Torino FEDERATED EPARTICIPATION SYSTEMS FOR ELECTRONIC DELIBERATION ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

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.