In addition to a variety of consultative platforms, which are increasingly used by governments and local authorities, it is worth looking at projects like www.popvox.com. It is a service that allows continuous monitoring of legislative work in the U.S. Congress. All of its users can instantly see the bills and other legislation that are currently being processed. They can also get to know the position of the various lobbying groups and state their own opinion on the matter as well as follow the exact course of work on individual documents.

The www.adhocracy.de is an open-source tool quite popular in Germany. It is used by committees in the Bundestag, political parties and various organizations to engage citizens in discussions on draft legislation – people can comment on both finished and unfinished projects, bring in their own proposals, suggest amendments at various stages of the work. They can also support their preferred solutions (in the form of internet voting).

A particularly inspiring example of combining deliberation tools with crowd-sourcing in order to encourage people to take part in the creation of the law is www.rahvakogu.ee – Citizens' Meeting Online. It is a platform created by a coalition of Estonian NGOs in cooperation with the central government. Its aim is to ensure that all citizens can be actively involved in a debate over the shape of the law on such issues as: elections; political parties, competition between them and their financing; the strengthening of civil society; and the prevention of public positions from being politicized. This platform is a part of a broad campaign for changes in the legal system. The ideas and proposals that it allows them to generate will become a matter of debate in the Estonian parliament in the spring of 2013.

Technology also enables citizens to control the authorities on a truly large scale and share opinions on that matter. Good examples are two websites that allow the monitoring of the activity of parliamentarians (British www.theyworkforyou.com or Polish www.mamprawowiedziec.pl). Thanks to them we can figure out if our representatives in parliament fulfill their obligations – how they vote, if they submit draft regulations, if they speak at the sessions, etc.

www.whatdotheyknow.com is on the other hand a platform for exchanging information related to the acquisition of data under the Freedom of Information Act. The website makes it much easier to send a request but also to collect data on similar queries that have been sent by other users and to see their experiences in dealing with various institutions.

A separate category of services which support participation are data repository projects – for example on public finances. Thanks to them, everyone (including local journalists or social activists) can get an insight into how public money is spent. These services usually rely on socially-created technologies with the use of an open API or more static public databases (such as www.naszakasa.org.pl or www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org)

The secret of the power of participation using ICT lies primarily in expanding the scale of its availability and its mechanisms as well as in the significant reduction of the costs of such participation. The financial benefits of e-participation are substantial. The costs of engaging in e-participation projects are only a fraction of those which we bear when we physically take part in various participatory events (for example securing a place and materials). Savings can also be made because of the potential benefits of cooperation while creating and developing various tools. This trend is becoming more and more popular and it gives people a possibility of getting free support for new ideas that require help from a specialist (someone who, for example, knows a given programming language). Many similar such tools (also described above) work and get developed as open-source projects.

Of course, e-participation is not a trouble-free phenomenon. It often carries various risks that can be associated with specific technologically-mediated activities, such as incidental commitments, anonymous communication being brutal and, finally, the danger of exclusion of those who have limited ICT access. One should keep that in mind and try to minimize these risks. But as Kipling once said... that is another story.

The image used in this post has been taken from FLICKR where it is published under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.