;June-Suh Cho
Affiliations:
City University of New York-College of Staten Island, NY;Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea
Venue:
Information Polity - Special issue on Open Government and Public Participation: Issues and Challenges in Creating Public Value
Year:
2012

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Abstract

In this study, we investigate the implementation, benefits and results of an online participation tool, called Cyber Policy Forum, and other for e-participation tools, by the Seoul Metropolitan City Government (SMG) in Korea, used for citizen participation in the policy making process. The Forum has not only shifted the paradigm of city governance by easing SMG's burden of policy planning, but also has raised public awareness and understanding of municipal issues. However, we do not think the Policy forum tool has enough features for "shared governance" to achieve a true citizen-government partnership in policy decision making. We recommend a provenance data based policy transparency model that captures and makes the policy decision making data transparent to citizens to be used in the deliberation process. The provenance data-based policy transparency model implies transparency in policy data, process, role and context information generated in the policy decision making lifecycle by the government. In addition, we advocate augmenting citizen participation tools with personal decision support system functionalities, such as content management and social analytic tools. Such tools can help enhancing the efficient management of the deliberation data to overcome information overload. They will also make it easy for citizens to understand the interactions among participants, and to grasp the conditions and contexts related to policy decision making.