Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 19th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview e-Government Author(s) Kristina Reinsalu e-Governance Academy Tallinn Estonia Title e-democracy in Europe - regulations, challenges, best practices File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Almost all Western-European countries have witnessed a lessening of citizen participation and infliuence. Information on how to improve the facilities for democracy within the European Union member states is vital. Concrete measures are needed in order to gain knowledge on the range and effectiveness of various citizen participation projects. However, recent years have seen the launch and implementation of various development projects both conducted by authorities and civil society organisations. These include initiatives, information campaigns, pilot projects and various experiments.The projects have generated a wide selection of tools for promoting and safeguarding democracy in fields such as information provision, communication and interaction. Still there is little verified knowledge of the effectiveness of such projects and of similar experiences in other EU member states. Last year the EPACE (Exchanging good practices for the promotion of an active citizenship in the EU) project, coordinated by the Ministry of Justice Finland and supported by the European Commission, was launched. One of the real outcomes of the project is e-democracy handbook, which was written by me on behalf of one of the official partners of the project, Estonian State Chancellery. The publication tries to fill the gap and present a collection of cases which can be taken as a model for citizen-government interaction at dif¬ferent levels using various e-democracy tools. My proposal for e-government working group is a paper which bases on the analysis done for the e-democracy publication. The material for the publications has been compiled through an analysis of answers to a questionnaire, which was sent to practitioners in the field of e-democracy as well as by a desktop study of the published cases..Most of the best practices in my paper and presentation are relevant at the central government level. However, considering the important role local governments play in many European countries, and the proximity of this institutional level to citizens, a special chapter is dedicated to local e-democracy. My paper consists of the following parts: Section 1 briefly introduces the problem and background, the questionnaires used and the desktop studies. Some of the main definitions of the key concepts of e-democracy are presented here, and as background information, this section also introduces the essential principles of e-democracy in the European Comission Recommendations, linking them to some existing practices. Section 2 is about strategic planning and administration of e-democracy/e-participation in Member States. Section 3 – the focus point of the paper– presents Good Prac¬tices from different European countries, classifying and describing them. Section 4 summarizes the findings of the study and takes a brief look at ongoing processes and trends in Europe regarding planning and imple-menting e-democracy. In the paper, Good Practices are classified according to the level of involvement they represent (information, consultation, cooperation). However, it is sometimes challenging to draw the line between different levels of citizens’ involvement; for example, there are cases in which the levels are more advanced than just consultation, but to consider them as cases of full cooperation would probably be an exaggeration.
