Evaluating the quality of e-democracy processes

A significant number of studies have appeared on how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have a strong impact on e-democracy, which, in a few words, is the online citizen engagement and participation in public policy making. However, only few studies focus on the aspect of quality in edemocracy. This paper aims to raise questions on how e-democracy processes are perceived by the citizens and define the main characteristics of quality in an edemocracy system. Answering these questions will contribute to the identification of topics and issues that have to be prioritized in an e-democracy service delivery system. Based on our literature review, a four-dimensional framework is used to evaluate quality of e-democracy processes. This framework comprises the following dimensions: coordination, control, sharing, and transparency. Coordination is the capability of public agencies to combine their efforts in order to accomplish the delivery of their services to citizens. Control refers to how the activation and delivery of e-democracy services are controlled. By the term sharing we mean the way in which the public agencies handle and share citizens’ data with other agencies.