eParticipation 

Why eParticipation? 

The Dutch Government wants to improve the public service, together with their citizens. That's why citizen participation is one of the focus points of the government. The State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations is responsible.

eParticipatie 

eParticipation uses information and communication-technology (ICT) as a utility to get citizens more involved in improving the public service, public administration and social cohesion. More and more links are made between governments and citizen communities.

Citizenlink differentiates three forms of eParticipation. At this moment there is an open dialogue at the Community of ePractice about the exact content of the concept eParticipation.

1. Political participation. How to involve citizens in the decision-making process?
2. Policy participation. Citizens and governments cooperate together at the implementation and maintenance of policy.
3. Social participation. How to reinforce the mutual involvement of citizens?

The instruments 

Citizenlink stimulates the development of four eParticipation instruments:

1. watstemtmijnraad.nl, a website where citizens can read about the voting behaviour of their Council.
2. petities.nl, the aim of the website is to make it easier to sign or to start a petition.
3. wijwaarderen.nl, on this website citizens can give their judgement about services with a social importance.
4. Webantenne, a digital search engine that is still under construction.

To give direction to the developing of this four instruments there is formed a Community of Practice eParticipation.

eParticipation award 

The eParticipation Award is a recognition for citizens and governments whom are using digital resources to increase citizen involvement. It is the second time that Citizen Link organizes the eParticipation Award. The main goal is to ask attention and in particular to stimulate good eParticipation initiatives.

Intented results

1. An inventory of all eParticipation initiatives has held - that are started at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.
2. eParticipation gets a lot of positive publicity.
3. The development of eParticipation in 2009 will be defined in a special edition.

More: ePractise.eu

Knowledge Center 

When it comes to eParticipation, Citizenlink plays a facilitating role at ideas, projects and research projects of several governments as well as in society. It wants to create useful accessibility and open up initiatives for other governments, that improve the service to citizens. In this way Citizenlink develops itself into a knowledge centre of eParticipation.