Abstract
Abstract— Previous political sciences research has revealed that democracy (democratic institutions, consultations with citizens) and technocracy (specialized knowledge of experts) are the main foundations for the development of effective and socially acceptable public policies, and that there should be balance as well as interaction and exchange of knowledge between them. However, there is a lack of e-participation platforms supporting this required ‘duality’: the collection of policy related information, knowledge and opinions from both citizens and experts, as well as the communication and interaction between them. This paper contributes to filling this critical research gap. It describes the development of an innovative e-participation platform, which supports on one hand structured consultation and argumentation between experts/technocrats concerning important social problems and public policies for addressing them, and on the other hand the collection and interrelation of relevant citizensgenerated textual content from numerous external social media. This platform enables the meaningful combination of technocrats’ expertise with public opinion, allowing the technocrats participating in policy related structured consultations to retrieve, understand and get insights from citizens’ perceptions. Evaluation results show that users appreciate the potential of exploiting the synergy of machine and human reasoning enabled by the proposed platform through a combination of data mining and structured consultation/argumentation - collaborative decision-making services.

Abstract
The application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016/679/EC, the Regulation for the protection of personal data, is a challenge and must be seen as an opportunity for the redesign of the systems that are being used for the processing of personal data. An unexplored area where systems are being used to collect and process personal data are the e-Participation environment. The latest generations of such environments refer to sociotechnical systems based on the exploitation of the increasing use of Social Media, by using them as valuable tools, able to provide answers and decision support in public policy formulation. This work explores the privacy requirements that GDPR imposes in such environments, contributing to the identification of challenges that e-Participation approaches have to deal with, with regard to privacy protection.

Abstract
One of the most promising developments comes with the use of innovative technologies and thus with the availability of novel services. The combination of text mining with legal elements may contribute to the development of many innovative legal IS. Moreover, in the case of public administrations and governments, the distribution, availability, and access towards legal information are essential and urgent. On the other hand, legal data and law texts are a potential open Government data category in order for innovation to be achieved, regarding the development of new, better, and more cost-effective services for citizens. Those data need to be available 24/7 basis and compliant towards a standard. Yet, there exist some severe issues at the moment regarding this access. This, in turn, makes the use of automated crawling and analysis more than difficult. This paper describes the "Peri Nomou" system: an innovative legal information system for Greek laws utilising text mining techniques to indexing legal documents, identifying correlations and dividing legal documents into their articles.

Abstract
Driven by ‘success stories’ reported by private sector firms, government agencies have also started adopting various Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in diverse domains (e.g. health, taxation, and education); however, extensive research is required in order to exploit the full potential of AI in the public sector, and leverage various AI technologies to address important problems/needs. This paper makes a contribution in this direction: it presents a novel approach, as well as the architecture of an ICT platform supporting it, for the advanced exploitation of a specific AI technology, namely chatbots, in the public sector in order to address a crucial issue: the improvement of communication between government and citizens (which has for long time been problematic). The proposed approach builds on natural language processing, machine learning and data mining technologies, and leverages existing data of various forms (such as documents containing legislation and directives, structured data from government agencies' operational systems, social media data, etc.), in order to develop a new digital channel of communication between citizens and government. Making use of appropriately structured and semantically annotated data, this channel enables ‘richer’ and more expressive interaction of citizens with government in everyday language, facilitating and advancing both information seeking and conducting of transactions. Compared to existing digital channels, the proposed approach is appropriate for a wider range of citizens' interactions, with higher levels of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. In close co-operation with three Greek government agencies (the Ministry of Finance, a social security organization, and a big local government organization), this approach has been validated through a series of application scenarios.

Abstract
Open government data (OGD) initiatives have proliferated over the last years in many countries all over the world as the result of a long-standing movement towards the ‘open government’ paradigm. These initiatives have been launched and maintained by a variety of government organizations with different strategies and technical capacities, and under different social, political and legal conditions. As a result, the OGD sources (defined as various types of portals enabling access to government datasets by the public through the Internet and providing various capabilities/functionalities in this direction) developed through these initiatives demonstrate a great diversity in both content, functionality and technology. However, limited research has been conducted on these OGD sources for understanding better their main characteristics from various perspectives, and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an analysis of the thematic, functional, semantic and technological characteristics of OGD sources in Greece. Sixty OGD sources have analysed from these perspectives and statistical analysis of relevant characteristics have been performed. Interesting conclusions have been drawn from this analysis, and based on them recommendations have been formulated for government policy makers, in order to enhance OGD provision in Greece, and increase the social and economic value that can be generated from them.

Abstract
Business incubation aims at stimulating entrepreneurship and nurturing ideas to transform them to viable ventures and drive economic growth. Since the emergence of the concept, some decades ago, the incubation process and its underlying services have been evolved, while incubators around the world are continuously increasing. These incubators vary according to their type, operation model and specialisation. The aim of this paper is to define a comprehensive framework that serves as a basis for the categorisation of all services that can be part of the incubation process. The proposed taxonomy, comprised of 8 core service categories, has then been applied on ten University associated incubators from the Mediterranean region, since the various socio-economic conditions encountered there, cause particular interest in the prospect of entrepreneurship. An indicative sample of five European, Middle East and North African countries (i.e. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt) has been defined, with the Mediterranean Sea uniting them and shaping their unique characteristics. We selected to focus on the University incubators from this area as they bridge the innovation potential of research and academia communities with the real business world and can underpin a sustainable and robust entrepreneurship model. By mapping the sample with the categories of services they offer, we intended to find out how they differentiate from other types of incubators. It was concluded that University incubators fall shorter only in the provision of administrative services in relation to the typical incubators. However, the purpose of this framework is to be further used as a tool both for policy makers’ and support their resource allocation decisions and help the internal stakeholders of incubator activities identify and adopt best practice models.

Abstract
Motivated by the multiple ‘success stories’ of the open innovation paradigm in the private sector, and also by the increasing complexity of social problems and needs, the public sector has started moving in this direction,attempting to exploit the extensive knowledge of citizens for the development of innovations in public policies and services. As the direct transfer of open innovation methods from the private sector to the public sector is not possible, it is necessary to develop effective ‘citizen-sourcing’ methods, which address the specific needs of the public sector, and then analyze and evaluate them from various political and management sciences' perspectives. This paper makes a two-fold contribution in this direction: i) It evaluates a novel method of monitoring relevant social media (e.g. political blogs, news websites, and also Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts) by government agencies, by retrieving and making advanced processing of their content, and extracting from it external knowledge about specific domains of government activity or public policies of interest, in order to promote and support open innovation; ii) For this purpose it develops a multi-perspective evaluation framework, based on sound theoretical foundations from the political and management sciences, which can be of wide applicability; it includes three evaluation perspectives: a political perspective (based on the ‘wicked’ social problems theory from the political sciences), a crowd-sourcing perspective (based on previous management sciences research on crowdsourcing) and a diffusion perspective (based on Roger's diffusion of innovation theory from management sciences). The above evaluation provides interesting insights into this novel method of promoting and supporting open innovation in the public sector through social media monitoring, revealing its capabilities and strengths, and at the same time its problems and weaknesses as well, and also ways/interventions for addressing the latter.

Abstract
Motivated by the multiple ‘success stories’ of the open innovation paradigmin the private sector, and also by the\r\nincreasing complexity of social problems and needs, the public sector has started moving in this direction,\r\nattempting to exploit the extensive knowledge of citizens for the development of innovations in public policies\r\nand services. As the direct transfer of open innovation methods from the private sector to the public sector is\r\nnot possible, it is necessary to develop effective ‘citizen-sourcing’ methods, which address the specific needs of\r\nthe public sector, and then analyze and evaluate themfromvarious political and management sciences\' perspectives.\r\nThis papermakes a two-fold contribution in this direction: i) It evaluates a novel method of monitoring relevant\r\nsocial media (e.g. political blogs, news websites, and also Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts) by government\r\nagencies, by retrieving and making advanced processing of their content, and extracting from it external knowledge\r\nabout specific domains of government activity or public policies of interest, in order to promote and support\r\nopen innovation; ii) For this purpose it develops amulti-perspective evaluation framework, based on sound theoretical\r\nfoundations from the political and management sciences, which can be of wide applicability; it includes\r\nthree evaluation perspectives: a political perspective (based on the ‘wicked’ social problems theory fromthe political\r\nsciences), a crowd-sourcing perspective (based on previous management sciences research on crowdsourcing)\r\nand a diffusion perspective (based on Roger\'s diffusion of innovation theory from management sciences).\r\nThe above evaluation provides interesting insights into this novel method of promoting and supporting\r\nopen innovation in the public sector through social media monitoring, revealing its capabilities and strengths,\r\nand at the same time its problems andweaknesses aswell, and also ways/interventions for addressing the latter.

Abstract
The opening of government data, in order to have both social and economic value generated from them, has attracted the attention and interest of both researchers and practitioners from various disciplines, such as information systems, management sciences, political and social sciences and law. Despite the rapid growth of this multidisciplinary research domain, which has led to the emergence and continuous evolution of technologies and management approaches for open government data (OGD), a detailed analysis of the specific areas and topics of this research is still missing. In this paper, a detailed taxonomy of research areas and corresponding research topics of the OGD domain is presented: it includes 4 main research areas (ODG management & policies, infrastructures, interoperability and usage & value), which are further analysed into 35 research topics. An important advantage of this taxonomy, beyond its high level of detail, is that it has been developed through extraction and combination of relevant knowledge from three different kinds of sources: important relevant government policy documents, research literature and experts. For each of these 35 research topics we identified, its research literature has been summarized and main research objectives and directions have been highlighted. Based on the above taxonomy, an extension of the existing in the literature OGD lifecycle has been proposed; also, under-researched topics that require further research have been identified. Our OGD research taxonomy extends and elaborates previous research taxonomies for the ‘ICT-enabled Governance’ and ‘Policy Making 2.0’ domains, which have been developed in the European projects CROSSROAD and CROSSOVER.

Abstract
Government agencies all over the world are making big investments for developing information systems that open important data they possess to the society, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. It is important to understand what value they create and how, and at the same time – since this is a relatively new type of information systems (IS) – to identify the main improvements they require. This paper contributes in this direction by presenting a methodology for determining the value generation mechanism of open government data (OGD) systems and also priorities for their improvement. It is based on the estimation of a ‗value model‘ of the OGD system under evaluation from users‘ ratings, which consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three ‗value layers‘, and also the relations among them. The proposed methodology has been successfully applied to an OGD system developed as part of the European project ENGAGE (‗An Infrastructure for Open, Linked Governmental Data Provision towards Research Communities and Citizens‘), and provided interesting insights and improvement priorities. This first application provides evidence that our methodology can be a useful decision support tool for important ODG systems investment, management and improvement decisions.

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop a novel approach to e-participation, which is based on “passive crowdsourcing” by government agencies, exploiting the extensive political content continuously created in numerous Web 2.0 social media (e.g. political blogs and microblogs, news sharing sites and online forums) by citizens without government stimulation, to understand better their needs, issues, opinions, proposals and arguments concerning a particular domain of government activity or public policy. Design/methodology/approach – This approach is developed and elaborated through cooperation with potential users experienced in the design of public policies from three countries (Austria, Greece and the UK), using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques: co-operative development of application scenarios, questionnaire surveys, focus groups and workshops and, finally, in-depth interviews. Findings – A process model for the application of the proposed passive crowdsourcing approach has been developed, which is quite different from the one of the usual active crowdsourcing. Based on it, the functional architecture of the required supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure has been formulated, and then its technological architecture has been designed, addressing the conflicting requirements: low response time and, at the same time, provision of sufficiently “fresh” content for policymakers. Practical implications – Taking into account that traditionally government agencies monitor what the press writes about them, our research provides a basis for extending efficiently these activities in the new electronic media world (e.g. newspapers websites, blogs and microblogs, online forums, etc.) to understand better the needs, issues, opinions, arguments and proposals raised by the society with respect to important domains of government activity and public policies. Social implications – The proposed approach provides a new channel for the “voice” of the society to be directly communicated to the government so that the latter can design its policies and activities based on the social needs and realities and not on oversimplified models and stereotypes. Originality/value – Our paper proposes a novel approach to e-participation, which exploits the Web 2.0 social media – but in a quite different way from previous approaches – for conducting “passive crowdsourcing”, and elaborates it: it develops an application process model for it and also an ICT infrastructure for supporting it, which are quite different from the ones of the existing “active crowdsourcing” approaches.

Abstract
Social innovation requires extensive networking, communication, and collaboration among various social actors. This article presents an approach to fostering and supporting social innovation through the combined exploitation of multiple social media. Furthermore, a methodology is developed for evaluating this approach, based on sound theoretical foundations: The wicked problems theory and the diffusion of innovation theory. This methodology is used for evaluating three pilot applications of this approach, organized in cooperation with members of the European Parliament.

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to develop and evaluate, in “real-life” pilot applications, a framework for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy-making processes to promote public participation and conduct crowdsourcing. Design/methodology/approach – This framework has been developed through cooperation with public sector employees experienced in public policy-making, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques: semi-structured focus group discussions, scenarios development and questionnaire surveys. The evaluation of the framework has been conducted through semi-structured focus group discussions with public sector employees involved in the pilot applications. Findings – A framework has been developed for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies, which is based on the automated posting of policy-related content to multiple social media, and then retrieval and processing of citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes, comments and retweets), using the application programming interfaces (API) of these social media. Furthermore, a supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and an application process model for it were developed. Its evaluation, based on “real-life” pilot applications, leads to useful insights concerning its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Research limitations/implications – The proposed framework has been evaluated in a small number of pilot applications, so further evaluation of it is required, in various types of government agencies and for different kinds of policy consultations. Practical/Implications – The above framework enables government agencies to communicate with wider and more heterogeneous audiences in a short time and at a low cost, increase public participation in their policy-making processes, collect useful knowledge, ideas and opinions from citizens and, finally, design better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies. Originality/value – This research contributes to the development of knowledge concerning advanced practices for effective social media exploitation in government (which is currently limited, despite the considerable relevant knowledge developed in this area for the private sector), by developing and evaluating a framework for advanced and highly automated exploitation of multiple social media by government agencies. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology for such practices has been developed, which is based on sound theoretical foundations.

Abstract
One essential characteristic of open data ecosystems is their development through feedback loops, discussions and dynamic data suppliers - user interactions. These user-centric features communicate the users’ needs to the open data community, as well to the public sector organizations responsible for data publication. Addressing these needs by the corresponding public sector organizations, or even by utilising the power of the community as ENGAGE supports, can significantly promote and accelerate innovation. However, such elements appear barely to be part of existing open data practices in the public sector. A survey we conducted has shown that professional open data users find the feedback and discussion on open data infrastructures from their users to their providers as highly useful and important, but they state that they do not know at least one open data infrastructure that provides various types of discussion, and feedback mechanisms. In this paper we describe and discuss an open data platform, which contributes to filling this gap and also present a usage scenario of it, explaining the sequence of using its functionality. The discussed open data infrastructure combines functionalities that aim to close the feedback loop and to return information to public authorities that can be useful for better government data opening and publication, as well as establishing communication channels between all stakeholders. This may effectively lead to the stimulation and facilitation of value generation from open data, as such functionality positions the user at the centre of the open data publication process.

Abstract
It is widely believed that the establishment of interoperability of the information systems (IS) of a firm with those of its collaborators (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) can generate significant business value. However, this has been empirically investigated only to a very limited extent. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of adopting the three main types of IS interoperability standards (industry-specific, proprietary and XML-based ones) on the four important perspectives/dimensions of business performance proposed by the Balanced Scorecard approach (financial, customers, internal business processes, learning and innovation). Our study is based on a large dataset from 14065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. It is concluded that all three examined types of IS interoperability standards increase considerably the positive impact of firm’s information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure on the above four perspectives/dimensions of business performance; however, their effects differ significantly. The adoption of industry-specific interoperability standards has the highest positive effects, while XML-based and proprietary standards have similar lower positive effects. Furthermore, these effects of the industry-specific IS interoperability standards are quite strong, as they are of similar magnitude with the corresponding effects of the degree of development of firm’s intra-organizational/internal IS, and of higher magnitude than the corresponding effects of the degree of development of firm’s e-sales IS. These conclusions provide valuable empirical evidence of the multidimensional business value generated by IS interoperability, its big magnitude and its strong dependence on the type of IS interoperability standards adopted.

Abstract
Government agencies are gradually moving from simpler towards more sophisticated and complex practices of social media use, which are characterized by important innovations at the technological, political and organizational level. This paper intends to provide two contributions to the current discourse about such advanced approaches to social media exploitation. The first is of practical nature and has to do with assessing the strengths and the potential and at the same time the weaknesses and the challenges, of a centralized cross-platform approach to social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy making processes. The second contribution is of theoretical nature and consists in the development of a multi-dimensional framework for an integrated evaluation of such advanced practices of social media exploitation in public policy making processes from technological, political and organizational perspectives, which is based on theoretical foundations from various different domains. The proposed framework is applied for the evaluation of a pilot consultation campaign conducted in Italy using multiple social media based on the above approach, concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program, in the context of an international research project named PADGETS (‘Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media’), and leading to interesting insights.

Abstract
This paper describes the research concerning the systematic, intensive and centralized web 2.0 social media exploitation by government agencies for widening and enhancing participative public policy making, which is conducted as part of the research project PADGETS (‘Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media’) partially funded by the European Commission. The proposed approach is based on a central system, which publishes various types of policy-related content (e.g., short text long text, images, video) and micro-applications in multiple social media simultaneously, and also collects from them and processes data on citizens’ interactions (e.g., views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.). This poses difficult research questions and challenges, both technical (analysis and exploitation of social media application programming interfaces (APIs), appropriate design of the central system architecture, processing and integrating the large amounts of collected citizens’ interaction data) and also non-technical (investigation of the value generated by this approach, preconditions for its effective application by government agencies), which are researched in the project. Some first findings on them are presented and discussed.

Abstract
There has been significant research and practice oriented towards the rational exploitation of the rapidly expanding social media by private sector enterprises. However, much less research and practice have been done in this area with respect to the public sector. This paper explores advanced forms of rational exploitation of social media in government policy-making processes, aiming to strengthen and widen participation of and interaction with citizens, concerning new or existing public policies and services. The proposed approach is based on a platform, which can publish policy-related content and micro-applications towards multiple social media simultaneously, also collect data on citizens’ interaction with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.), using the application programming interfaces (API) of the targeted social media. The information gathered through social media will then undergo various types of advanced processing (e.g. access analytics, opinion mining, simulation modelling) in order to extract synthetic conclusions from them and provide substantial support to government policy-makers, always respecting data privacy guidelines. In addition, an extension of this ‘stimulated/ guided crowdsourcing’ approach is presented, based on ‘nonmoderated crowdsourcing’ by government agencies. The above approaches allow a more advanced and rational exploitation of social media by government for supporting evidence-based decision and policy making.

Abstract
This paper presents an empirical study of the risk factors of large governmental information systems (IS) projects. For this purpose the Official Decisions of the Greek Government Information Technology Projects Advisory Committee (ITPAC) concerning 80 large IS projects have been analyzed and interviews with its members have been conducted. From this analysis 21 risk factors have been identified, and further elaborated and associated with inherent particular characteristics of the public sector, extending existing approaches in the literature. A categorization of them with respect to origin revealed that they are associated with the management, the processes, and the content of these projects. Results show that behind the identified risk factors there are political factors, which are associated with intra-organizational and inter-organizational politics and competition, and can be regarded as ‘second level’ risk sources. The risk factors identified in this study are compared with the ones found by similar studies conducted in Hong Kong, Finland, and the United States, and also with the ones mentioned by OECD reports. Similarities and differences are discussed.

Abstract
E-participation is a relatively new approach, so it is necessary to evaluate it carefully so that we can improve e-participation practice. This paper describes a framework that has been developed for evaluating a number of e-participation pilots in the legislation development processes of parliaments. The framework is based on the objectives and basic characteristics of ‘traditional’ public participation, e-participation and the legislation development processes, as well as the existing frameworks for the evaluation of Information Systems (ISs), e-participation and traditional public participation. It includes three perspectives: process, system and outcomes evaluation; each of them is analysed into a number of evaluation criteria.

Abstract
During the last few years, research and practice worldwide have shown that enhancing interoperability among organizations, systems or software applications is a multi-disciplinary issue of critical importance, touching upon processes, data and technical standardization. Fortunately, researchers and practitioners have started to realize the impact of interoperability in achieving true one-stop service provision for citizens and businesses, in fostering collaboration between enterprises or in minimizing the needed investment for maintaining complex systems. Current research results show that there exist common practices to be shared among public sector organisations and private sector enterprises, in attempts related with aligning organisation and processes, tackling semantic and technical shortcomings, building relevant architectures and finally achieving the legal interconnection and co-operation of systems. The identification of such common areas between eBusiness and eGovernment can then lead to a joint exploration, enhance reuse of the real paradigms and real exploitation of results by enterprises and administrations. Also future interoperability research directions, as emerging from relevant strategies and research roadmaps of important stakeholders, and also from relevant research workshops, are outlined. Furthermore, it is argued that interoperability research should be extended towards ‘knowledge interoperability’ as well, and deal with the development of methods and architectures enabling the exchange of knowledge among co-operating organizations.

Abstract
Extant research on Open Government Data (OGD) has remained confined to the grappling of issues linked with its conceptual, theoretical and empirical dimensions, however focusing on the supply of OGD physical capital (ODG portals, datasets, etc.), and to a lesser degree on the demand for it (e.g., needs of potential users), but not dealing with relevant OGD human capital (human knowledge and skills concerning OGD). Furthermore, research on meta-analysis or literature reviews has not expanded its scope to unravel the formation of OGD human capital, and especially how the OGD theme is being showcased across universities’ curriculum. The present research aims to contribute to filling this research gap, through an analysis of the OGD-related programs and courses offered at the graduate and post-graduate levels across the top-notch universities identified as per the indicators of the QS World University rankings, 2023. Our theoretical foundation is the widely recognized ‘Human Capital Theory’ from the economic science, which gives prominence to the importance of the human capital (human knowledge and skills) as an important complement of the classical physical capital (e.g., production equipment, ICT capital, etc.). Our findings indicate that there are only small number of courses concerning OGD in these top-notch universities; furthermore, a very small share of them have OGD an main topic, while most of them include only a part concerning OGD. Most of them focus on the exploitation of OGD of a specific thematic domain (mainly urban studies and health), and only a few deal with OGD in general. Furthermore, there is a prevalence of postgraduate courses, offered as part of MSC programs, followed by undergraduate courses, offered as part of BSC study programs, and to a much lesser degree short courses. Also, with respect to the objective of these OGD-related programs and courses, most of them aim at the generation of scientific value from OGD, while a smaller number aim at the generation of social-political value, and only a much smaller number at the development of economic value. Therefore, it can be concluded that the formation of OGD human capital by the examined universities is limited.

Abstract
Most of smart city research focuses on the ‘supply-side’, and only limited research has been conducted about the ‘demand-side’ of smart cities: the smart city actions that are perceived by citizens as having higher usefulness, value and therefore priority; also limited research has been conducted for the comparison between the supply-side and the demand-side of smart cities. This paper contributes to filling these important research gaps. It investigates and compares smart city actions’ priorities of the municipalities with the ones of the citizens, in order to identify points of convergence as well as of divergence. A novel methodology has been constructed for this purpose, which includes as a first step the development of a detailed taxonomy of possible smart city actions, based on previous relevant literature. This taxonomy is then used for collecting assessment data from municipalities as well as from citizens concerning these possible smart city actions. Furthermore, our methodology includes three layers of processing of the above assessment data, which identify: a) the priorities of these two important stakeholders concerning smart city actions; and b) points of convergence as well as points of divergence between them. This methodology has been applied in the context of the Greek local government. Assessment data concerning the importance of the smart city actions of the above taxonomy were collected from 144 Greek municipalities and 500 citizens; their processing has revealed an important divergence between these two important smart city stakeholders.

Abstract
Digital Governance (initially ‘Electronic Government’, and later ‘Electronic Governance’ incorporating also ICT-based innovations and transformation) has emerged as a research and practice domain aiming at the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in government, in order to support, transform and enhance its activities, both the internal ones, as well as the ‘extrovert’ ones concerning communication with the external environment (dialogue and consultation with citizens and firms, and also transaction with them), in order to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. During the last decades, Digital Governance has been recognized as a well-established domain with a highly ambitious objective, which is quite beneficial for the society and the economy: to study and advance the exploitation of ICT for addressing problems and needs of public sector organizations, and develop novel methods and frameworks for enhancing their internal efficiency, service quality and policy-making effectiveness through the use of ICT. Though substantial progress has been made through government funded as well private sector research in a number of areas of it, yet the lack of a science base of the Digital Governance domain seems to hinder unlocking the real transformative value of ICT in the public sector, as well as the full contribution and creativity potential of all its stakeholders, from researchers to industry and SMEs. Such a scientific background would enable a better documentation, organization, structuring of the existing knowledge in this area, as well as its dissemination through training, and also provide systematic directions for high priority future research, in order to develop a portfolio of systematic solutions to specific problems concerning the exploitation of ICT in government organizations (methods for assessment and identification of problems, as well as methods for providing solutions, which can be applied (possibly with some adaptations) in a wide range of organizational, cultural and legal contexts, as it happens in ‘mature’ sciences, such as the engineering ones).This paper provides some research directions concerning the development of the science base of the Digital Governance domain as well as its evolution, and proposes specific relevant research questions that have to be addressed.

Abstract
For long time research and practice in the area of Electronic Government (e-government) has been focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for improving the efficiency government agencies’ internal operations, as well as transactions with citizens and firms. However, the increased needs and expectations of citizens, and the proliferation of ‘participatory democracy’ ideas, gave rise to a new generation of ICT exploitation by government for increasing and enhancing citizens’ participation. Furthermore, the increasing social problems and challenges that had to be addressed by government through appropriate public policies, such as the increasing inequalities and poverty, the aging society, the environmental degradation, and the rising number of ‘unpredictable’ events, such as the financial and economic crisis, give rise to the development of a new wave of egovernment focusing on policy analytics for supporting the design of effective responses - public policies for these challenges. Therefore, evolutions in the needs of modern societies, in combination with technological evolutions, give rise to evolutions in e-government, and the emergence of new generations of it. This paper aims at the identification and better understanding of the main characteristics of the different e-Government generations, using an analytical framework based on two rounds of literature review. The results of the study provide insights on the main features of the three main e-government generations, regarding their main goals, obstacles, key methods and tools, and reveal the new emerging generation of e-Government 3.0 and its basic characteristics. Furthermore, within the first and to some extent the second e-Government generation there have been substantial advancements, which have created distinct sub-generations of them, revealed and analysed through extensive relevant growth/maturity stages research.

Abstract
Big Data is, clearly, an integral part of modern information societies. A vast amount of data is, daily, produced and it is estimated that, for the years to come, this number will grow dramatically. In order for transforming this hidden provided information into a useful one, the use of advanced technologies, such as Machine Learning is deemed appropriate. Over the last years, Machine Learning has grown a great effort considering the given opportunities its usage provides. Furthermore, Machine Learning is a technology that can handle Big Data classification for statistical or even more complex purposes such as decision making. At the same time the new generation of government, Government 3.0, explores all the new opportunities to tackle any challenge faced by contemporary societies by utilizing new technologies for data driven decision making. Taking into account the opportunities Machine Learning can provide, more and more governments participate in the development of such applications in different governmental domains. But is the Machine Learning only beneficial for public sectors? Although there is a huge number of researches in the literature there is no a comprehensive study towards the analysis of this technology. Our research moves towards this question conducting a comprehensive analysis of the use of Machine Learning from Governments. Through the analysis all benefits and barriers are indicated from the public sectors' perspective pinpointing, also, a number of Machine Learning applications where governments are involved.

Abstract
Europe's vision is to establish a well-functioning Digital Single Market, where Europeans are able to move and trade among the EU member states. On the other hand the large amount of information about laws that apply in each EU country has posed significant barriers in this vision. Moreover only legal experts can follow the latest legislation in each country consuming a large amount of business resources in order to follow the current legislation. However, Mass customization tools can help to filter and thereby reduce the flood of legal information and make it easier to be followed from businesses and citizens without legal expertise. The proposed solution is a novel ICT architecture utilising and built upon text mining, advanced processing and semantic analysis of legal information towards the provision of a set of services for citizens, businesses, and administrations of the European Union. In order to provide the most appealing, comprehensive and added value services in the legal domain, this paper presents six use case scenarios based on the opinion of different target groups. Conducting interviews and focus groups, we were able to identify the novel functionalities and services of great importance for the users highlighting and addressing users' daily problems regarding legal information. Generally, interviews with the different target groups reveal that at this point, users prioritise their needs towards more basic services such as search functionalities and correlation with previous laws. Lawyers on the other hand as more competent target group asked for summarisation and reporting services. All target groups where eager on the implementation of this service which as it seems it will directly impact their everyday professional and personal use of legal information.

Abstract
Nowadays, Blockchain Technologies (BCT) could be characterized as one of the most promising trends. We are currently witnessing a plethora of implementations basically in the economic sector with the creation of cryptocurrencies. The majority of researchers and practitioners argues that many benefits could be derived from the use of this innovative technology with the most significant one being the improved sense of trust to BCT applications. At the same time governments pursue amplified trust from their citizens and BCT is gaining momentum since it addresses this of utmost importance problem based on its unique characteristics. More and more governments realize the advances of this technology and participate in pilot applications in different vertical governmental sectors. Even though there are several implementations in the Government sector, there is no comprehensive study towards the analysis of the major characteristics of these developments. This paper moves towards the fulfilment of this gap conducting a thorough analysis of e-Government pilot applications of BCT in a European level. Furthermore, this study discusses the key benefits and main barriers coming from the application of this technology in different domains with BCT experts.

Abstract
For long time research and practice in the area of Electronic Government has been focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the internal operations of government agencies, as well as for providing elec-tronic transaction services to citizens and firms. The increased needs and expectations of citi-zens, and the proliferation of ‘participatory democracy’ ideas, result in an increase of their di-rect participation in policy making processes, and the use of ICT seems to be an important fa-cilitator of this. At the same time the multiple social problems and challenges to be addressed through policy-making, such as the increasing inequalities and poverty, the aging society, the environmental degradation, and the rising number of ‘unpredictable’ events, such as the finan-cial and economic crises, necessitate the development of a new generation of eGovernment fo-cusing on the design of effective responses - public policies for these challenges. Therefore evo-lutions in the needs of modern societies, in combination with technological evolutions in the ICTs, give rise to evolutions in e-Government, and the emergence of new generations of it. This paper aims at the identification and better understanding of the main characteristics of the dif-ferent e-government generations, using an analytic framework based on two rounds of literature review. The results of the study provide insights on the main features of the three main e-Government generations, regarding their main goals, obstacles, key methods and tools, placing special emphasis on the new emerging generation of e-Government 3.0 and its basic character-istics.

Abstract
In order to address the complexity of the modern social problems and needs through effective public policies, government agencies have started experimenting with policy informatics methods, adopting various approaches that increase citi-zens’ and stakeholders’ participation in the public policy formulation processes. Such approaches allow the exploitation of their opinions, which incorporate valu-able perceptions of them, as well as knowledge, proposals and ideas. This paper outlines three advanced methods of social media (SM) exploitation in public poli-cy making processes for citizen-sourcing, which are based on the concepts of ac-tive citizen-sourcing, passive citizen-sourcing and passive expert-sourcing respec-tively, as well as the conclusions from some first applications of them. Based on them a comparison of these methods is conducted, and then a maturity model is developed concerning the use of SM for citizen-sourcing in order to support policy making.

Abstract
One of the most promising developments comes with the use of innovative technologies and thus with the availability of novel services. The combination of text mining with legal elements may contribute to the development of many innovative legal information systems. Moreover, in the case of public administrations and governments, the distribution, availability, and access to-wards legal information are essential and urgent. On the other hand, legal data and law texts are a potential open Government data category in order for innovation to be achieved, regarding the development of new, better, and more cost-effective services for citizens. Those data need to be available 24/7 basis and compliant towards a standard. Yet, there exist some severe issues at the moment regarding this access. This, in turn, makes the use of automated crawling and analysis more than difficult. This paper describes the “Peri Nomou” (about law) system: an innovative legal information system for Greek laws utilising text mining techniques to indexing legal documents, identifying correlations and dividing legal documents into their articles. The first version of the system has been evaluated by legal experts and the second version is developed based on the previous evaluation and presented in this paper. The results from the evaluation indicate the significance of the “Peri Nomou” system for the legal experts and allow us to promote the Peri Nomou system to other user groups, such as business, public administration.

Abstract
Governments are responding to the rapid evolution of technologies and the era of Government 3.0 through novel services providing to citizens, businesses, and administrations. In the other hand, society is overwhelmed because of the large amount of legal information in the countries of European Union and there is no system capable of acquiring, storing and processing such large amounts of legal information, at an advanced level in various languages. The current paper presents a proposed novel framework and an ICT architecture for the introduction of a set of services for citizens, businesses, and administrations of the European Union, built upon text mining, advanced processing and semantic analysis of legal information. To achieve this, our proposed framework gain access to big legal data currently produced and published in multiple national or EU public data sources (e.g EUR-Lex, NOMOS), link it and transform it to structured open datasets. By combining data coming from a multiplicity of sources, our framework aims to achieve seamless and inclusive access to legal information across EU and improve the efficacy of decision making in legislative procedures operated by public bodies.

Abstract
Government 3.0 is characterised by the utilisation of disruptive technologies in conjunction with already established ones towards data-intensive decision and policy making. One of the disruptive technologies that will affect in general e-government applications and services provision and will more specifically frame government 3.0, is BCT. Yet no systematic research is available which compares the benefits of BCT with the barriers to its adoption. This paper conducts a literature, research projects and applications review for the BCT within the respecting area of e-government. The inquiry follows a desk-based methodology for the identification of the primary references and research projects as well as a qualitative discussion with experts of the domain. This study identifies the major benefits and impediments for the application of this technology in the e-government domain. The findings show that a gap exists between the promised benefits and barriers and frame future research directions.

Abstract
The increasing use of Social Media has transformed them into valuable tools, able to provide answers and decision support in public policy formulation. This has resulted in the emergence of new e-participation paradigms, such as crowdsourcing approaches, aiming to drive more constructive interactions between governments and citizens or experts, in order to exploit their knowledge, opinions, and ideas when tackling complex societal problems. However, the continuous exposure of the average users, without or with limited awareness of the dangers of the disclosure of sensitive data, remains a threat to the preservation of their information privacy. The upcoming EU regulation (GDPR) about the protection of personal data is especially well timed, and forces for revision of the processes followed related to the manipulation of personal data within public participation methods. Towards this direction, a thorough examination of three advanced methods of crowdsourcing in public policy-making processes is conducted in the current paper, analysing the data collection and processing methods they encompass. Then, an assessment of their compliance with fundamental privacy requirements is presented. The research contributes to the identification of challenges that crowdsourcing, and in general, e-participation approaches impose with regard to privacy protection. Further research directions include the implementation of techniques that can satisfy the identified requirements.

Abstract
Social Media have been initially used by government agencies for general public oriented ‘citizen-sourcing’. Though this enabled the collection of useful policy relevant information and knowledge from the general public, and provided valuable insights into their relevant perceptions, it would be quite useful if this could be combined with the collection of policy relevant information and knowledge from experts as well (‘expert-sourcing’). In this paper, a passive expert-sourcing method based on social media, which has been developed in a European research project, is evaluated from a fundamental perspective: the wicked problems theory perspective. In particular, we investigate to what extent this method enables government agencies to collect high quality information concerning the main elements of important social problems to be addressed through public policies: particular issues posed, alternative interventions/ actions, and advantages/disadvantages of them; as well as to what extent there is consensus about these elements among different stakeholder groups. For this purpose data are collected through interviews with Members of the Greek Parliament. From their analysis interesting conclusions have been drawn about the strengths and weaknesses of this expert-sourcing method, as well as required impro-vements of it.

Abstract
The growing adoption of the open innovation paradigm in the public sector poses a set of research challenges related to the particularities of the domain and the technologies required to manage the associated knowledge flows among diverse types of stakeholders. This paper aims to shed light on how the proper combina-tion of existing ICT tools can support and advance the implementation of open innovation practices in the public sector. Towards this aim, it first presents a non-exhaustive taxonomy of these tools, which is also associated with the open inno-vation phase they primarily support. Paying particular attention to the issues of collaboration support and sophisticated data collection and analysis, the paper al-so proposes an open, inclusive and sustainable web-based platform that builds on the synergy between human and machine intelligence to address the important challenges of public sector open innovation. An indicative application scenario, concerning a contemporary societal problem, showcases the potential of the pro-posed solution.

Abstract
Since its inception, open government data (OGD) as a free re-useable object has attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners, civil servants, citizens and businesses for different reasons in each target group. This study was designed to aggregate the research outcomes and developments through the recent years towards illustrating the evolutionary path of OGD portals, by presenting an analysis of their characteristics in terms of a maturity model. A four-step methodology has been followed in order to analyse the literature and construct the maturity model. The results point out the two greater dimensions of OGD portals, naming traditional and advanced evolving within three generations. The developed maturity model will guide policy makers by firstly identify the current level of their organisation and secondly design an efficient implementation to the required state.

Abstract
The first attempts of government agencies to apply crowdsourcing ideas aimed at the collection of policy-related information, knowledge and ideas from the general public (‘citizen-sourcing’), concerning various social problems and needs, in order to support the development of effective public policies for addressing them. However, it was soon realized that, due to the high complexity of modern social problems and needs, it would be quite beneficial if the above could be complemented by the collection of relevant information, knowledge and ideas from experts; this leads to the gradual emergence of ‘expert-sourcing’, as an important foundation of public policy making. Such practices constitute important innovations in the policy development processes, so it is necessary to analyze them from this perspective; the most fundamental question to be investigated is to what extent these innovative expert-sourcing practices have the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion. Our paper makes a contribution in this direction, evaluating an ICT-based passive expert-sourcing method for supporting policy making from this perspective, using as theoretical foundation the Diffusion of Innovation Theory.

Abstract
Since 2009, the European Union (EU) is phasing a multi–year financial crisis affecting the stability of its involved countries. Our goal is to gain useful insights on the societal impact of such a strong political issue through the exploitation of topic modeling and stance classification techniques. \ \ To perform this, we unravel public’s stance towards this event and empower citizens’ participation in the decision making process, taking policy’s life cycle as a baseline. The paper introduces and evaluates a bilingual stance classification architecture, enabling a deeper understanding of how citizens’ sentiment polarity changes based on the critical political decisions taken among European countries. \ \ Through three novel empirical studies, we aim to explore and answer whether stance classification can be used to: i) determine citizens’ sentiment polarity for a series of political events by observing the diversity of opinion among European citizens, ii) predict political decisions outcome made by citizens such as a referendum call, ii) examine whether citizens’ sentiments agree with governmental decisions during each stage of a policy life cycle.

Abstract
The public sector gradually starts exploiting the crowdsourcing ideas initially developed in the private sector. However, there is much less knowledge on efficient and effective methods and practices for public sector citizen-sourcing in comparison with private sector crowd-sourcing, so extensive research is required in this area. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an ICT-based method for ‘pssive expert-sourcing’, with the latter term denoting the collection of policy relevant information, knowledge and ideas from experts, which aims at supporting policy making by the European Union (EU) by leveraging its large policy community. Its theoretical foundation is previous theoretical work on the relationships between democracy and technocracy, and also on policy networks. The main technological pillars of the proposed method are: EU policy experts’ profiling and reputation management, relevant documents’ opinion mining and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them. Finally, a first evaluation of the proposed method is presented, leading to encouraging results.

Abstract
Open data portals have been a primary source for publishing datasets from various sectors of administration, all over the world. However, making open data available does not necessarily lead to better utilisation from citizens and businesses. Our paper presents a new framework and a prototype system for supporting open application development by citizen communities, through gathering and making available open data and open web services sources from governmental actors, combined with an application development environment, training material and application examples.

Abstract
Social media monitoring has been initially adopted by private sector firms in order to collect opinions, complaints and questions concerning their products and services, to be used for mak-ing appropriate changes and improvements of them and also for designing communication strategies. Recently government agencies have started adopting SMM, as a form of ‘passive citi-zen-sourcing’, in order to collect useful information from citizens concerning their needs, prob-lems, opinions and suggestions, to be used for public policy formulation. It is therefore im-portant to evaluate these first initiatives, so that the potential of SMM with respect to public pol-icy making can be exploited, and at the same time appropriate adaptations and improvements of relevant ICT platforms and practices can be made, in order to reach higher levels of maturity. This paper makes a two-fold contribution in this direction. Initially it develops a framework for evaluating the use of SMM for supporting policy making, initially from the ‘classical’ ease of use perspective, and then from a public policy perspective, based on the wicked social problems theory. This framework is then used for the evaluation of three pilot applications of a novel method of SMM by government agencies and other policy stakeholders, which has been devel-oped as part of a European research project.

Abstract
In the last decade there is extensive and continuously growing creation of political content in the Internet, and especially in the Web 2.0 social media, which can be quite useful for government agencies in order to understand the needs and problems of societies and formulate effective public policies for addressing them. So a variety of ICT-based methods have been developed for the exploitation of this political content by governments (‘citizensourcing’), initially simpler and later more sophisticated ones. These ICT-based methods are increasingly based on the use of opinion mining (OM) and sentiment analysis (SA) techniques, in order to process the extensive political content collected from numerous sources. This paper describes a novel approach to OM and SA use, created as part of an advanced ICT-based method of exploiting political content created in the Internet, and especially in social media, by experts (‘expertsourcing’), aiming to leverage the extensive policy community of the European Union, which is developed in the European EU-Community project. Furthermore, some first experimental results of it are presented.

Abstract
Governments initially used social media mainly in order to disseminate information to the public about their activities, services, policies and plans. Then they started using social media also in order to collect from citizens useful information, knowledge, opinions and ideas concerning the problems and needs of modern societies and more recently in order to apply crowdsourcing ideas in the public sector context and promote ‘citizensourcing’. In this direction governments first used their own accounts in various social media, in which they provide information about specific problems and policies, and solicit citizens’ feedback on them (active citizensourcing). Recently, they attempt to take advantage of the extensive public policy related content developed beyond their own social media accounts, in various political forums, blogs, news websites, and SM accounts, by the citizens, without any stimulation (passive citizensourcing). These constitute significant innovations in policy formulation– citizens communication processes and practices of government. Therefore it is important to evaluate them from various perspectives, in order to learn from them as much as possible, identify and address their weaknesses, make the required improvements, and in general achieve higher levels of effectiveness and maturity of these highly innovative practices. This paper makes a two-fold contribution in this direction: initially it develops a framework for evaluating such citizensourcing innovations based on the passive social media monitoring; and then it uses this framework for the evaluation of three pilot applications of a novel method of government passive citizensourcing through social media monitoring, which has been developed as part of an international research project.

Abstract
The EU Community project seeks to promote, facilitate, and ultimately exploit the synergy of a cutting-edge intelligent collaboration platform with a community of institutional actors, stakeholders, scientists, consultants, media analysts and other individuals that can make valuable contributions to EU policy debates. Its ultimate goal is to effectuate a transformation in the modus operandi of EU politics and move closer to achieving the illusive goals of improved transparency, efficiency, awareness and engagement, ultimately leading to better policies for a better European Union.

Abstract
In the last decade there is extensive and continuously growing creation of political content in the Internet, and especially in the Web 2.0 social media, which can be quite useful for government agencies in order to understand the needs and problems of societies and formulate effective public policies for addressing them. So a variety of ICT-based methods have been developed for the exploitation of this political content by governments (‘citizensourcing’), initially simpler and later more sophisticated ones. These ICT-based methods are increasingly based on the use of opinion mining (OM) and sentiment analysis (SA) techniques, in order to process the extensive political content collected from numerous sources. This paper describes a novel approach to OM and SA use, created as part of an advanced ICT-based method of exploiting political content created in the Internet, and especially in social media, by experts (‘expertsourcing’), aiming to leverage the extensive policy community of the European Union, which is developed in the European EU-Community project. Furthermore, some first experimental results of it are presented.

Abstract
Policy networks are highly important for the formulation and implementation of public policies, so it is quite valuable to exploit modern ICT in order to support them. This paper presents a novel method of supporting the large policy network of the European Union (EU), which consists of numerous actors geographically dispersed all over Europe, through advanced social media exploitation, in order to improve the quantity and quality of their interaction, and increase efficiency and effectiveness. Based on a series of workshops, in which a large number of individuals involved in EU policy network participated, initially its structure has been analyzed, and then the proposed method has been formulated. Furthermore, the architecture of the ICT infrastructure required for the application of this method has been designed. The main pillars of the proposed method (corresponding also to the main modules of its ICT infrastructure) are: profiling of important EU policy actors’ and reputation management, relevant documents’ storage and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them.

Abstract
Most of the research that has been conducted on the business value of information systems (IS) interoperability focuses mainly on the efficiency related benefits it can generate, but deals much less with its potential to drive innovations in firms’ products/services and processes. Our study contributes to filling this research gap by empirically investigating the effect of interoperability of firm’s IS (meant as compliance with various types of relevant standards) on firm’s innovation performance. It is based on a large dataset from 14.065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors), which has been collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission, and is used for estimating product/service and process innovation models. It has been concluded that IS interoperability has strong positive effects both on product/service and process innovation, which are weaker than the corresponding effects of the degree of development of firms’ IS, but stronger than the effects of the degree of functional development of firm’s e-Sales IS; also they are stronger than the corresponding effects of R&D and competition (regarded as important innovation drivers according to previous literature). Finally, a comparison among different types of IS interoperability standards shows that their positive effects on firms’ innovation activity differ, with the industry-specific and the XML-horizontal standards having stronger effects of similar magnitudes, while the proprietary standards have weaker ones.

Abstract
Government agencieshave started usingthe social media for increasing communication with citizens, and involvement of themin public policy making processes. However, most of the research in this area has technological orientation, but limited research on the use of social media in government from management and political sciences’ perspectives has been conducted. This paper contributes to filling this gap, presenting a study of an advanced form ofcentrally managed combined use of multiple social media in the European Parliament from an innovationperspective. Our main theoretical foundation has beenRogers’Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. It has been concluded that the above approach, viewed as an innovation, has to a good extent the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion proposed by DOI theory: relative advantage (though some possible ‘relative disadvantages’ have been identified as well), low complexity (though some considerable initial effort is required), compatibility with existing values and practices(at least to some extent), trialability and observability. Furthermore, recommendations have been provided for improving the diffusion potential of the above innovation, through interventions in the above attributes.

Abstract
The first generations of social media exploitation by government were oriented towards the general public. Evaluations of them have shown that they can provide some insights into the perceptions of the general public, however in order to achieve the required higher levels of quality, depth and elaboration it is necessary to target specific communities having strong interest and good knowledge on the particular topic under discussion. The research presented in this paper makes a contribution in this direction. It develops a novel approach to social media exploitation by the European Union (EU), which aims at leveraging its policy community, which consists of a big network of individuals/ policy stakeholders having various policy related roles and capacities, geographically dispersed all over Europe. Its theoretical foundation is policy networks theory. Based on a series of workshops, in which a large number of such individuals participated, the structure of the EU policy community is initially analysed, then the proposed approach is formulated and elaborated, and finally the fuctional architecture of an ICT platform for supporting it is designed. Theirb main pillars are: important policy stakeholders’ profiles and reputation management, relevant documents’ repository and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them.

Abstract
Two important trends in government emerging in the recent years have been on one hand the exploitation of the Web 2.0 social media supporting a more extensive interaction and collaboration, and on the other hand the opening of government data to the citizens through the Internet in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. However, there has been limited attempt of integrating them. Using a design science approach a second generation of open government data (OGD) platforms is developed, which offer to the users both the „classical‟ first generation functionalities, and also a comprehensive set of additional Web 2.0 features. The latter enables social and collaboration, which enable users to generate value from ODG. In this way users become „prosumers‟, both producing and consumingdata. Capabilities forperforming various types of processing,information and knowledge exchange, and collaboration were found to be useful and valuable in a user test.

Abstract
Government institutions of various levels have started experimenting with the use of social media for increasing citizens‟ involvement in their public policy making processes. It is necessary to evaluate systematically these initiatives from various perspectives, in order to develop new knowledge in this recently emerged area, concerning methods of social media exploitation in government, the value they can generate, and also the challenges they pose and their limitations. This paper contributes in this direction, by analysing three centrally managed multiple social media consulations conducted by Members of the European Parliament, from a public policy perspective, based on the wicked problems theory. It has been concluded that the above method of social media exploitation has a good potential for disseminating highly informative multimedia content on a policy under formulation to a much wider audience than the usual participants in the „traditional‟ European Parliament consultations, and also involving and stimulating them to think about the policy, leading to the collection of useful relevant ideas, knowledge and opinions, in a cost efficient manner. However, in order to go into more discussion depth it will be necessary to conduct further consultations, more focused on particular sub-topics and participants. Furthermore,their outcomes should be combined and integrated with the ones of the „traditional‟ consultations and experts‟ studies. Finally, a critical success factor is to build wide, knowledgeable, diverse and pluralistic communities for these social media consultations, including various social actors with strong interest and good knowledge of the particular problem, and extending beyond the networks of the initiator.

Abstract
Recently, a second generation of advanced open government data (OGD) infrastructures has emerged, influenced by the principles of the Web 2.0 paradigm, and oriented towards the elimination of the clear distinction between providers and consumers of such data, and the support of data ‘pro-sumers’. This paper presents and validates a methodology for evaluating these advanced second generation of ODG infrastructures, which is based on the estimation of value models of them from users’ ratings. This value model includes assessments of the various types of value generated by such an infrastructure, and also of the relations among them as well. This enables a deeper understanding of the whole value generation mechanism and a rational definition of improvement priorities.The proposed methodology has been used for the evaluation of an advanced second generation ODG e-Infrastructure developed in the European project ENGAGE.

Abstract
The Web 2.0 social media have been initially exploited by private sector firms, in order to support mainly their marketing and customer relations functions, and there has been considerable research for developing frameworks and practices for the effective utilization of these new communication media in the private sector. Government started exploiting the high capabilities and popularity of the social media much later, so there has been much less research concerning their effective utilization by government agencies. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, presenting a novel framework for the effective utilization of the Web 2.0 social media by government agencies for promoting participative governance and applying crowdsourcing ideas. It is based on the centralised automated publishing of content and micro-applications to multiple Web 2.0 social media, and then collection of citizens’ interactions (e.g. comments, ratings) with them, based on central platform that uses efficiently the application programming interfaces (APIs) of these social media. Finally, citizens’ interactions are processed in this central platform using a variety of techniques (web analytics, opinion mining, simulation modelling) in order to provide finally useful analytics that offer substantial support to government decision and policy makers. Furthermore, an application and an evaluation model for the proposed framework are described, as well as an extension of it that combines active/moderated and passive/non-moderated crowdsourcing.

Abstract
Extensive investments are made for the development of various types of information systems (IS) interoperability technologies, and also for their implementation at firm level. This necessitates the systematic study of the business value that IS interoperability technologies generate. However, quite limited empirical research has been conducted on this. Our study contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of the adoption of three types of IS interoperability standards (industry-specific, XML-horizontal and proprietary ones) on the business benefits firms gain from their information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructures. It is based on a large dataset from 14.065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission. For all these three types of IS interoperability standards it has been concluded that their adoption for establishing IS interoperability with cooperating firms (suppliers, business partners, customers) increases the business benefits gained from firm’s ICT infrastructure, both the cost reduction and the sales growth related ones. A comparison among these three types of IS interoperability standards shows that their positive effects on the ICT business benefits differ, with the industry-specific standards having the strongest effects, which are of similar magnitude with the ones of the degree of development of firm’s internal IS (widely recognized as the main determinants of these benefits). Furthermore, we have found that the adoption of industry-specific standards is particularly important for realizing sales growth related benefits from firm’s ICT infrastructure.

Abstract
Many government agencies worldwide have started making considerable investments for developing information systems that enable opening important data they possess to the society, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. In order to rationalise and support future decisions concerning the development, upgrade, improvement and management of this new type of information systems it is important to understand better what value they create and how, and at the same time to identify the main improvements they require. This paper contributes in this direction presenting a methodology for determining the value generation mechanism of open government data (OGD) systems and also priorities for their improvement. It is based on the estimation of a ‘value model’ of the OGD system under evaluation from users’ ratings. It consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three ‘value layers’, and also the relations among them. These three value layers concern value related to the efficiency of the OGD (= quality of the various capabilities it provides to the users), its effectiveness (= degree of supporting users for achieving their objectives) and also users’ future behavior intentions respectively. The proposed methodology has been applied successfully to an advanced OGD system developed as part of the European project ENGAGE (‘An Infrastructure for Open, Linked Governmental Data Provision towards Research Communities and Citizens’), providing to interesting insights and improvement priorities. This first application provides evidence that our methodology can be a useful decision support tool for important ODG systems development, upgrade, improvement and management decisions.

Abstract
Governments have started increasingly using web 2.0 social media as a new channel of interaction with citizens in various phases of public policies lifecycle. In this direction they have started moving from simpler forms of expoitation of these strong bi-directional communication channels to more complex and sophisticated ones. These attempts constitute important innovations for government agencies, so it is necessary to analyse them from this perspective as well. This paper analyzes an advanced form of centralised use of multiple social media by government agencies from this perspective, using the well established Diffusion of Innovation Theory of Rogers. It is based on a pilot application of the above approach for conducting a consultation campaign concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program of the Piedmont Regional Government, Italy. It has been concluded that this approach has the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion (relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and processes, reasonable complexity, trialability and observability), at least in government organizations having a tradition of bi-directional communication with citizens in all phases of policy making, and also some experience in using social media for this purpose.

Abstract
While the first generation of e-participation has been based on official e-participation spaces owned and operated by government, the second one is oriented towards exploiting the highly popular web 2.0 social media for performing ‘crowd-sourcing’ of policy-related knowledge, opinions and ideas from citizens, through posting relevant policy-related content to some social media and then retrieving and processing citizens’ interactions with it. Recently, the idea of a third generation of e-participation has been proposed, which is based on a more ‘passive’ form of crowd-sourcing in social media, through automated passive search by government agencies for content on a public policy under discussion, that has been created in a large number of predefined relevant web 2.0 sources (e.g. political blogs, news websites, facebookand twitter accounts) by citizens freely, without any direct stimulation by government, retrieval and sophisticated processing of this content. In this paper we analyze and elaborate this idea, based on cooperation with potential users experienced in the design of public policies, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Initially, the main roles required for the practical application of this concept are identified, and then the functional requirements of each of them are determined. Finally, based on these functional requirements the architecture of a central platform supporting the application of this concept is designed.

Abstract
Government agencies gradually start moving from simpler to more advanced and sophisticated forms of social media use, which are characterized by higher technological and political complexity. It is quite important to evaluate systematically these efforts based on sound theoretical foundations. In this direction this paper outlines and evaluates an advanced form of automated and centrally managed combined use of multiple social media by government agencies for promoting participative public policy making. For this purpose an evaluation framework has been developed, which includes both technological evaluation based on the software platforms and ecosystems theory, and political evaluation based on wicked problems theory, and focuses on the fundamental complexities and challenges of these advanced forms of social media exploitation. It has been used for the evaluation of a pilot application of the above approach for conducting a consultation campaign concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program in Piedmont, Italy, revealing both its important potential and strengths, but also at the same time some notable problems and weaknesses as well.

Abstract
The establishment of interoperability of enterprise IS with the ones of trading partners (e.g. customers, suppliers, business allies) is regarded, based on a variety of theoretical arguments, as an important source of business value associated with efficiency gains and innovation. However, there is a lack of empirical investigation of this business value. This paper presents an empirical study of the effect of adopting two types of IS interoperability standards for exchanging electronic data with trading partners, the industry-specific and the proprietary ones, on the benefits firms obtain from their ICT infrastructures, and finally on their business performance. Furthermore, it examines what part of these effects is through increasing effectiveness of existing business process for producing existing products and services, and what part of them is through driving innovation. It is concluded that the adoption of both these types of IS interoperability standards for exchanging electronic data with trading partners has positive effect on the benefits gained from ICT infrastructures, with the effect of the industry-specific standards being much higher than the effect of the proprietary ones. Also, it has been found that a large part of these effects (46% for the industry-specific standards and 62% for the proprietary ones) is through driving innovation.

Abstract
Considerable investments are made to develop numerous e-infrastructures for the reuse of open government data for scientific, commercial and political purposes. This necessitates a deeper understanding and assessment of the value these infrastructures generate. For this purpose, our paper presents a framework for evaluating open government data infrastructures, both ‘traditional’ ones following the web 1.0 paradigm and also advanced ones influenced by the web 2.0 paradigm. The evaluation framework is based on findings of previous research on the evaluation of public projects, information systems and e-services, and also on technology acceptance and IS success models. The proposed evaluation framework consists of an evaluation model with measurable evaluation dimensions and criteria, as well as a comprehensive evaluation procedure for using this evaluation model, which enables both higher level and detailed evaluation. It includes quantitative as well as qualitative methods in order to provide comprehensive and deep insights. Finally, we describe an application of the proposed framework (both the model and the procedure) for the evaluation of a European e-infrastructure for opening government data. This first application has provided some first evidence concerning the applicability and usefulness of the proposed evaluation framework, and at the same time useful directions and ideas for the improvement of the above-mentioned e-infrastructure.

Abstract
The emergence of web 2.0 social media enables the gradual emergence of a second generation of e-participation characterized by more citizens’ control, in which government agencies post content (e.g. short or longer text, images, video) to various social media and then analyze citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes/dislikes, comments, etc.). In this paper we propose an even more citizens controlled third generation of e-participation exploiting web 2.0 social media as well, but in a different manner. It is based on the search by government agencies for content on a public policy under formulation, which has been created in a large set of web 2.0 sources (e.g. blogs and microblogs, news sharing sites, online forums) by citizens freely, without any initiation, stimulation or moderation through government postings. This content undergoes advanced processing in order to extract from it arguments, opinions, issues and proposals on the particular policy, identify their sentiments (positive or negative), and finally summarize and visualize them. This approach allows the exploitation of the vast amount of user-generated content created in numerous web 2.0 social media for supporting governments to understand better the needs, wishes and beliefs of citizens, and create better and more socially rooted policies.

Abstract
In order to achieve e-governance, we are in need of new and more advanced tools, specifically designed towardssupporting the policy making procedure. The purpose of thispaper is to investigate the perspectives, provided by thedevelopment of decision support tools, to confront complex e-government phenomena. The analysis is performed using aSystemDynamics simulation model that enables policymakers to investigate the estimated impact of plannedgovernment initiatives. Simulation applies on the diffusion of Internet and Communication Technology. The developmentof the model, made in collaboration with the Observatory forthe Greek Information Society, addresses the digital divide inGreece. Data fromthe i2010 initiative indicators have beenused for the simulation. The results, arising fromtheexecution of alternative scenarios, indicate the parameters tobe changed through the implementation of actions to have thebest impact on society.

Abstract
Several off-line mechanisms have been developed and applied for the participation of citizens in government policy making and services design. The increasing adoption of ICT, and especially the Internet, by individuals allows the development of a new generation of digital mechanisms for public participation (e-participation). The dominant digital mechanism has been in the last ten years the development of official e-participation websites by government agencies, which provide to the citizens information on government activities and also policies and services under formulation, and allow them to participate in relevant consultations in electronic fora. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism has been much lower than expectations. In this paper are presented three different digital mechanisms for public participation, which have been developed by the authors as part of European research projects. The first of them is based on the use of structured e-forum, in which citizens can enter only annotated postings according to a predefined discussion ontology. The second is based on the use of a central platform which can publish policy-related content and micro-applications to multiple social media simultaneously, and also collect and process data on citizens’ interaction with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.). While the previous mechanisms were moderated by government, the third one – still under development as part of the European research project NOMAD - is non-moderated. It is based on the search by government agencies for content on a public policy under formulation, which has been created in numerous social media and other sources (e.g. blogs and micro-blogs, news sharing sites, online forums, etc.) by citizens freely, without any government initiation, stimulation or moderation, and the advanced processing of this content.

Abstract
It is widely believed that the establishment of interoperability of firm’s IS with the ones of other cooperating firms (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) can generate significant business value. However, this has been only to a very limited extent empirically investigated. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of IS interoperability on the four business performance dimensions/ perspectives proposed by the Balanced Scorecard approach (financial, internal business processes, customers, learning and innovation). In particular, we examine the effects of adopting three different fundamental types of IS interoperability standards differing in the level of detail and applicability: XML, industry-specific standards and proprietary standards. Our study is based on a large dataset from 14065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. It is concluded that all these three examined types of IS interoperability standards increase considerably the positive impact of firm’s IS on the above four business performance perspectives/dimensions; however, their effects differ significantly. The adoption of industry-specific interoperability standards has the highest positive impact, while proprietary and XML standards have similar lower impacts. These conclusions provide valuable empirical evidence of the multidimensional business value generated by IS interoperability and its strong dependence on the type of IS interoperability standards adopted.

Abstract
In Parliaments there are huge amounts of knowledge concerning public policies for addressing social problems and needs, which is however contained in numerous long textual documents (e.g. drafts, laws, justification reports, discussions’ minutes, experts’ reports), and it cannot be exploited to a good extent. Its full exploitation necessitates an appropriate structured representation of it. In this paper, initially we analysed the legislation formulation process of the Greek Parliament and its main documents from a public policy perspective, focusing on the knowledge they contain on social problems and needs, and on public interventions (e.g. regulations, programmes, services provision, infrastructure building) for addressing them. Based on the conclusions drawn from this analysis we developed a methodology for the codification, representation and management of the policy related knowledge of Parliaments, which is founded on a well established product of CSAV research, the Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) framework. A first application of this methodology has been made for the whole set of documents produced for the Law on the ‘Contracts of Voluntary Cohabitation’ passed by the Greek Parliament. It was then evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative techniques based on the ‘Technology Acceptance Model’ (TAM). The evaluation concluded that the above representation/codification includes to a good extent the substantial elements of the policy related knowledge contained in the Parliamentary documents, and it is understandable by the users. At the same time it revealed weaknesses that lead us to the development of an extension of the IBIS framework in order to achieve a better representation of this knowledge.

Abstract
The trend of opening government data, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes, has resulted in the development of numerous e-infrastructures providing public sector information (PSI). The big investments that have been made in this direction necessitate a deeper understanding and assessment of the value they produce. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating PSI einfrastructures, which is based on the estimation of multiple value models corresponding to their main stakeholder groups: data users and data providers. Each value model consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three levels (associated with efficiency, effectiveness and future behaviour), and also the relations among them. The proposed methodology allows a comprehensive assessment of the various types of value generated by a PSI e-infrastructure for each stakeholder group, and also the interconnections among them. This enables a better understanding of the whole value generation mechanism and a rational definition of improvements priorities.

Abstract
Electronic Participation (eParticipation), both in its traditional form and in its emerging Web 2.0 based form, results in the production of large quantities of textual contributions of citizens concerning government policies and decisions under formation, which contain valuable relevant opinions and knowledge of the society, however are exploited to a limited only extent. It is of critical importance to analyze these contributions in order to extract the opinions and knowledge they contain in a cost-efficient way. This paper reviews a wide range of opinion mining methods, which have been developed for analyzing commercial product opinions and reviews posted on the Web, as to the capabilities they can offer for meeting the above challenges. The review has revealed the great potential of these methods for the analysis of textual citizens’ contributions in public policy debates, both for assessing contributors’ general attitudes-sentiments (positive, negative or neutral) towards the policy/decision under discussion, and also for extracting the main issues they raise (e.g. negative and positive aspects and effects, implementation barriers, improvement suggestions) and the corresponding attitudes-sentiments. Based on the conclusions of this review a basic framework for the use of opinion mining methods in eParticipation has been formulated.

Abstract
The article proposes the concept of Policy Gadget (Padget) as an innovative tool for leveraging the group knowledge produced over Social Media platforms inside policy making processes. The concept has been developed within an international research project named PADGETS financed in the context of the “ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling” call of the FP7. In addition, the article highlights the value proposition of Padgets within the policy cycle as well as their novelty with respect to existing practices in the use of ICT for participatory purposes.

Abstract
Government agencies are making considerable investments for exploiting the capabilities offered by ICT, and especially the Internet, to increase citizens’ engagement in their decision and policy making processes. However, this first generation of e-participation has been characterised by limited usage of the ‘official’ e-consultation spaces of government agencies by the citizens. The emergence of Web 2.0 social media offers big opportunities for overcoming this problem, and proceeding to a second generation of broader, deeper and more advanced e-participation. This paper presents a methodology for the efficient exploitation of Web 2.0 social media by government agencies in order to broaden and enhance e-participation. It is based on a central platform which enables posting content and deploying micro web applications (‘Policy Gadgets’-Padgets) to multiple popular Web 2.0 social media, and also collecting users’ interactions with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings) in an efficient manner using their application programming interfaces (API). These interactions’ data undergo various levels of processing, such as calculation of useful analytics, opinion mining and simulation modelling, in order to provide effective support to public decision and policy makers. The proposed methodology allows government agencies to adopt advanced and highly effective ‘hybrid’ e-participation approaches.

Abstract
While previously public policy making was predominantly technocratic, based mainly on ‘first generation’ approaches employing mathematical optimization algorithms, in the last thirty years it has become much more participative, adopting ‘second generation’ approaches which involve the affected citizens to a continuously increasing extent. This trend has been reinforced by the explosive growth of the information and communication technologies (ICT) and especially the Internet, resulting to the development of e-participation. Public participation provides to the competent government organizations useful information on citizens’ interest in and acceptance of public policies under formation or application, and also numerous proposals for changes, improvements and enhancements of them. It is therefore necessary to support and enhance participative policy making with technocratic mechanisms and tools for screening these proposals and analysing them as to their outcomes, and also for forecasting the future evolution of citizens’ interest in and acceptance of them. The use of simulation can be a very useful tool for these purposes. In this paper we present a state of the art review of existing modelling and simulation approaches from the above perspective. In particular, we examine Discrete Event Modelling and Simulation, Monte Carlo Simulation, System Dynamics, Dynamic Systems, Cellular Automata and Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation. From this investigation it is concluded that System Dynamics seems to be the most promising for the above purposes, followed by Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation, and that both can contribute significantly to the technocratic enhancement of participative policy making.

Abstract
The paper presents a policy analysis framework developed through a process of interdisciplinary integration as well as through a process of endusers needs elicitation. The proposed framework constitutes the theoretical foundation for the decision support component of a technological platform bringing together Social Media and System Dynamics simulation developed withinthe PADGETS project. The main novelties introduced have to do with the possibility to provide decision makers with a set of synthetic, fresh and relevant data in a cost effective and easily understandable way.

Abstract
Governments of many countries attempt to increase public participation by exploiting the capabilities and high penetration of the Internet. In this direction they make considerable investments for constructing and operating e-participation websites; however, the use of them has been in general limited and below expectations. For this reason governments, in order to widen e-participation, should investigate the exploitation of the numerous users-driven Web 2.0 social media as well, which seem to be quite successful in attracting huge numbers of users. This paper describes a methodology for the exploitation of the Web 2.0 social media by government organizations in the processes of public policies formulation, through a central platform-toolset providing interoperability with many different social media, and enabling posting and retrieving content from them in a systematic centrally managed and machinesupported automated manner (through their application programming interfaces (APIs)). The proposed methodology includes the use of ‘Policy Gadgets’ (Padgets), which are defined as micro web applications presenting policy messages in various popular Web 2.0 social media (e.g. social networks, blogs, forums, news sites, etc) and collecting users’ interactions with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.). Interaction data can be used as input in policy simulation models estimating the impact of various policy options. Encouraging have been the conclusions from the analysis of the APIs of 10 highly popular social media, which provide extensive capabilities for publishing content on them (e.g. data, images, video, links, etc.) and also for retrieving relevant user activity and content (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.), though their continuous evolution might pose significant difficulties and challenges.

Abstract
The limited use of the ‘official’ e-participation websites by the citizens, their high heterogeneity in terms of political interests, educational level and technological skills and at the same time the emergence of the new web 2.0 social media necessitate central and local administration to exploit the numerous usersdriven virtual spaces, which have been launched through citizens initiatives with dramatic success in terms of adoption and usage, in order to widen and enhance e-participation. This paper describes a methodology for the systematic exploitation of the emerging Web 2.0 social media, in combination with established simulation modelling techniques and tools, by governmental organizations in the processes of public policies formulation. It is based on the concept of ‘Policy Gadget’ (Padget), which is defined as a micro web application combining a policy message with underlying group knowledge in social media and interacting with citizens in popular web 2.0 locations (such as social networks, blogs, forums, news sites, etc) in order to get and convey their input to policy makers. Such ‘Padgets’ will be created by a central platform-toolset and then deployed in many different Web 2.0 media. Citizens input gathered through ‘Padgets’ will be used in various simulation modelling techniques and tools, such as the Systems Dynamics methodology), which are going to simulate different policy options and estimate their outcomes and effectiveness. Finally, a use case scenario of the proposed methodology is presented, which outlines how it can be used in ‘real life’ public policy design problems.

Abstract
In this paper a systematic evaluation is presented of an e-participation platform based on GIS tools, which has been developed as part of the FFED project co-financed by the European Commission. The evaluation methodology has been based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which has been elaborated and adapted to this particular type of IS, taking into account the particular objectives and capabilities of this platform. Our main evaluation dimensions were usage, ease of use, functional usefulness, political usefulness and importance of discussion topic; each of them has been analysed into a number of sub-dimensions. Using this methodology five pilot applications of this platform in „real-life‟ situations and problems have been evaluated with both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Finally it has been concluded that the use of GIS tools can provide significant value in the area of e–participation, which however depends on a number of context factors, such as citizens‟ computer literacy and familiarization, trust to the political system, interest of the sponsoring public authorities, appropriate promotion, importance of the topic under discussion and quantity and quality of reference information appended on the digital maps by public authorities.

Abstract
The problems of formulation and application of various kinds of public policy concerning energy and environment are wicked’ and highly complex ones, with multiple and conflicting objectives and many stakeholders with different views, values and concerns. For this reason a deliberation among stakeholders and argumentation approach using advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) is the best way for addressing such problems. The use of e-participation technologies and methods can be very useful for this purpose. This paper describes an advanced ICT platform that has been developed for supporting and facilitating such deliberation and argumentation approaches, as part of the FEED (Federated e-Participation Systems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues) project. This platform aims to support and enhance deliberation among all stakeholders and argumentation for the formulation and application of public policy concerning environment and energy, by providing i) federated content from various sources, ii) efficient mechanisms for accessing it based on ontologies and maps, and ii) stakeholders’ interaction capabilities through forum and petition functionalities. Also, a usage scenario of this platform is described.

Abstract
The high potential of modern ICT for supporting citizens’ and administrations’ interaction for the formulation of public policies has been extensively recognized by academics and practitioners, resulting in a rapid development of the e-participation domain in the last decade. Extensive research is required for developing appropriate advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) platforms that exploit and realize this potential to the highest possible extent. In this direction this paper describes an advanced ICT e-participation platform that has been developed having as main objective to improve the quantity and quality of interaction among citizens, and also with public administrations, concerning the formulation of public policies and decisions on environmental and energy issues, as part of the FEED (Federated e-Participation Systems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues) project of the European Commission. It enables citizens and administrations to upload geographically referenced multimedia content (e.g. pictures, videos, etc.) on an electronic map of the area which the public policy or decision under discussion concerns, so that other interested citizens or administrations can easily access and download them. The proposed e-participation platform provides: i) federated relevant content from various sources, ii) efficient mechanisms for accessing this content based on maps, semantic annotation and ontologies, iii) additional stakeholders’ interaction capabilities through forum and petition functionalities. Finally, a pilot application of this platform for supporting e-participation/e-deliberation concerning important environmental and zoning public policies and decisions in the Flevoland region, Netherlands, which has been designed by the project consortium and is going to be implemented in the near future, is described.

Abstract
The paper presents project needs of new solution in eParticipation initiative area focusing main environmental and energy issues that the new European energy policy has to deal with. The project FEED (Federated eParticipation Sys-tems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues) is introduced as one possible solution. There will be discussed its main goals, platform architecture and project work plan.

Abstract
As electronic participation systems are becoming widely available, promoting the public debate on a variety of issues, a new challenge is emerging: how to organize, access and present multi-format supportive documentation from various sources. The more wide-spread eParticipation systems become, the more difficult is for the participants in electronic debates to find and relate documents, legal information or policy statements, on the issues discussed. In this world of multiple sources of unstructured and diverse information elements, the presented approach proposes the concept of federated eParticipation systems, able to dynamically locate and channel information from existing, diverse sources. The proposed architecture includes multimedia content management tools, syndication mechanisms and ontologically supported mechanisms, in an effort to provide the users with the proper information for supporting opinions and decisions. As a first application, energy and environmental issues are considered, which constitute an important subject of the European Union policy agenda, as well as a common issue for discussion at local and municipal level.

Abstract
The LEX-IS project (its full title being ‘Enabling Participation of the Youth in the Public Debate of Legislation’ among Parliaments, Citizens and Businesses in the European Union) is part of the ‘eParticipation’ Preparatory Action of the European Commission (Commission of the European Communities, 2006) aims for contributing to these issues. Its main objective is to improve the legislative process and output in the National Parliaments by enhancing public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation proposal formation stage and public debate of draft legislation), with special emphasis on the youth, using advanced ICT-based tools and methodologies, such as ontologies, metadata, argumentation support, facilitation and visualization methods, process management approaches.

Abstract
Argumentation systems and ontologies have the potential to support and enhance the participation of citizens in the development of effective and acceptable legislation concerning the complex and multidimensional problems that modern societies face. However, this potential has only to a very small extent been explored and realized. In this direction this paper describes an investigation of this potential, which is performed as part of the EU funded project LEX-IS. The main objective of LEX-IS is to improve the legislation process in the National Parliaments through enhanced public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation proposal formation and public debate of draft legislation) with the use of state-of-the-art ICT-tools and methodologies. This paper introduces four scenarios of public participation in above mentioned preparatory legislation processes thereby exploring the support of argumentation systems and ontologies. Along the scenarios, peculiarities of these two preparatory and highly significant stages of a legislation process are discussed, and results of existing relevant research are reflected. The basic features, advantages and disadvantages of each scenario are shown, and the LEX-IS design is sketched.

Abstract
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can play an important role in facilitating the involvement of citizens and enterprises in the development of legislation and in managing the increasing complexity of the legislative processes. In this direction the main objective of the EU funded project LEX-IS is to improve the legislative process in National Parliaments through enhancing public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation proposal formation and public debate of draft legislation) with the use of state-of-the-art ICT-tools and methodologies. The main goals of the project are: a) development of tools for managing the complex legal frameworks and structures, b) development and use of ontologies and metadata schemas for the semantic annotation of legal elements (e.g. directives, laws, decrees, etc.), c) modelling of the draft formation and public consultation process using standard process management approaches such as BPMN to support direct integration in common workflow management systems and d) provision of tools for the active participation of citizens, businesses and non-governmental organizations in the above stages of the legislation process d) using argumentation support systems and web-based annotation facilities (ontology, semantic web services, Web 2.0, etc.) to the legal drafts. Using the above technologies the project aims to contribute to engaging citizens online, with special emphasis on the younger ones; bridging the growing gap between citizens and the state, represented by National Parliaments; improving the legislation process and its outcomes; and promoting e-Participation awareness.