e-Government Stakeholder Involvement in Austria

Vienna.
The next presenter at EDEM 2009 is Silke Weiß from the Austrian Ministry of Finance. Her focus is on the egosta (e-Government Stakeholder Involvement) platform, which aims to develop and test stakeholder involvement systems. For the project, e-participation is the participation of citizens and businesses in political decision making processes through ICTs; such participation strengthens mutual trust between stageholders and can result in more broadly based solutions.

However, so far participation is very unevenly distributed, and some citizens, enterprises, and NGOs are left out from the consultation, which can lead to distrust towards electronic forms of government processes. So, it is necessary to develop a standard method and tool for the instant and immediate involvement of stakeholders in the development of new e-government applications, using Web 2.0 technologies. This will hopefully optimise processes of knowledge transfer between all stakeholders (defined broadly as all groups who may be future users of IT applications or may be affected by outcomes).

So far, communication strategies around new e-government applications are limited and tend to inform stakeholders only relatively shortly before the roll-out. There are also problems with development as deveopers remain largely unaware of stakeholder interests and needs. The involvement of stakeholders can be ensured through physical meetings or online means, which aim to elicit more information about needs and wants. This can be time- and resource-intensive, however, especially for face-to-face meetings - and so, the use of online platforms is important.

egosta is such a platform, enabling new forms of cooperation and supporting the development process without a need for physical presence. Small and medium enterprises can contribute more effectively here, and a much wider general audience can also be addressed. Project elements include organisational guidelines for use of the e-participation toolbox; the e-participation toolbox itself, which provides various Web 2.0 tools for collaborative efforts; and an analysis tool for the evaluation of artefacts of the collaborative process.

An early use-case for this process was the "Virtual Company Dossier" (VCD) which forms part of the EU Pan-European Public Procurement Online Project (PEPPOL); the VCD consolidates collection of information required for economic operators to participate in public procurement processes as tenderers, and was implemented in Austria. Stakeholders were able to use egosta to drive the collaborative development of the VCD system based on a collaborative understanding of technical terms and the requirements for the VCD project.

egosta as used for VCD development runs on Plone, provides structured information, VCD blogs by the project team, a stakeholder discussion forum, a stakeholder wiki, monthly live chats between experts and stakeholders, rating functionaity to identify innovative contributions, a semantic analysis tool, and an internal VCD developers ideas forum. The project runs from 2008 to 2011, and through this test case, the overall egosta platform will be able to be optimised further, especially in relation to user-friendliness, functionalities, topics to be addressed, blog and forum functionality, top-down topic provision, and the use of Web 2.0 technologies. To further develop egosta, there are also further stakeholder processes tracking its improvement.

So why is this necessary? It aims to develop a standard method and product for such development projects, creating a win-win situation in which there is active support for and from the project team, detailed initial information for the stakeholders, involvement of stakeholders in design decisions for e-government applications, and eventually better outcomes and a better acceptance of the outcomes. In the process, the use of Web 2.0 technologies in stakeholder involvement, moderation strategies for such sites, and the level of acceptance for e-participation mechanisms are also being investigated.

Technorati : Austria, EDEM 2009, collaboration, development, e-government, e-participation, egosta, stakeholder involvement
Del.icio.us : Austria, EDEM 2009, collaboration, development, e-government, e-participation, egosta, stakeholder involvement