MEASURING THE e-PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES THROUGH ONLINE SURVEYS

Abstract

The deliberative decision-making process of the group can be a result of counseling and voting mediated by technology. The involvement of citizens in this process is crucial and measuring participation in process allows for assessment of the effectiveness of participation. Measuring the maturity of this decision, i.e. assessment of individual participation and its consequent reflection on the group's decision, can be accomplished through the maturity level method discussed in this paper. In order to accomplish an examination of the relative potential and difficulties in achieving and measuring e-participation, we found it necessary to have a reasonable level of information structuring. For this purpose, online surveys were built and tested in stages, structured according to the Government-Citizen Interactive Model in a way as to support the Maturity of Decision-Making method (MDM). The main goal is to test the method proposed with the use of online surveys by stages and, through this experiment, indicate both positive and negative points.