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Answer or Publish – Energizing Online Democracy

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Best Practices for the Knowledge Society. Knowledge, Learning, Development and Technology for All (WSKS 2009)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 49))

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Abstract

Enhanced communication between citizens and decision makers furthering participation in public decision making is essential to ease today’s democratic deficit. However, it is difficult to sort out the most important public inputs from a large number of comments and questions. We propose an online solution to the selection problem by utilizing the general publicity of the internet. In the envisioned practice, decision makers are obliged either to answer citizens’ questions or initiatives or to publish the letter received on a publicly accessible web page. The list of unaddressed questions would mean a motivation to consider public inputs without putting unnecessary burdens on decision makers – due to the reliance on the public, their workload would converge to the societal optimum. The proposed method is analyzed in the course of the existing Hungarian e-practices. The idea is found valuable as a restriction for representatives and a relief for some other officials.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Environmental Economics, Sztoczek u. 2, Building St, Room 420, 1111, Budapest, Hungary

    Miklós Antal

  2. BME-UNESCO Information Society Research Institute (ITTK), Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Sztoczek u. 2, Building St, Room 108, 1111, Budapest, Hungary

    Dániel Mikecz

Authors
  1. Miklós Antal
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  2. Dániel Mikecz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Open Research Society, Gerakas Attikis, NGO, Greece

    Miltiadis D. Lytras

  2. University of Ovieto, Spain

    Patricia Ordonez de Pablos

  3. Department of Information Technology, University of Milan, via Bramante, 65 - 26013, Crema (CR), Italy

    Ernesto Damiani

  4. ESSEC Business School, Cergy Pontoise Cedex, France

    David Avison

  5. KMR group at NADA/KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Lindstedtsv. 5, P.O. Box, 100 44, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ambjörn Naeve

  6. The American College of Greece, Greece

    David G. Horner

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Antal, M., Mikecz, D. (2009). Answer or Publish – Energizing Online Democracy. In: Lytras, M.D., Ordonez de Pablos, P., Damiani, E., Avison, D., Naeve, A., Horner, D.G. (eds) Best Practices for the Knowledge Society. Knowledge, Learning, Development and Technology for All. WSKS 2009. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 49. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04757-2_44

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04757-2_44

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04756-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04757-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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