issue2, December 2007

 

An advanced ICT tool for enhancing Citizen’s Participation in the Legislative Process

At the four corners of Europe, a turnkey solution is now being implemented and tested for the easy configuration and management of e-Legislation participatory trials. Its methodology and platform allow the creation of Living-Labs-like communities of citizens and the performance of moderated online discourses among them. Trials have been set up in Hamburg (Germany), Thessaloniki (Greece), Massa (Italy) and Alston Moor (UK). The four ‘tiers’ of the European normative power are represented in the project, scaling down from the City State (Regional) to the Prefecture (Provincial) level, to the medium and small sized Municipalities.

Trial applications have involved policy makers, citizens and other socio-economic groups in the four testbeds of :

• Hamburg (Germany)
• Massa (Italy)
• Thessaloniki (Greece)
• Alston Moor (UK)
In the course of the LexiPation trials, the online discussions have focused on concrete pieces of legislation of local/regional/national interest that have been identified and appropriately selected together with the partner Administration
 
Editorial

Recent reflections conducted at EU level on the issue of participation have highlighted in very broad terms the following four stages of a ‘typical’ legislative process:

  1. policy formation (agenda setting and prior analysis);

  2. law/regulation drafting and discussion of draft norms/rules;

  3. norms/rules implementation and monitoring of approved law/regulation;

  4. amendments and follow-up.

At each of these stages, very traditional issues can arise - like the ‘competence’ of a law/rule making body, or the forms of institutional control over it - together with more innovative ones, like the existing ways, possibly IT-supported, to enable and effect a free, focused and constructive participation of the citizenry in the current legislation process.
Within this latter scope, the LexiPation project is concerned with a novel use and integration of state-of-the-art methodologies and ICT tools enabling a structured and effective interaction between law/rule making bodies of European public administration and the citizens or other socio-economic groups.
The interaction can be located at either of the four mentioned stages of a ‘typical’ legislative process, and ‘in vivo’ simulations – past methodology configuration and platform deployment - are taking place in the trial sites established in four Member States of the Union: Germany, Greece, Italy and the UK.

Impressum
Our Lexipation project is partly funded by the European Commission funding under the eParticipation Preparatory Action (2006/1/017). However, the opinions expressed here are those of the authors and not of the European Commission.
You can visit the Lexipation site at: http://www.lexipation.eu and come back to us with comments and request for additional information!
EC

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