e-Participation and Decision Analysis

Decision analytic methods are being increasingly used to help to articulate and structure debate and deliberations among citizens and stakeholders in societal decisions. Methods vary, but, essentially, a public authority or agency, when faced with a significant set of issues, may organise one or more workshops with stakeholders and citizens as participants. Such methods of public engagement and participation are, by and large, conducted face to face. However, the advent of the World Wide Web brings the possibility of conducting citizen and stakeholder interactions in a distributed, possibly asynchronous fashion. In this paper we discuss the challenges that have to be addressed and overcome if such e-participation is to be a valid tool within a modern democracy. The difficulties are many and varied, but the pressures towards e-government, and better regulation in general, mean that such methods will be used in the near future. Thus, we outline a program of research and debate in which we believe that the professional decision analysis community should engage.