MODELING OF A DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP COMMUNITY

TO FACILITATE THE CONSULTATIVE AND DELIBERATIVE

PROCESS IN THE WEB

Cristiano Maciel and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia

Instituto de Computação, Universidade Federal Fluminense - Rua Passos da Pátria, 156 sl 326 Niterói, RJ, Brazil

Keywords: Interaction, e-Democracy, Deliberation, Community, Decision-Making.

Abstract: Electronic democracy should facilitate the discussion and participation of citizens as well as electronic

voting in governmental issues. Governmental applications available in the Web have not evolved

significantly toward real participation of citizens. The implementation of an e-democracy system can benefit

from incorporating features from distinct information channels, especially television. This paper discusses

an Interactive Government-Citizen Model that allows and stimulates the decision-making process between

government and citizens, facilitating citizen participation through a virtual community and through

integrated management of information in the Web environment. In this Model we identify the phases of an

consultation and deliberative process as carried out through a Democratic Citizenship Community, the

discussion of which is structured in a Government-Citizen Interaction Language known as DemIL. The

degree of maturity initially proposed is structured in four levels: Immature, Poorly Mature, Mature and

Sufficiently Mature. In order to measure the degree of maturity, by levels, we use a set of indicators, for

later construction of an evaluation tool.

1 INTRODUCTION

The use of Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT's), especially the InterNet, allows

citizens access to information, the rendering of

services and joint participation in governmental

issues. The participation of citizens, in particular,

can make democracy feasible, since it generates a

continuous flow of information between citizens and

the government, assisting both in the decision-

making process. However, in order for democracy to

really exist, citizens must articulate a speech, outline

proposals as well as compare and confront them

with others through public dissemination means.

Electronic democracy (e-Democracy) can facilitate

this articulation, turning ICT’s not only a voting tool

but also an environment for discussion and

substantial citizenship for accomplishment of

democratic processes.

Many countries have adopted various methods to

promote citizen participation in decision-making,

including referendums, public hearings, public

opinion surveys, negotiated rule marking, consensus

conference, citizens jury or panel, public

consultative committee or focus group (Rowe and

Frewer, 2000). Brazilian democracy is essentially

representative, since government bodies are defined

by way of elections. The existing forms of direct

manifestation of popular sovereignty in the

Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil

make mention of referendums, plebiscites and

popular initiatives.

The UNPAN annually releases a Worldwide

Electronic Government Report – e-Gov (UNPAN,

2005), with Brazil ranking 18th in 2001. In the year

2005, however, Brazil plunged to 33rd position.

From 1st in Latin America, Brazil moved to 3rd

position, after Chile and Mexico. The information

portal of the Brazilian government receives special

mention in said report, although the evaluation

criteria are not made clear. Brazil stands out

worldwide when it comes to electronic services such

as Tax Return submission and InterNet purchasing

system. Participation has nonetheless not been duly

explored. This level deserves attention, and new

mechanisms to stimulate participation in the

deliberative decision-making process should be

made available to the citizens, with consultation and

deliberation in the Web environment.

387

Maciel C. and Cristina Bicharra Garcia A. (2007).

MODELING OF A DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP COMMUNITY TO FACILITATE THE CONSULTATIVE AND DELIBERATIVE PROCESS IN THE WEB.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 387-394

DOI: 10.5220/0002387203870394

 SciTePress

Therefore, what are the requirements,

characteristics and limitations of the e-democracy

modeling so as to ensure that real needs are met and

interaction between users and e-Gov Web-based

systems is optimized? How can we ensure and

measure the effectiveness and continuation of an

consultation and deliberative process, with citizen

participation in governmental issues?

In this study we relate a Government-Citizen

Interactive Model structured in phases, and we use

DemIL (Maciel and Garcia, 2006a), a Government-

Citizen Interaction Language, the aim of which is to

promote discussion and deliberation. In order to

ensure citizen participation we propose the

construction of a ‘Democratic Citizenship

Community’ (DCC), with characteristics of this

focus of application and adapted to DemIL. An

evaluation of the effectiveness of the processes in a

community is therefore discussed, ultimately

seeking to conceive an environment capable of

promoting a better deliberative participation.

With a DCC, an environment with integrated

information on the Web, we intend to engage

citizens and to investigate whether they develop

maturity for the decision-making process. We

believe that if the consultative and deliberative

processes are integrated within the same

communication means (in this case, the Internet) it

becomes possible to measure the degree of maturity

in decision-making. The degree of maturity initially

proposed is structured in four levels: Immature,

Poorly Mature, Mature and Sufficiently Mature. In

order to measure the degree of maturity using levels,

we use a group of metrics and classifications useful

for subsequent construction of an evaluation tool.

2 E-DEMOCRACY

In democracy power can be exercised by many, it is

the people’s expectations that prevail in all political

decisions. However, freedom of expression in

democracy does not merely involve being able to

express an opinion about predefined options. In

order for it to be effective, it must allow people to

articulate a discourse, outline proposals, discuss

them and confront them with other proposals

through public communication means. Electronic

democracy should facilitate the discussion and

participation of citizens as well as electronic voting

in governmental issues.

With the exception of deliberative councils and

public opinion polls, which are extremely codified,

anarchical and creative use of ICT’s in the decision-

making process is problematic for political science

(Monnoyer-Smith, 2005). Thus, introducing an

opinion consultation tool does not imply success

through effective user participation. Monnoyer-

Smith (2005) points we have a not-identified

deliberative object that presents a number of

characteristics of a traditional deliberation, but does

not correspond to the deliberation in the totality: it is

dynamic, with actors entering and leaving, a large

use of rhetoric, interpersonal emotions and relations.

This apparent complexity is ideal for a deliberative

environment that explores these characteristics by a

creative way and gives more power to the real

deliberation.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation

and Development (OECD, 2006), in turn, identified

five challenges for e-democracy: scale problem (to

become available for all); qualification and

construction of the citizenship; guarantee of

coherence of the information; the guarantee of

continuity of the process and evaluation of the

effectiveness of the process. For Scheiderman

(2002), the attainment of a national consensus that

reflects the opinions of millions of citizens through a

mix of representation and direct participation will

depend on an ambitious development. Even basic

questions such as to establish a programming, to

moderate the discussions, to organize the groups and

to supply summarization of the discussions will

depend on an innovative and state-of-art project by

means of tests.

At the international level we point to three e-

democracy tools: Webocracy, DEMONS and

EURO-CITI. These tools make possible the

consultative and the deliberative process, as they

focus more on making information available and

promoting consultations through, e.g., discussion

forum and opinion polls. They do not allow us to

guarantee

if maturity has been reached in the theme

discussions so as to allow measure a conscious

decision-making.

Through an evaluation of the current conditions

of the Brazilian governmental sites (Garcia et al.,

2005) it was verified, among other items, that the

investigated federal, state and municipal

governments do not dispose in the sites tools that

allow to the effective participation of the citizen by

an automatic way. These data bump against the

position given to Brazil in the UNPAN (2005)

ranking of e-Gov. It was investigated the disposition

of the following tools of participation in each site: e-

mail, chat, discussion forum, voting/pull and

workgroup. Significant experiences with regard to

consultation and/or deliberative processes in the

Brazilian Web are found in the City halls of the

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cities of São Paulo/SP and Porto Alegre/RS. In the

Federal Government, through the site of the

Congressman Chamber, one of the participation

options is the discussion forum, which reveals an

important space for the discussion of government

and citizen, but it makes difficult a decision making,

because it is a half-structuralized consultation

environment and without deliberative purpose.

In general, we note that applications for

consultative and deliberative purposes present

problems, since: a) they do not come as a sociability

space focusing on the citizen as an individual, b)

they must stay on for a certain period and be

effectively used, c) they lack structuring

mechanisms for the discussions, d) they do not favor

information retrieval, e) they do not facilitate

deliberation and, consequently, they do not facilitate

joint decision-making by the government and the

citizens, and e) they do not allow us to verify if

maturity has been reached in the theme discussions

so as to allow a conscious deliberation. It is standed

out that the availability of technological

infrastructure is not enough to make possible the e-

democracy that is a current effort of many

governments.

3 THE GOVERNMENT-CITIZEN

INTERACTIVE MODEL

Considering the studies related to the use of ICT’s in

the consultative and deliberative processes in the

Web (Maciel and Garcia, 2006) and the deficiencies

presented by some of these tools, as well as the

existence of strategies used for the traditional medias

to attract the participation of the public, it is

proposed the Government-Citizen Interactive Model.

The process starts with some definitions by the

government such as type of manifestation and

calendar (phase 1). To engage citizens we propose

the creation of a virtual community for citizens to

interact on governmental issues, one that is

structured by geographic and thematic categorization

of the participants and election of popular

representatives, among other things (phase 2). The

debate phase (phase 4), in particular, requires

structuring to facilitate discussion of the demands

(phase 3) and to facilitate Web integrated

information retrieval, with qualitative and statistical

analysis of data (phase 5). Thus, the posting of

opinions forces the citizen to give an opinion, pro or

con, on the relevant topic and to justify his/her vote.

Then the final voting takes place. The existence and

performance of a moderator are also modeled. This

facilitates a deliberative strategy whereby the

prioritized demands (phase 5) are presented for

voting (phase 6). In order for citizens, government

and moderators to actually engage in discussion, we

propose a DemIL(Citizen-Government Interaction

Language), which can be useful not only for the

application proposed here but also for other methods

of direct participation of the citizens in decision-

making.

Considering previous studies we structure the

participation environment according to phases and

activities as shown in Table 1 (Maciel and Garcia,

2006b). We should note that the phases and

activities are not exclusionary and may or may not

be considered in the development of a Web

environment for these purposes.

Table 1: Phases of the Consultative and Deliberative

Process in the Web.

Phase Description of core activities

1. Opening

- government provides the calendar

- government provides the plain of actions

- government asks some methods of

participation

- citizen receives prior notice

-administrator opens the virtual community

- administrator register in cadastre of

geographic regions and/or thematic

- administrator opens the virtual library of

information

2. Virtual

Community of

Citizens

- inclusion of the citizen in the virtual

community

- register in cadastre of the popular

representatives

- register in cadastre of moderators

- register of the government representatives

- voting of representatives and/or

moderators

- deliberation of the voting process

- participate in socializing environments

- participate in virtual library of

information

3. Register of

Demands

- register in cadastre of the opinions

4. Consultation

debate

- discussion of opinions

- motivation for the discussion

5. Clustering

- clustering of opinions/sumarization

- priorization of the opinions

- priorization of the opinions for demand

6. Voting

- cadastre of demands to voting

- register of votes

- counting a votes

7. Deliberation - administrative process report

In the Interactive Model proposed, the modeling

of electronic participation takes into account the

characteristics of an audiovisual plan, seeking to

explore a topic, the existence of a conflict, the

definition of personages (citizens organized by

community), a structure to engage in discussion, and

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389

a final technical plan, which constitutes the

deliberation report. Through discussion we seek a

consensus so as to allow informed voting. In this

intermediate phase we use some characteristics of

techniques for decision-making.

The phase of Consultation Debate (phase 4)

requires structuration in the discussions, once that

the studies in e-goverment reflect it structuration

lack in others interaction resources (e.g., forum).

Through the DemIL it models a forum structured

with own characteristics (Maciel and Garcia, 2006a).

In figure 1, bellow, the DemIL language is

presented, contemplating mainly phases 4 and 6.

Figure 1: DemIL (Maciel and Garcia, 2006).

In this forum the demands previously registered

by thematic and/or geographic region are argued,

and consist in opinions (Arguments), which can

excite several other opinions (counterargument). An

opinion possess the following attributes:

- Date: register of date of the opinion;

- Hour: register of the hour of the opinion;

- Type: an opinion can be a justification for the

demand, or either, an argument, or a question for

motivation, sent for the moderator.

- Justification: Pro or Against: confrontation

between two forms and request of positioning of the

opinative, through which it classifies its opinion as

being favor or against the registered in cadastre

demand. Later each Justification is validated as valid

or invalid, for the moderator, in order to make a

previous cleanness of data. Compared with one

reality show, it consists in the "thick wall" of the

demands, and can be adapted for election of popular

representatives. It allows a reference to the

documents of the Library of Information, that stores

multimedia of distinct formats.

- To motivate: to stimulate the use of the

environment tasks are created, under the form of

questionings, for example, to the participants of the

discussion, relative to thematic the envoy for a

moderator, which assumes the role of the "presenter"

of a televising debate. This can be of the type

automatized (through a database of motivations) or

an animated agent. Examples of questions that can

stimulate the discussion: In your opinion, which are

the two people with better organizative capacities in

the group (to lead, to co-ordinate, to guide, to

manage)? Who would be benefited with demand

"x"?

The components "Clusterization Opinions" (phase

5), "To prioritize Opinions" and "To prioritize

Opinions for demand" must be considered for

implantation of this complex ambient however they

are not the focus of this paper.

The proposed space of discussion and

deliberation is organized around a Virtual

Community - VC’s (Phase 2). It must be considered

that the existence of the citizen in the virtual world

is given by his/her identification through a unique

profile and for the consequent link between the

members. Therefore, the aspects of the conception of

one VC and its structuration to support a democratic

process proposed are argued bellow.

4 DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP

COMMUNITY

The VC’s are an extension of the communities in the

real world, however there is not a direct relation

with the geographic localization of the involved

members, but an union for common interests. A VC

must possess four elements that characterize

(

Hummel and Lechner, 2002):

a) The clear definition of the group: clear limits

(focus), reference to real communities, rules for

admission, authorizations for use and access, rules

for use and punishment for misconduct.

b) The interaction between the members:

environments of chat rooms and forum, possibility

of contribution, selection of contributions,

monitoring, internal and external events.

c) The linking between the members: protection

to the privacy, individuality, sub-groups, usability,

identification of members and organizers.

d) The exchange of information in a common

place: archives, analysis of the participants

(recommendation), voluntary work, culture of use

and roles of members.

Several methodologies have been proposed for

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studies of the VC’s (Preece and Maloney-Krichmar,

2005), focusing the ethnography; the techniques of

linguistic analysis and context; visualization

techniques; evaluation with interviews,

questionnaires and analysis of log registers. Other

researchers had tried to adapt the evaluation by

using metric systems of Human-Computer

Interaction (Preece, 2000) (de Souza and Preece,

2004). Researchers and developers of online

communities are most worried in trying to

understand the dynamics of the VC’s (Hummel and

Lechner, 2002). The challenge of virtual

environment for the use of virtual communities is

that these not always are capable of keeping the

same level of collaboration, motivation and

involvement of the real communities.

In a preliminary analysis of 47 governmental and

no governmental communities available in the

Internet, of national and international level, distinct

areas of performance had been identified (for

example, government, entertainment, relationship

and businesses). Such communities make use of

resources for interaction with and between the users,

making possible a diversification of actions. The

deliberation can be possible inside of small

communities (above one hundred people) and in

bigger communities (above a thousand people)

where there be little knowledge and confidence

between the members (Schneiderman, 2002). For the

author, through the creation of small groups of

interest of citizens of similar mentalities, in which

there is the understanding and is deposited a highly

reliable level, it is possible to develop the necessary

influence for campaigns in favor of national

questions and the support to candidates for popular

representation unto the spheres of government.

The present virtual communities possess many

social characteristics, without the focus in the

democracy, and they do not stimulate the

participation of the citizens in the effective decision

making process. A strategy that effectively

completes the communication between government

and citizens, with the possibility of deliberation of

important social matters is the subject for study in

this work. An alternative of success in the

interaction is seen in the virtual communities

through Internet between government and citizens,

for being attractive under the social point of view

and for supporting a participative project of digital

inclusion in the electronic democracy.

The problems that arise owe to the fact that when

citizens are asked to participate in public

consultations and deliberative processes, they

individually receive information from different

communication means (television, newspapers,

Internet, among others). This process persists until

the moment of voting. Thus, it is not possible to

verify whether the individuals reached maturity in

the decision-making process so as to ensure they are

really exercising their role as citizens in the Web

environment.

The study suggested in this work is especially

concerned with the phase 2 (virtual community of

citizens) of the model previously presented in Table

1, however it integrates almost all the phases.

Through the conception of ‘Democratic Citizenship

Community’ (DCC) it is intended to engage the

citizens in the consultative and deliberative process

and to verify if these, in fact, develop maturity

during the process of decision making, in view of

fact that he/she will access distinct information and

communication integrated to the environment.

The DCC searchs to guarantee the effectiveness

of the participation of the citizens in the consultation

and deliberative processes through the following

components: Profile of Citizens, the Register of the

Popular Representatives and/or demands, a

component for Debate, linked to a Library of

Information, Space of Socialization, a component

for Voting and another one for Deliberation. Figure

2, below, represents the proposed environment.

Figure 2: DCC Model.

The Debate is organized as proposed in the

DemIL (Maciel and Garcia, 2006a) that separates

the opinions in "agree" and "not agree", with the

respective justifications. A stated period is settled

for the summarized presentation of the final results

for Region/Thematic, managed by the Moderator.

After this phase the members are stimulated to vote,

in determined turns, and the results will be tuned

available in the deliberation environment.

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The components of the DCC has functionalities

as displayed bellow.

- Citizen Profile: the initial step is the formation

of the Community that is nothing more but the

insertion of the individuals in the virtual world,

through the registering in cadastre of the profile of

these citizens. This profile allows that the demands

are worked extensively and distributed,

geographically and thematically. This distribution

can be compared to the existence of "virtual rooms"

in chat rooms, that organize the virtual space, and

allows the exchange of information between the

components of the group. The geographic and

thematic distribution is predefined conforming to the

governmental management.

- Popular Representative and/or Demands: the

individuals must candidate to the popular

representation, being able to be, for example, a

partisan or advising representative. Each candidacy

possesss a plan of work, or either, a justification for

the candidacy. The demands to be argued also will

be registered in cadastre by the operating citizens in

the community, as thematic daily predefined.

- Library of Information

: the citizen needs to

have access to the information, in distinct medias, so

that he ou she can think and vote conscientiously.

Both the government and the citizen can turn

available documents and links that are referred to the

the discussions.

- DemIL Debate: in this component the citizen

can exchange information that is one of the basic

characteristics of the discussion. It is a structuralized

forum with characteristic proposals in DemIL.

- Space of Socialization: the inclusion of spaces

of socialization, such as chat, mural or coffee-bar,

where the members can known better each other, can

motivate and integrate the members of the CV.

- Voting: a final question is placed in discussion

so that people can vote against or in favor of this,

through private vote and being optional the

justification for the vote (phase 6). The votes are

entered, as well as an automatic report of the

justifications for question is generated (phase 7).

The process can be carried through in n turns, being

that in each turn is necessary a time for discussion

and choice of vote options. After carried through

each election a deliberation is made.

Deliberation: In each turn it is deliberated

whom/what/which will go for the next phase of the

election or whom/what/which was the one chosen by

the community.

Through of this application will be tried the

proposed model.

4.1 Evaluation of the Process

The stimulation to a effective participation and a

continuous process in the community is a challenge

(Kim, 2000). Some strategies to control the problem

of motivation in virtual communities proposed in

this work are the clear division of the environment

for geographic and for thematic region and the

insertion of a more operating moderator (or of

leaderships). The presence of a more operating

moderator could monitor the behaviors in the

environment and the use of common-sense to

manage the discussion and deliberation in this

environment. A system of recommendation of use of

the environment can also assist the users to

participate more actively.

The effectiveness of the process of transformation

of information in the environment will be measured

through the analysis of the data remover from the

environment. With the use of techniques of

observation and statistics of use will be investigated

some metrics (see Table 2).

As determinative factors in the effectiveness of

the process of transformation of information in

consultations and deliberations carried through VC it

is determined and investigated if:

- the use of resources of communication made

available (profile, coffee-bar, forum, ballot of

voting, among others) propitiates the satisfaction of

the user, being him ou her capable to indicate some

resource that him or her judges to support some

activity in the community;

- the communication is continuous, with the

establishment of clear objectives and motivated

discussions;

- the spaces of personal socialization, as a coffee-

bar or a Chat, make possible that the members know

and change experiences each other, being able of

indirectly to motivate them to participate of the

community.

- the existence and use of a structure for

management of the knowledge, with information and

resources for exchange of information (library).

- the role of the moderator and his/her influence

in the process, through the analysis of activities

assigned for the monitoring, such as: attendance to

the members, stimulation to the discussion,

summary of discussions, advices, schedules and

guarantee of use of the rules.

- there is the necessity of a common agreement of

the processes of the group, a feeling of pertaining

(attributions) and an involvement in the planning

and management of the community;

- satisfaction and identification with the VC’s,

correspondent to the expectations of the members;

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- there is a relation in the interest for the

discussion and consequent deliberation, or either,

members that participate of the discussion also vote.

- the members receive information from other

medias, that must converge to the V.C. and the V.C.

must use other media to notify its actions, aiming to

reach a bigger number of citizens.

- there is confidence of the members about the

information and processes of the community.

The effectiveness of the decision-making process

in the DCC will be measured through the analysis of

the data remover from the environment. With the use

of techniques of observation and statistics of use will

be investigated some metrics to the decision-making.

At last, through a questionnaire available in the

environment, the satisfaction of the participants will

be measured.

The methodology adopted in this study includes

both bibliographical and applied research and is

applied in four phases, as is generally described in

Table 2 below.

Table 2: Study Phases and Method.

Phase Method

Phase I Conception of DCC

1. Conceptual Model of a DCC

2. Interface Design

3. Implementation

Phase II Implementation of a DCC

Phase III a) Definition of indicators and metrics to

evaluate the degree of maturity in decision-

making

b) Initial Data Analysis:

1. Register Participants Profile

2. Register Moderators

3. Postings for Discussion (pro and againts)

by theme/demand

4. Performance of Moderator

5. Resources used by participant

6. Participation in the Voting by

theme/demand

7. Use of Socializing Space

8. Use of Library

9. Respect to the DCC rules of use

10. Satisfaction of Participants

Phase IV Analysis of the degree of maturity in decision-

making regarding DCC

In the Phase I, the DCC is desenvolved using the

follow techniques: analysis of domain and

user/scenarios; WebML diagrams (Ceri et al., 2002);

wireframes; prototype evaluation (Garcia et al.,

2005)(Preece, 2000) and database project/Web

language.

A later implementation of the DCC (Phase II)

will include deliberative decision in education as a

case study. This system has already been introduced

in Universidade Federal Fluminense (RJ) and your

use will be managed.

In the Phase III, before definition of metrics, will

be use the DCC application to

measure the degree of

maturity in decision-making. The data analysis

will be

accomplished with observation techniques (variables

1 up to 9 of the table 1) and with questionnaire

(satisfaction of participants).

Finally the theoretical approach and the practical

experiment will be analyzed.

4.2 Decision-making Measure

Decisions are made in response to a problem that

needs to be solved, a requirement that needs to be

met or an objective that needs to be accomplished.

Decision entails a process, in other words, a

sequence of steps or phases succeeding each other

and known as the decision-making process. Thus, by

focusing on the democratic consultative and

deliberative process in the Web, as proposed

structure in model, we attempt to measure the degree

of maturity in decision-making in this domain.

In order to define a degree of maturity in

decision-making for consultative and deliberative

processes we propose four levels:

1. Immature: initial process, unpredictable,

conditional on acceptance of an invitation for

participation in the DCC. Indirectly, it shows the

interest of a given public in a certain theme

proposition.

2. Poorly Mature: a participatory consultative

process that involves an interest in discussion rather

than necessarily in voting.

3. Mature: a participatory deliberative process

that involves an interest in voting rather than in

discussion.

4. Sufficiently Mature: a participatory process,

effective and deliberative, whereby the citizen

participates in all activities, with a minimum

frequency.

In order to measure each level, we will use some

metrics, analyzing some variables of DCC, e.g.:

Immature (registration, candidacy as moderator);

Poorly Mature (number of postings in the discussion

by topic (pro-against), number of justifications

posted in the discussion, size of justifications;

performance of moderator); Mature (participation in

voting); Sufficiently Mature (participation in the

entire process, used of other spaces, respect the use

rules, trust). The proposed model is being

experiment through DCC and the degree of maturity

in the decision-making of the citizens will be

definitively defined and then classified.

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5 CONCLUSIONS

The way public opinion consultation environments

(forums, chats, etc) are currently devised do not

facilitate the recovery of information and resulting

deliberation of the process. Diagnoses of current

participation initiatives and real longings of citizens

converge to the need for a robust environment for

implementation of governmental issues. By

researching the existing relationship between

televising techniques and virtual interaction

strategies as well as the resulting participation of

citizens in debate environments, we can conceive the

Government-Citizen Interactive Model. The citizens

are the "personages" organized in a VC structured to

that end. That way it is possible to promote e-

participation and e-vote, the decision-making

process being a reflection of consultations, voting

and deliberations.

The conception of a DCC for citizen interaction

with governmental issues allows us to verify the

effectiveness and continuation of an consultation

and deliberative process in the Web, allowing us to

learn and assess citizen behaviour during the

process.

Other serious challenges are posed in the search

for e-democracy, since the use of such system by

millions of citizens (e.g. in a national debate) highly

increases the complexity of the model; it can be

misused by influential groups or by activist

politicians; the existence of ill-intentioned hackers

and invisible participants (lurkings) is also reason

for concern, and credibility should be ensured

regarding the relevant information and voting. The

issues trust and security in e-Democracy, data-

protection and privacy are essential to e-Government

applications and deserve to be investigated

afterwards.

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