Abstract
The world for which policies have to be developed is becoming increasingly complex, uncertain and unpredictable. Citizens are better informed, have rising expectations and are making growing demands for services tailored to their individual needs. The traditional policy-making process – where identification of problems and solutions given are defined by a small group of politicians and experts – is characterized by several inefficiencies: risk of false identification of problems, misled setting of goals, wasted resources, unsatisfactory evaluation and, above all, inefficiently addressed societal problems. The main goal of paper is to address the above mentioned challenges through the exploitation of social learning and supporting ICT techniques for a more efficient and open policy making process. These will enable better motivation to participate by taking each opinion into account for the final solution. The paper discusses our Centralab ICT solution as a supporting environment for policy modeling. The aim of our solution is not to change policy-making processes but rather to support them with innovative ICT tools to reach the overall goal when policy-making results in better quality of democracy and improved civic capacity.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baiocchi, G.: Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre. Stanford University Press (2005)
Wolterstorff, N.: Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy Edited by Terence Cuneo. Oxford University Press (2012)
OECD: Promise and Problems of E-Democracy. Challenges of Online Citizen Engagement. OECD Publications Service (2003), http://www.oecd.org/governance/public-innovation/35176328.pdf
Gramberger, P.S.D.M.: Citizens as partners, OECD Handbook on Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-Making, Published by : OECD Publishing (2001), http://www.ezd.si/fileadmin/doc/4_AKTIVNO_DRZAVLJANSTVO/Viri/Citizens_as_partners_hanbook_oecd.pdf
Aparajita, A., McConnachie, C., Sharma, D., Mehta, D., Carelli, F., Dhru, K.: A Compara-tive Survey of Procedures for Public Participation in the Legislative Process – Research Report, University of Oxford (2011), http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/news/events_files/A_Comparative_Survey_of_Public_Participation_in_the_Legislative_Process.pdf
OECD: Evaluating Public Participation in Policy Making, OECD Publishing (2005), https://bvc.cgu.gov.br/bitstream/123456789/3674/1/evaluating_public_participation_policy_making.pdf
Cerda, B.C., Valenzuela, H.C.: Can Social Dialogue Be a Social Coordination Mechanism? Social Dialogue Policies in Chile between 1990 and 2010. Politics & Policy 40, 904–929 (2012), doi:10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00380.x
Bandura, A.: Social Learning Theory. General Learning Press, New York (1977)
Milbrath, L.W.: Envisioning a sustainable society. Learning our way out. State University of New York Press, New York (1989)
Bertot, J.C., Jaeger, P.T., Grimes, J.M.: Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency? - E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies. Government Information Quarterly 27, 264–271 (2010)
Jaeger, P.T., Bertot, J.C.: Designing, implementing, and evaluating user-centered and citizen-centered e-government. International Journal of Electronic Government Research 6(2), 1–17 (2010)
Jaeger, P.T., Bertot, J.C.: Transparency and technological change - Ensuring equal and sustained public access to government information. Government Information Quarterly 27, 371–376 (2010)
Gelders, D., Rijnja, G.: Dutch government communication professionals X-rayed - their role and attitude in public communication about policy intentions. Estudos em Comunicação (1), 26–42 (2007)
Bannister, F., Connolly, R.: A Risk Framework for Electronic Voting. International Journal of Technology and Policy Management 7(2), 190–208 (2007)
Lampathaki, F., Koussouris, S., Passas, S., Osimo, D., Mouzakitis, S., Tsavdaris, H., Charalabidis, Y., Askounis, D., De Luca, A., Bicking, M., Wimmer, M.: CROSSROAD: State of the Art Analysis. Brüsszel, European Commission (2010)
Macintosh, A.R.: Argument visualization to support democratic decision-making. In: Proceedings of the eChallenges e.2004 Conference, Vienna, Austria (2004)
Demirhan, K., Öktem, M.K.: Electronic Participation in the Policy Making Process: A Case Study. International Journal of e-Business and e-Government Studies 3(1) (2011), http://www.sobiad.org/eJOURNALS/journal_IJEBEG/arhieves/2011_1/05kamil_demirhan.pdf
Birkland, T.A.: An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public, 2nd edn. M.E. Sharpe (2005)
Hill, M.: The Policy Process in the Modern State. Prentice-Hall, London (1997)
Parsons, W.: Public Policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (1995)
Hofferbert, R.: The Study of Public Policy. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis (1974)
Kiser, L., Ostrom, E.: The Three Worlds of Action. In: Ostrom, E. (ed.) Strategies of Political Inquiry, pp. 179–222. Sage, Beverly Hills (1982)
Sabatier, P.: An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein. Policy Sciences 21, 129–168 (1988)
Zhang, Y., Liu, X., Wang, W.: Policy Life-cycle Model for Systems Management. IT Professional 7(2), 50–54 (2005)
Marriott, D.A.: Policy Service for Distributed Systems, PhD thesis. Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London (1997)
Koch, T.: Automated Management of Distributed Systems, Berichte aus der Informatik. Shaker Verlag (1997)
Avitable, M.: An Examination of Requirements for Metapolicies in Policy-Based Management, Thesis. Munich Technical University (1998)
NAO (National Audit Office): Supporting innovation - Managing risk in government de-partments. HC 864 Session 1999-2000. The Stationery Office, London (2000)
Edelenbos, J.: Managing stakeholder involvement in decision-making - a comparative analysis of six interactive processes in the Netherlands. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16(3), 417–446 (2005)
Saab, D.J.: The Ontology of Tags. In: Proceedings of the iConference 2010, February 3-6, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2010)
Alves, H., Santanchè, A.: Folksonomized Ontologies – from social to formal. In: Proceedings of XVII Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web, pp. 58–65 (2011)
Muro, M., Jeffrey, P.: A critical review of the theory and application of social learning in participatory natural resource management processes. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 51(3), 325–344 (2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kő, A., Gábor, A., Szabó, Z. (2013). Policy Making Improvement through Social Learning. In: Kő, A., Leitner, C., Leitold, H., Prosser, A. (eds) Technology-Enabled Innovation for Democracy, Government and Governance. EGOVIS/EDEM 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8061. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40160-2_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40160-2_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40159-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40160-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)