Jun 17

Written by: Momentum
6/17/2009 8:44 AM

The 1st MOMENTUM expert evaluation workshop was held in conjunction with the European E-participation Day in Brussels, Belgium organized by the European Commission (EC) on 4th March 2009. Besides the plenary presentations and panel discussions, the eParticipation projects co-funded in the frame of the Preparatory Action, and other eParticipation projects, exhibited their results at booths.

The exhibition at the European eParticipation day provided the best possible environment for the 1st MOMENTUM expert evaluation workshop to take place. The external experts got the opportunity to inform themselves about the projects and their results at the projects’ booths. They could ask detailed questions about the projects’ progress and could get demonstrations of the pilots (as far as pilots are up and running).

The main purpose of the MOMENTUM project evaluation was to

• derive best practices, lessons learnt and identification of barriers and constraints, as well as opportunities for further reuse and adoption of related know-how and experience in future initiatives and projects
•  and provide relevant feedback to the monitored eParticipation projects, the EC as well as the relevant key stakeholders.
  

Therefore, MOMENTUM developed an expert’s evaluation questionnaire including in particular feedback and recommendations to the projects where the experts identified weaknesses so far and how projects might advance their results in future.
Seven experts were invited to the 1st MOMENTUM expert evaluation workshop and to serve as evaluator. Each expert was asked to evaluate two eParticipation projects monitored by MOMENTUM.

In order to perform the expert evaluations, the experts were requested to visit the booths of the projects to be evaluated by them. They were asked to discuss with the representatives of projects about issues experts were asked to evaluate. Apart from that the experts were requested to visit the projects’ portals and (if available) trial sites.

The results of the 1st MOMENTUM expert evaluation workshop are presented and summarized according to the kind of challenge and the level at which the challenge occurs within the project organisation.

1. Sustainable motivation builds capacity and active citizenship. There is a crucial need to constantly motivate the target group in particular if the target group consist of the general public. From a marketing point of view this means dealing with heterogenity. Hence personalised and strongly specialised marketing approaches may be not applicable. However, it is not enough to just activate the target group but it is also important to keep their interest and build active citizenship. Projects should go on with motivating the target group. We recommend to have at least one person (or ‘champion’) who motivates others or to invest continuously in marketing. This is a strategic challenge that cannot be solved via ICT but only at the organisational and process level.
   
2. Means to establish contacts. The choice of means to establish contacts is crucial not only mass media but in particular those media that allows more or less personal contact between the eParticipation project representative and the target user. So, projects should consider strategies to ensure that there is a ‘critical mass’ before going live or risk stagnation caused by ‘ghost town’ environments. This might be a tactic and/or strategic challenge that should consider the use of modern ICT to establish. But it is important to chose the right tool and/or technology to encourage the target group.
   
3. Involvement and responsiveness of elected representatives. Positive reactions from the target group are expected if they recognise reaction/contribution from their elected representatives. A lack of commitment from politicians to interact with citizens and a lack of taking account of participation contributions is expected to have a negative influence on the behavioural intention of citizens to continue using the platform/application. This is an organisational challenge that occurs at the operational level.
   
4. Full-time, active moderation. Some projects mentioned that an active moderation is needed to stimulate the target group. A lively discussion requires a moderator with wide spanned experiences to accommodate the number of interests, to help participants to come to a result and above all to give no birth to losers. While contents are brought in by the participants, the moderator is responsible to structure and document the content received. Therefore a full-time and active moderation supports the transparency of the discussion and helps the participants to come to appropriate results, and transforms fuzzy contents into clear and useful form. Moderator reactions must be visible in time. Many more efforts need to be expended on that. Only living systems are attractive to the target group and will lead to sustainable use of the platforms or software. But there should be balance between end user freedom and flexibility, and restrictions given by the moderator. In some projects users are very restricted to what is provided to them by the platform managers, e.g. certain topics and processes. In some cases it is better to allow for more flexibility, in particular in the design of informal participation, e.g. let the target group decide on what topic to discuss. This is an organisational challenge that cannot be solved via ICT but only.
   
5. Maintenance to ensure dynamic web sites. Experts point out the crucial need of dynamic websites. The need for living systems does not only refer to a full-time and active moderation but also to maintenance of the information and contents provided. Therefore it is important to manage the maintenance of the platform very well. In particular the content must always be up to date, for example ensuring that links are not broken. Again this is an organisational challenge that cannot be solved via ICT but only.
   
6. Improve usability through user-centric and participatory design. Although the term usability is often used in each ICT project (most often for marketing purposes) there is still a lack between the intention to provide high degree of usability (i.e. the willingness to do) and the effectively reached degree of usability (i.e. the usability provided in fact). In particular expert evaluation discovered lots of usability and accessibility related errors. Usability of the system influences not only the perception of the technical aspects of the system but also all other related aspects (e.g. the perception of the topic discussed and the process supported). So, usability co-determines the success and impact of each e-participation project results. It is the quality of use which is perceived by the user when interacting with the system. Nielson (1993) defined five usability attributes of the system: easy to learn, efficient to use, easy to remember, low error rate, and pleasant to use. But these are traditional attributes and applicable to each system; in particular for e-participation systems a more advanced approach should be tackled. In this respect, systematic usability engineering is advantageous to detect minor design details that influence usability (Nielsen, 1993). Besides, in order to track action and impact of the action all decisions about the e-participation system should be documented and monitored. Besides, we recommend to follow a more holistic and integrative approach the user experience (see the Total User Experience (Gribbons, 2008)) thereby enhancing Nielsons attributes with aesthetical and emotional factors, as well as branding and most important with confidence building. This is in parts an organisational and process related challenge that partly can be solved by the right choice of the tools and technologies applied.
   
7. Accessibility. Accessibility is a crucial factor not only for traditional democratic processes but also and in particular for electronic participation offers. Projects should focus on the development of accessibility strategies, and keep informed about existing guidelines, and resources to help make their Web applications accessible to people with disabilities. Among others this challenge can be solved by the right choice of the tools and technologies applied, as well as some of them by keeping with simple design principles. So, we recommend that each eParticipation project should direct efforts in achieving at least the lowest level of the WCAG.
   
8. Language barrier: diversity of languages. The diversity of languages practiced with in the EU might cause immense problems amongst others in order to keep the target group sustainable interested. Most projects are involving test groups from several EU member states. Since all projects are international cooperations, projects might not face this challenge as their project consortium consists of partners that natively speak the language. With it the contents can be translated from e.g. originally English to the respective language of the country in which the discussions or whatever will take place. In our context translation related issues are crucial to reach out widely and keep interest in view of the fact that understanding of the topic and its context is central requirement for participation. Discussion groups, blogs and all the other features which focus on enabling any human communication depend on the ability to express and formulate thoughts, ideas, etc in an understandable way. Hence citizens should not only be able to listen to others but also to answer.
   
9. The choice of the right topic. Expert evaluation point out the outstanding importance of choosing the right topic for discussion in regard to reach the target group and keep its sustainable interest. One expert states that the topic is the most important aspect of participation contributing and impacting the success of the project. If the topic is perceived as interesting by the users and if it meets users concerns then users will continue to use the platform although the process supported and/or the tools and technologies deployed are not suitable. In this respect, the success of eParticipation projects depends at the same issues as traditional participation does.
   
10. The right combination of topics, processes and technologies. Overall the right combination of topics discussed, processes supported and tools and technologies deployed is crucial to the success of the project, as well. None of these aspects is on its own. So, projects should not separately have a look at each of these aspects but integrate these views and gear each aspect to the other aspects thereby ensuring that the aspects complement each other.
    
11. Fun factor in participation. In the virtual world eParticipation websites compete with fun sites such as face book, second life, etc. for the free time users spend there. Legislation by itself is boring for nearby all people. So, it is very important for the success of eParticipation (projects) to create and bring in fun in participation processes. Instead of mapping traditional approaches of participation from real world onto eParticipation we recommend to search for new and innovative ways for citizens to participate in democratic processes. In this respect informal legislation approaches may serve as a better starting point for eParticipation than formal ones.
    

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