Abstract
This paper collects some evidence from a now completed EU-funded project, aimed at the localisation and institutionalisation of two eParticipatory tools, DEMOS-Plan and the Electronic Town Meeting, within real public administration processes. The independent or combined usage of the two tools, supported by the Living Labs approach has been tested in 18 local pilots across several regions of Europe, from Ulster (UK) to Sicily and Tuscany (Italy), from Turku Archipelago (Finland) to Voroklini (Cyprus). Selected policy domains include (among others): Spatial Planning, Socio-Economic Programming, Strategic Environmental Assessment, and Open Government. Deployment has led to a number of interesting implications for the European public authorities, such as: i) building up of a cost effective ICT platform that enables regular or occasional consultation of remotely and sparsely located citizens and stakeholders; ii) gradually migrating the whole administrative system related to spatial data infrastructure towards a full digitalisation of the “legally compulsory” exchanges between planning agencies, local stakeholders and the general public; and iii) setting the stage for these two facilities to become practically interoperable to each other and across different EU Member States.
Highlights
The project moved on from the consideration that spatial planning and strategic environmental assessment are in the best position to achieve a paradigm shift in the way electronic participation and social capacity building are currently practised in Europe. This for at least three good reasons: a) Their legal framework is completely defined at EU level, based on a reasonable distribution of competences across Member States, Regional and local institutions, and on a sustainable combination of compulsory and optional participation procedures; b) The migration from “offline” to “online” participation can be supported by a sound business model, showing up the efficiency and quality advantages usually advocated by supporters of electronic democracy for other key processes of public administration; c) A multitude of successful trials exist in this domain – most of which funded by the EC under the ICT Framework Programmes, INTERREG III or the eParticipation Preparatory Action – which have demonstrated the above advantages, on the political side, and in a financial perspective
With the global crisis forcing national and local governments towards unpopular budget decisions, consultation of citizens and stakeholders is even less practised as a policy support tool than it recently used to. This may lead to dissipating a patrimony of knowledge deriving from a decade of more or less successful eParticipation experiments, none of which has yet shown practical continuity over time
The ending age of one-off showcases may do benefit to direct democracy prospects, leaving room to a more reasoned approach that is weighing the financial costs against the efficiency gains of ICT supported stakeholder integration in public decision making
Summary
In all EU countries, participation in spatial planning is a compulsory legal requirement. If some urban planning decisions are taken without these formal stages of participation, courts may annul them These common traits are preserved across the five categories of European planning systems that were first identified by Newman and Thornley (1996) as a reflection of country level differences in political and social histories, economic conditions, traditions of law and governance, land tenure, resource endowments etc. Policies with a territorial focus, counteract these effects, but most crucially add more value by integrating the economic, social and environmental dimensions at cross-sectorial (“horizontal”, or transversal) and “place-based” levels (Barca, 2009) Another important element in the EU Territorial Agenda is the cooperation of various sectors of activity and levels of governance, such as public private partnerships and stakeholders from civil society and third sector organisations, which taken together, play an important role in growth and development processes. The SEA becomes the evaluation function that transforms traditional planning into iterative and interactive processes, as well as making a procedural and methodological link with the other kinds of issues for which it is mandatory, such as approving a power plant or a wind farm
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