Policy Context and Legal Framework

The policy context was provided by the European Parliament resolution on the “Next steps for the period of reflection and analysis on the Future of Europe” adopted on June 14, 2006. The resolution followed the “Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate”, introducing the parliament's proposals regarding the organization of forums in order to enable an intensive and lively exchange of public opinions and achieve a consensus on the core issues related to the future of Europe. The resolution enabled the institutional incorporation of the Citizen's Forum into the European parliament decision-making process.

Implementation and Management Approach

The forum was technically established by the Centre of Electronic Democracy (CED) at the Institute of Ecology using the communication concept developed in collaboration with the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Ljubljana). The European Parliament Information Office for Slovenia (EPIOS) provided media promotion of the forum, assumed the communication process and fostered the Citizen's Forum involvement in decision-making by facilitating and encouraging Slovene members of the European Parliament to initiate on-line debates and consultations.

CED moderates and administrates the forum, publishes invitation messages, background documents and consultation questions (occasionally prepared by the MEP's). It also prepares evaluations and reports on all the processes. The final reports are published on-line and forwarded to the MEP's (who present them in the European Parliament), mass media and the Committee on EU Affairs at the National Assembly.

The feedback paper (in case a debate or consultation is initiated by the MEP) referring to the citizens’ messages is also published and available to public commenting. Public promotion of the forum is carried out simultaneously by the EPIOS, the CED and the MEP's.

The Citizen's Forum is financed by the European Parliament Information Office for Slovenia.

Technology solution

The Citizen's Forum was created with the free Simple Machines Forum (SMF http://www.simplemachines.org) software, a package that allows setting up advanced on-line communities. Its powerful custom made template engine enables full control of the lay-out of message boards, while allowing forum and website interaction with the Server Side Includes (SSI) function. SMF is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. It is designed to provide all bulletin board features while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server.

Additionaly, the TinyPortal (http://www.tinyportal.net) expand for the SMF script was used in order to set up extra pages, both in html and php code. Alongside with many other additions (e.g. blocks), the forum was successfully transformed into an interactive portal site.

Both SMF and TinyPortal software were used because of its accessibility, user-friendly concept and simple implementation, maintenance, administration and moderation. From the user´s perspective, the latest forum improvements allow citizens to post new messages quickly and without prior registration, while keeping the communication procedure transparent. The SMF software has also been subject of constant development in order to be even more user-friendly, safe and fast.

Impact

Since July 2006, seven public debates and consultations regarding EU issues have already taken place in the Citizen’s Forum. Three of them (“The future European social model”, “The future of the EU energy policy” and the “United against cancer” campaign) were initiated by the Slovene members of the European Parliament.

The novelty of the Citizen's Forum can be described from different aspects. Firstly, the Republic of Slovenia ranked poorly according to the United Nations eParticipation Index in 2005: 46 among 191 nations of the world, and 15 among EU-27 (behind the majority of the new member states). This poor ranking was partially due to previous unsuccessful on-line forums implemented by Slovenian official institutions and local communities. From this perspective, the Citizen's Forum brings a much needed recognition of on-line forums as a tool for strengthening democratic participation in Slovenia.

Secondly, from the conceptual point of view, the Forum represents a successful attempt to provide new deliberative elements to increase participation in EU issues, at a national and European level.

Thirdly: the e-inclusion and e-accessibility aspects. The possibility to involve all Slovene citizens in the forum’s participatory process has taken a lot of effort. Therefore, in order to engage less skilful internet users, the posting procedure is quite simple and registration is not mandatory. In addition, ePoints with forum facilitators are occasionally created to involve citizens without internet access. Combining this kind of on-line and off-line participation represents a novelty in the Slovene context.

Finally, the Citizen's Forum constitutes a turning point for eDemocracy/ eParticipation initiatives in Slovenia in terms of the valuable experience and confidence gained in implementing EU oriented e-democracy projects within Slovene political conditions, values and culture.

Track record of sharing

The Citizen’s Forum results have been evaluated by the Centre of Electronic Democracy at the Institute of Ecology, Ljubljana, and presented at several national and foreign symposiums, such as the eChallenges 2007 Conference & Exhibition in The Hague and the “Young People, New Technologies and Political Engagement” seminar at the University of Surrey. More information on sharing the good practice is available on-line at http://www.e-participacija.si

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1. Solely institutional top-down approach when designing e-democracy on-line forums brings limited democratic implications - political elitism (democracy issue).

Lesson 2. Complex situations when implementing e-democracy within multilevel European governance requires detailed knowledge of decision-making process (proper evaluation framework).

Lesson 3. Politicians are keen to exploit on-line democratic process for their own advantage (trust issue).

Lesson 4. Important arguments in favour of e-democracy forums derive from securing transparency and concrete evidence of the citizens’ contributions inclusion in final documents (policy involvement).

Lesson 5. On-line deliberation in a real-time environment improves participation in the process (digital divide issue).

Lesson 6. Wider (national) scale e-democracy deliberations require more human moderators and advanced technological platforms (e.g. content management system) in order to facilitate a massive participation and to summarise the large amount of information provided by participants (technological issue).

Lesson 7. Providing intensive and long term media promotion and public advertisement of successful on-line forums that are trusted both by politicians and citizens strengthens participation and confidence.

Lesson 8. On-line deliberation carried out by intermediary civil society institutions which promote, moderate and evaluate the process, motivate citizens and watch over transparency and inclusion in decision-making processes, fosters expert and professional implementation.