Evaluation of an eParticipation Project Against eParticipation Success Factors

Abstract

(e)Participation, as a characteristic of open government, is gaining more and more public attention recently. Therefore, it is important to be able to evaluate eParticipation projects against a sound framework to look into the projects’ impact on society. As several evaluation frameworks focus on quantitative measures only, such as cost-benefit analyses, only a very few provide qualitative measurements. In this paper, we evaluate a concrete eParticipation project from Switzerland, which has not been systematically evaluated before. As an evaluation framework, a list of 23 success factors, which has been developed based on extensive research, has been applied. The results are twofold: first, the evaluation process triggered a systematic ex-post reflection of the project; second, it was discerned that the used framework is highly useful and applicable for the evaluation of eParticipation projects; some suggestions for the further development of the framework are being discussed as well. Both results contribute to the body of knowledge in the area of eParticipation in general.