Citizen engagement with information aggregation markets

Abstract

Abstract. Participatory governance entails converting citizens from passive users of administrative decisions into active participants of political procedures. Public institutions and organizations can benefit from methods and tools able to aggregate and interpret information dispersed among citizens. In this paper we explore the use of Information Aggregation Markets (IAMs) for citizen engagement. We identify the benefits of IAMs and explain how markets can be used to aggregate citizens' opinions and views on policy issues. Furthermore we report on two real life cases where we deployed IAMs to assist the decision making processes of public organizations. The positive feedback from participants and decision makers provides empirical evidence on the benefits of IAMs as a method for engaging citizens in public policy decision making.

Κοινωνική Υπολογιστική Και Αγορές Πληροφορίας

“…The experimental results of Chapters 6 and 7 as well as parts of the real-life cases reported in Chapter 7 have been submitted for publication in the journal Expert Systems with Applications (Bothos et al 2010b). Parts of the cases described in Chapters 7 and 8 were published in the International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management (Brachos et al, 2009b) and the work presented in Chapter 8 has been submitted for publication in the Journal of E-Governance (Bothos et al 2011). Last but not least the work of Chapter 9 will appear in the forthcoming special issue on Social Computing by the journal IEEE Intelligent Systems (Bothos et al 2010a).…”