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How to Identify Objectives and Genres in E-Democracy Projects: Learning from an Action Case Study

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An increased number of public organisations engage in E-Democracy projects to improve their capability to communicate on democratic issues. Such efforts are complex due to lack of knowledge on how to develop information technology solutions to support the complex nature of the electronic communication taking place. In this paper a process is proposed, identifying objectives and genres in E-Democracy projects. The process addresses two major problems identified from the E-Democracy literature and a case study. Firstly, the purposes of E-Democracy projects are often unclear and somewhat naïvely understood. Secondly, it seemed difficult to enact technology to achieve the identified objectives. This paper first describes the suggested process and then focus on experiences from an action case study. The opportunity to link main ideas (phase 1) and genres (phase 2) showed importance in the discussion about what to develop in the action case project. Introducing E-Democracy models simplified a comparison between alternatives and initiated a discussion on the objectives before focusing directly on technology, which is found to be a weakness in other E-Democracy projects.

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Sæbø, Ø. (2007). How to Identify Objectives and Genres in E-Democracy Projects: Learning from an Action Case Study. In: Magyar, G., Knapp, G., Wojtkowski, W., Wojtkowski, W.G., Zupančič, J. (eds) Advances in Information Systems Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-70761-7_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-70761-7_26

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-70760-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-70761-7

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