Open consultation practices - an overview

White Paper
Brief overview of current practices
for open consultation
Vassilis Giannakopoulos(1)
, George Giannakopoulos(1,2)
1
SciFY PNPC and 2
NCSR “Demokritos”
A SciFYWhite Paper on eDemocracy
1.Introduction
The purpose of this document is to provide a brief overview of open consultation
approaches in the current, international setting and propose a role for Information
Technologies (IT) as a disruptive force in this setting. The document is structured as
follows. We describe the motivation behind this work in Section 1.1; we identify trends
and challenges in Section 1.2. Then, we look deeper into the first stages of public
consultation in Section 2, referring to current practices across the globe. We conclude
the text with a summary of the findings and proposed next steps in Section 3.
1.1 Motivation and scope
The public consultation process in Greece faces many issues: research showed that
although people find it very valuable, trust towards the process is low and citizen
participation has been declining. OGP commitments to strengthen the public
consultations were clear, and progress has been made but technical progress in the
implementation has been slow.
SciFY has worked towards facing the above challenges through e-democracy tools. In
order to best understand the international scenery and adapt our approach, we
conducted a study of current open consultation practices, which we share in this
document, as part of our open knowledge dissemination action.
The results of this study empowered the creation of a innovative, even disruptive, tool:
DemocracIT. DemocracIT, is an innovative public consultations platform that allows
policymakers engage with citizens at the final stage of the consultation process in an
effective way. It provides a rich annotation and discussion environment, coupled with
powerful reporting mechanisms exploiting data mining methods. It includes
cross-consultation statistics and analysis to quantify the way organizations follow (or do
not follow) best practices regarding open consultation. The platform is developed as an
open source project to maximize reuse and sustainability of the project.
Brief overview of current practices for open consultation by Vassilis Giannakopoulos, George Giannakopoulos
is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

With DemocracIT we respond to the need for more transparency, higher citizen
participation and clearer impact measurement. Its open source approach maximizes
reuse potential and, thus, may empower communities beyond the traditional law-making
ones, including possibly cross-country policy making organizations and settings. The
open source approach allows for adaptability, customization, and therefore
international use.
1.2 Trends and Challenges
Citizen engagement in the decision-making process has significantly increased during
the last two decades [1]. A number of reasons can explain this trend: the complexity of
the issues to be solved, the knowledge citizens and citizen groups possess around a
problem, the need for acceptance of the policies to be implemented. But it is emerging
ICT technologies, Internet usage and web 2.0 tools that are the technical enablers, since
they have made wider citizen participation easier. Yet, our research around practices and
tools used for public consultation, a function that permeates all the stages of the policy
making cycle, shows that a number of challenges still need to be addressed:
– Inadequate use of ICT technologies. Public consultation practices require that
policymakers deal with large amounts of textual input. Although ICT technologies (e.g.
text mining, sentiment analysis) exist, they are not exploited to allow for an effective
analysis of the available citizen feedback, making the work of the policymakers more
difficult.
– Public consultation of the final draft laws is a real need, yet the approach is
inadequate: at this stage, the only way citizens can leave their comments is through
e-mails and forms. This approach is ineffective in many ways: it does not allow
discussion, interaction and mutual understanding, nor does it encourage participation.
– Lack of an evaluation mechanism for the consultation process: There is no way for
the citizens to check what their contributions were, and if and how they got into
consideration or incorporated in the final text of the law. This increases the lack of trust
of the public on the outcome of e-participation processes [2, 3].
2. Public Consultation at the first stages of the
policymaking process
E-democracy is divided into three sub-fields: “information provision, deliberation, and
participation in decision-making” [1]. Civic engagement includes three dimensions:
political knowledge of public affairs, political trust for the political system, and political
participation in influencing the government and the decision-making process [4]. The
Internet provides a new avenue to interact with governmental institutions [5]. In the
above context, different levels of government (e.g. municipalities, states, state unions)
in different continents have included ways to allow citizens and/or other players in the

field (e.g. political organizations, trade associations etc.) to get involved in the process
of policymaking.
The policymaking process includes different steps that could be broadly described as
follows:
– Issue identification / Agenda setting
– Policy formulation
– Decision making
– Implementation
– Evaluation
Yet, the above stages are indicative; the lawmaking process is usually iterative and more
systemic. Consultation can permeate the entire process, to maximally integrate
feedback and improve the resulting policies.
We looked into practices of different governmental structures regarding the first
three steps of the policymaking process. For these different stages, different
e-participation tools are being used.
2.1 Stage 1: Issue identification / Agenda setting
This stage includes problem identification and quantification. It includes the following
actions to allow participation:
Action Tools Examples
Problem identification /
quantification
● Blogging-like tools,
● “Post your story”,
● Discussion forums
1. Australian Government
2. UK government
2.2 Stage 2: Policy formulation
This stage usually includes the following actions to allow participation:
Action Common Tools Examples
Collecting ideas Various tools that allow
citizens to submit ideas
and vote on them
Australian Government
Getting feedback on
different suggested
policies / priorities
Structured questionnaires 1. European Union
2. Victoria, Australia
3. Canada
Budget allocation Specific web tools YouChoose (UK)

2.3 Stage 3: Decision making
In this stage, citizens usually participate by giving feedback on the final draft law.
Action Tools Examples
Collecting feedback on the
final text of the draft law
e-mails 1. Business consultations
portal in Australia
2. UK Public Consultation
site
Forum-like tools that allow
for remarks
Greek OpenGov portal for
open consultations
Specific forms with general
remarks
(with personal info
needed)
USA public consultation
portal
There is a variety of tools and methods to gather feedback for the first stages of the
lawmaking process. For example, the NOMAD platform [6] allows a policy maker to
gather feedback from the Web and Social Media to improve a policy proposal. The
PADGETS system [7] supports policy makers by combining social media analysis and
simulation to provide feedback on policy making. However, as indicated above the use
of technology is very limited in the public consultation of the final text versions of the
draft law. Furthermore, in most cases the tools function as collectors of data and do not
always empower the citizen; they empower the policy maker.
Yet, the need for a system that enables citizens and lawmakers to interact efficiently
during the last stages of the lawmaking process is clear. For example, the Australian
Government states that automated tools and techniques for evaluating online
submissions are much needed, because some consultations receive a large volume of
submissions. For example, the 2009 National Human Rights Consultation , which
included an online element, received over 35,000 submissions. It suggests the “use of
text mining tools” and the “design the online submission mechanisms in such a way that
there is already some level of meaning attached to content at the point of submission,
for example by asking contributors to tag or categorise their submissions based on the
topic/s of the consultation”. The EU does not have a tool to address this stage of the
consultation.
Other consultation platforms
There exist tools used for choosing priorities, setting budgets, brainstorming ideas and
voting on them. Such solutions:
1. Allow commenting of small texts (ideas / challenges etc.)

2. Work like forums, where participants can comment, and/or agree with other
people’s ideas
3. Integrate Social Media into polling (Answer questions and post answers to Social
Media)
Probably the most representative ones are:
CitizenSpace: It allows for online surveys, uploading of files from respondents, manually
entering answers received outside the public consultations (e.g. through mail or email)
EngagementHQ: Forum-like tool
It has to be noted though that these tools are not built to allow people to discuss on
specific texts, at a later/final step of a process, where the final text of the draft law is
open for consultation.
3. Conclusions
We consider that Information technology tools can significantly empower democratic
action and collaboration, but, based on the above study, they need to:
● remain user-oriented,
● be well-designed and efficient,
● be taking into account all the stakeholders and
● take advantage of advances in ICT.
In ancient Greece, “Ecclesia” had the final say on legislation, through direct participation
of the citizens. Now, the challenges of space and time, the number and motives of
participants have to be well-addressed. The new “Demos” needs new tools to function in
an inclusive and effective way, in order to strengthen Democracy and participation.
DemocracIT provides new tools that address these issues. Being open source and
modular, it allows for implementation in different countries and settings. It can be
combined with other tools to allow for the creation of new solutions that serve the
people.
Acknowledgements
DemocracIT was funded by Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway in terms of the program
«We Are All Citizens» , which is part of the Funding Mechanism of EEA for Greece, also
known as EEA Grants . Administrator of the subvention of the Program is Bodossaki
Foundation . Aim of the Program is the empowering of the society of the citizens in our
country and the aid of social justice, democracy and sustainable development.


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Brief overview of current practices for open consultation by Vassilis Giannakopoulos,
George Giannakopoulos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
4.0 International License.

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