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The purpose of this study is to present and discuss some core issues regarding the transparency of the eVoting process. Apart from the protection of voting secrecy, the possible manipulation of votes, even of the entire election, is one of the key issues in eVoting. Comparatively few Supreme Court rulings are available for eVoting, as it is a new field. Where there are rulings available, they often focus on the case at hand and do not derive general principles. On 3 March 2009, the German Constitutional Court published a ruling on the use of voting terminals[1] from which also general principles can be derived far beyond the case itself.

Apart from the protection of voting secrecy, the possible manipulation of votes, even of the entire election, is one of the key issues in eVoting. Comparatively few Supreme Court rulings are available for eVoting, as it is a new field. Where there are rulings available, they often focus on the case at hand and do not derive general principles. On 3 March 2009, the German Constitutional Court published a ruling on the use of voting terminals[1] from which general principles can also be derived far beyond the case itself.

The paper presented some core issues in eVoting transparency as required by the ruling of the German Constitutional Court. In particular, it suggested a way to define and operationalise the terms “audit chain”, “count” and “recount”, which arguably represent the core issues in eVoting transparency and auditability. Furthermore, the paper introduced a model to map the key security dimensions in an eVoting system and the degree to which they are fulfilled by technical, not just organisational, means, with auditability being the dimension discussed in this contribution.

The paper only considers political elections and starts off the framework and requirements set by the German Constitutional Court. With one exception, these requirements can be seen as rather generic for most Western-style democracies, the exception being observability and auditability of the election by the general public.

The paper derives concrete design principles for remote eVoting systems.

The paper develops a security framework for remote eVoting from given legal requirements. After an analysis of popular existing eVoting protocols, a generic eVoting protocol is derived satisfying these requirements.

As the society has long ago left the “industrial age” and entered the “information age”, people, enterprises and above all decision makers are constantly trying to get the best out of the opportunities and the technologies offered, for facilitating their life and their work. One of the most active and promising domains nowadays, is eParticipation, which is actively promoted by all stakeholders, as there is a great need of reconnecting citizens with the decision makers and re‐engaging them into the democratic procedures, especially as during the last years this gap is expanding, with the most convincing proof being the huge figure of voter turnout during the latest European elections. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

A review of the most active and well‐known eParticipation action pilot projects funded in the European Union is presented, alongside with a methodological framework that has been followed for mapping, assessing and evaluating those projects, using a beyond the state‐of‐the‐art classification method.

Conclusions of the performed work are in a position to outline the current status quo of eParticipation in Europe, highlighting lessons learned and opportunities for future activities and research.

This paper includes valuable information towards practitioners, decision makers and administration officials, based not only on the established knowledge and on the experiences gained, but also on the identified gaps of the domain, aiming to support them in understanding the status quo of the domain and in the design process of future research roadmaps for eGovernace and policy modelling.

The purpose of this paper is to depict the present situation of e‐participation initiatives of Austrian municipalities and derives recommendations to further enhance the e‐participation sophistication level.

The findings are based on hypotheses we verified against a dataset obtained from an electronic survey among all Austrian municipalities, conducted in 2008.

The technical basis for e‐participation in Austria is well developed, yet accessibility of municipal web sites and the phrasing of information leaves space for improvement. E‐participation in Austria is still in a nascent state and requires the convergence of technical, political, legal and socio‐economic factors, which has not yet fully arrived at the municipal level.

The raw material of the survey did not allow a qualitative assessment of e‐services.

Change of law and reconsideration of opening hierarchical structures.

Recommendations of implementing e‐participation on municipal level.

Owing to the broad fragmentation of e‐government strategies and relevant regulations, the detailed results of the survey are only of limited use for comparability to other surveys in this domain. The identified factors for e‐accessibility and the derived measures for e‐participation thereupon are a new approach and will help further research and surveys to define an e‐participation assessment framework.

The research is aimed at developing an efficient electronic voting platform that would offer distinct advantages over traditional paper ballot voting and the available electronic voting systems.

Based on the analysis of the existing technologies and the authors' prior findings, electronic voting was approached as a public information and communication technologies service.

A new methodology of forming election event outcomes is proposed, which is based on the outcomes of internet transactions between web portals such as “The Guarantor” and millions of remote electors, voting event officials and independent observers (auditors). The paper presents the structure of a state‐scale voting system that collects, processes publishes the results of different election events.

The system can accept votes cast online by internet or SMS, by mail, via electronic kiosks and by special computer‐filled paper ballots at polling stations. The system also provides a number of new possibilities for network verification of voter registration and the individual votes without compromising the voters' privacy. A model implementation of a web portal for remote monitoring of election events and individual outcome verification is presented.

EPetitioning has been emerging as arguably the most important eParticipation institutional activity. This paper aims to provide some insights into how ePetitions are perceived and supported by social networking sites.

The paper investigated the connection between the UK Government's ePetitioning system and social networking groups linking to governmental petitions. Online data from Facebook were collected and analysed with respect to numbers of supporters compared to official signatures.

The results indicate that although the process of signing an official petition is not more complex than joining a Facebook group, the membership of respective Facebook groups can be much higher. In particular, certain topics experienced very high support on Facebook which did not convert to signatures.

The paper's added value lies in the questions raised about the potential uptake of citizen‐government interactions in policy‐making mechanisms.

This paper aims to present a case study on the public value of the e‐Sri Lanka program. Four major dimensions of public value creation through e‐government including the delivery of public services, the achievement of outcomes, the development of trust, and the effectiveness of public organizations are considered in evaluating the performance of the e‐Sri Lanka program. The progress of e‐Sri Lanka program is evaluated, and the potential areas for improvement in the development of e‐government in Sri Lanka are identified.

Existing methodologies for evaluating the public value of e‐government have been critically analyzed. The need for extending existing methodologies for better assessing the performance of e‐government is discussed. Consequently, an extended conceptual framework is developed for evaluating the public value of e‐government. Various national survey data in Sri Lanka on e‐government development are used for conducting the empirical analysis on the performance of the e‐Sri Lanka program.

The study reveals that the public value of e‐government in Sri Lanka is unsatisfactory in all the dimensions of public value generation. It shows that the proposed framework is effective in facilitating the identification of public value of e‐government in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the study shows that the lack of e‐services, the security threat to public information in public organizations, the low adoption of information and communication technologies in government, and the low uptake of available e‐government initiatives are the key reasons for such a poor performance in e‐government.

The proposed framework can be used for evaluating the public value of e‐government. It provides individual governments with an effective means for better understanding the impact of their e‐government efforts on their citizens and societies, leading to better policies and strategies being made for the continuous development of e‐government.

The proposed framework would be the first approach in examining the public value of e‐government by considering all the dimensions of public value creation. It is the first in‐depth study of public value creation through e‐government in Sri Lanka. Such a study is significant to Sri Lanka giving that its e‐government development is at a crucial stage supported by various international aid organizations.

The first American internet voting (I‐voting) implementation was in 2000. Since then many attempts and trials have taken place in this field. This paper aims to analyze these various attempts and discuss their benefits and vulnerabilities.

I‐voting can provide ease to elderly citizens and people with disabilities. Some also believe that the convenience that the internet offers will attract young voters, and hence increase voter turnout. I‐voting can also solve the problems of late delivery of absentee ballots “which leads to discarding the votes”.

Election officials believe that I‐voting can be considered a valid voting option if it offers at least the same level of security as traditional remote voting methods. On the other hand, many data security experts doubt that the current internet infrastructure is safe enough to support such an important function. I‐voting is still far from being a voting option for US citizens residing in the States; however, it is considered a promising alternative to facilitate voting for those living overseas.

The authors believe this paper contains the most comprehensive analysis of the I‐voting trials that have been carried out in the USA over the last decade.

The paper analyses discussion about public service organisational innovation and change in strategic plans as a potential source of information informing citizen participation.

The strategic plans of 24 different UK public service organisations were analysed using NVivo.

The strategic plans did not provide comprehensive information about organisational innovations and changes taking place. However, the rationales for why public service organisations were changing were evident.

The research was based upon a small sample and only a single communication channel (the strategic plans) was analysed.

The paper highlights the challenges of informing citizens about forthcoming organisational innovation and change in public service organisations and suggests ways forward.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a timely discussion of the important topic of remote‐access voting technology.

First, an introduction to the topic is offered; second the existing state of the art is considered; third, a brief history of electronic and internet voting methods is presented; and fourth, a short list of critical success factors for remote‐access voting is presented. Finally, a conclusion is offered surrounding how academics and practitioners can collaboratively proceed to address the salient issues and barriers that currently prohibit the advancement of remote‐access voting.

There is a brief and largely successful history involving applications of information communication technologies (ICTs) and computer technology to assist in data capture and tabulation of democratic elections. While several critical issues have been identified, none has been so significant that an end‐game strategy should be invoked rather than continued innovation. Concurrently, the business world has witnessed an expanding use of computer‐based infrastructures and enhanced ICTs to facilitate the processing of remote‐access commercial transactions. These advancements have provided a rich opportunity to seek out, identify, and address the substantive operational issues permitting the successful expansion of a variety of business methods, models, and processes. While these successes have provided a solid foundation upon which e‐government voting systems can be attempted, such a process improvement has been elusive to this date with many of the real issues and concerns seeming to be too large to resolve.

The paper considers the important issue of remote‐access voting as a means for supporting the expansion and refinement of democratic processes across the world through increased citizen participation.