Bringing social and technological innovation to the work of national, regional and local elected representatives: the eRepresentative project.

Karamagioli, Evika; Koulolias, Vasilis; Smith, Colin F; Cruickshank, Peter

Abstract

Members of elected assemblies have a number of overlapping roles. eRepresentative is a project of the European Commission’s IST programme, and has investigated the potential for ICT support for the committee-based legislative role in a secure, mobile context among members of five elected assemblies at national, regional and local levels. This paper describes the processes used for identifying user requirements and the web-based application that was developed to address them. It then describes the scenario-based evaluation process that was designed to cover not only technical functionality and usefulness/usability aspects but also the organisational factors contributing to the success or failure of such initiatives; initial findings suggest a positive response from potential users, elected representatives (and their staff) in particular. In a postscript, the potential for direct inclusion of citizens in the legislative process is considered.

• Start Date: Sep 29, 2008
• End Date: Sep 30, 2008
• Publication Date: 2008
• Deposit Date: Jan 5, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 5, 2010
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: EDem08 E-Democracy Conference
• Keywords: eRepresentative; European Commission; user requirements; ICT; information and communication technologies
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/3542
• Contract Date: Jan 5, 2010