Experiments on a Mashup Web-Based Platform for Increasing e-Participation and Improving the Decision-Making Process in the University

Abstract

Nowadays, there are two important techno-social confluent phenomena: the increasing interest of citizenship to participate on the public decision-making process and the rising use of ICTs in all vital areas. For this reason, there are many participation instruments being developed and implemented using ICTs and Internet. This paper aims: to deploy a generic and flexible ICT architecture for supporting e-participation in the university and to present the results of several experiments carried out with this ICT tool. This web-based platform supports many tasks such as debate, dissemination of information, vote, clarifying issues concerning the university community, use of questionnaires, among others. The stakeholder decides how to manage each task. The use of ICTs and Internet will allow to take advantage of the necessary technical hardware in order to enhance the university processes and tasks. The experiments were carried out in the Technical University of Ambato, in four different scenarios of the decision-making process. The obtained results may be used as reference by other universities or groups needing to improve the quality of the e-participation and decision-making processes with the use of ICTs.