Cleyton Slaviero

Ana Cristina Bicharra
email: bicharra@ic.uff.br

Cristiano Maciel
email: cmaciel@ufmt.br

Exploiting eParticipation using an Ontological Approach

Keywords: ontology design, specification phase, eParticipation environments

When building an eParticipation environment, many questions arise. Who will the participants be? What are the outcomes? How will citizens interact? How will they be selected? All these questions will influence the specification of an eParticipation environment. In order to create an effective eParticipation environment, the designer pays attention to all these characteristics, which can be tricky, especially when selecting ICTs to support the eParticipation process. This paper suggests the use of an ontological approach when specifying these eParticipation environments, in order to reduce the designer's cognitive efforts when designing effective eParticipation environments.

Introduction

Recently, initiatives to bring togheter government and citizen raised new research questions regarding citizen participation in the matters of their being informed, consulted and making decisions using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation : Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF] [START_REF] Macintosh | eParticipation: The Research Gaps[END_REF]. By using ICTs, e.g. chats, blogs, discussion fora voting tools and others, eParticipation environments are created by software engineers, reducing citizens efforts, as compared to traditional approaches for public participation [START_REF] Slaviero | Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments[END_REF]. In these environments, citizens are able to discuss their opinions, be informed of new topics and demands to be discussed and vote on such topics to reach a decision.

However, there are challenges in adding the "e" in participation. One of these challenges is the answer to the question "How do we select the appropriate tools in order that an eParticipation iniciative achieves its outcomes?". Selecting the right tools is important if we want to achieve the proper outcomes [START_REF] Phang | A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives[END_REF]. If the right tools are selected, they will certainly affect the course of the process positively and, as a consequence, its effectiveness [START_REF] Velikanov | Requirements and tools for an efficient eParticipation[END_REF].

Concerning tool selection, note that the effective access to software artifacts is only possible when the access to them is organized around the problem domain structure [START_REF] Clayton | Dowsing: a tool framework for domain-oriented browsing of software artifacts[END_REF]. In this context, in order to acccess these software artifacts and to properly select them, it is necessary to fully understand the public participation context, dictated by participation methods, techniques or mechanisms [START_REF] Rowe | A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms[END_REF][8] [START_REF] Slocum | Participatory Methods Toolkit -A practitioner's manual[END_REF]. These methods hold characteristics in common which are essential to create a public participation initiative. Each of these characteristcis will lead to necessary principles to build a participation environment. With these principles in hand, it is possible to start thinking of which tools may be employed to add the "e" to participation.

One of our goals is to elucidate these questions, regarding which the characteristics of an eParticipation methods are, which are the eParticipation tools commonly applied to build an eParticipation process and how participation methods and ICT tools may be related to build an eParticipation environment. After clearing these questions, we add this knowledge to an ontology previsously created, called ePDO [START_REF] Slaviero | Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments[END_REF] by adding concepts and properties to it. By describing a use scenario we demonstrate how an ontological approach may help a designer to specify an eParticipation environment.

This paper is organized as follows. After this introduction, we briefly present participation and eParticipation concepts. After that, we describe participation methods and their characteristics, followed by the description of ICTs to enable participation. In the next section, we describe the additions made to ePDO in order to support the specification process. We also present a use scenario for this ontology. Finally, conclusions and future works are presented.

Participation and eParticipation

Participation is the act of taking part in something. In this context, citizens may have distinct levels of participation [START_REF] Arnstein | A Ladder of Citizen Participation[END_REF], from anecdotic participation, in which citizens are manipulated to believe that they have their voice heard, to real decision-making participation, when citizens share their opinions which are accounted in making decisions which affect them. eParticipation describes citizens, by using information and communication technologies, being able to perform tasks common to participation, but in an online environment [START_REF] Thorleifsdottir | DEMO-net: Deliverable 5.1 Report on current ICTs to enable Participation[END_REF] [START_REF] Phang | A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives[END_REF]. It is correct to assume that these eParticipation tasks range from information, consultation and active participation [START_REF]OECD: Citizens as Partners -OECD Handbook on Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-Making[END_REF]. The last category of participation is also split into involvement, collaboration and empowerment [START_REF]IAP2: IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation[END_REF]. There are a number of distinct names for these participations contexts, but the important is that they all take into account the citizen as the center of the participation.

In this context, distinct eParticipation tools may be employed to create eParticipation environments [START_REF] Phang | A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives[END_REF][14] [START_REF] Thorleifsdottir | DEMO-net: Deliverable 5.1 Report on current ICTs to enable Participation[END_REF]. These may range from simpler ones, used in any context apart from eParticipation, to more specific tools to support this kind of participation.

To control the procedures and guarantee the correct outcomes, a participation or eParticipation may follow a participation method. There are a number of methods to promote participation [START_REF] Rowe | A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms[END_REF]. However, authors state that only a few fit the active participation category [START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF] [START_REF] Abelson | Deliberations about deliberative methods: issues in the design and evaluation of public participation processes[END_REF].

When building eParticipation environments, it is important to consider the outcomes expected and the tools selected to create the eParticipation initiative, with the risk of building flawed citizen participation, which decreases citizens' confidence in these processes, making it harder for the citizen to participate. Indeed, the choice of the correct tools improve the correct progress of the eParticipation initiative, leading to these citizens' greater confidence [START_REF] Phang | A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives[END_REF]. In the next sections, we will provide a closer overview of these participation methods and ICTs, showing how to relate them when building eParticipation environments.

Characterizing Participation Methods

Public participation encompasses consulting, involvement and information procedures to allow those affected by a decision to have an input. The way these inputs are gathered may be characterized by distinct participation methods [START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF].They may also be called public participation processes [START_REF] Abelson | Deliberations about deliberative methods: issues in the design and evaluation of public participation processes[END_REF], mechanisms or techniques [START_REF] Rowe | A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms[END_REF]. They will be called participation methods herein.

Each of these participation methods have a set of characteristics that define them, e.g. number of participants and participant selection [START_REF] Abelson | Deliberations about deliberative methods: issues in the design and evaluation of public participation processes[END_REF]. In order to describe a common understanding of these, we performed a literature review searching for participation methods descriptions. The next paragraphs discuss the most relevant findings describing existing participation methods, along with their descriptions. From these descriptions, we present a set of common characteristics and describe the most relevant deliberative participation methods [START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF] using these characteristics.

Rowe and Frewer [START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF], in their paper about the evaluation of public participation methods, describe those who are closer to active citizen participation and more formalized in the literature. They are: Referendum, public hearings/inquiries, public opinion surveys, negotiated rule-making, consensus conference citizens' jury/panel, citizen/public advisory committee and focus groups.

The same authors also mentions guidelines for evaluating participation methods, which are very interesting to be observed if common characteristics of participation methods are to be extracted. These are divided into two dimensions: acceptance criteria, related to the public acceptance of the process, and process criteria, related to the effective construction and implementation of a procedure. Since the specification of eParticipation environments is being considered, we may pay closer attention to the second criteria. This dimension has as criteria: participants' access to appropriate resources to achieve their participation goals; scope, task and nature definitions for each activity during the participation; structured decision-making using appropriate mechanisms for decision-making process exhibition; and finally, cost/effectiveness.

Authors from [START_REF] Abelson | Deliberations about deliberative methods: issues in the design and evaluation of public participation processes[END_REF] also present a discussion about design and evaluation of participation methods. In their work, the authors establish four elements that distinguish participation methods: selection of participants (which is also mentioned in [START_REF] Mulgan | People & Participation[END_REF]; number of participants; input type and number of meetings until a decision is made. Also, after analyzing distinct participation methods described in the literature, authors establish principles for designing and evaluating participation methods, divided into four elements: representation, regarding the way we represent the issues; procedures, related to the steps to execute one participation method, being these steps, e.g., duration, moderation or answers given by the public participating; information, which deals with the need to evaluate how information is selected, presented and interpreted; and results, regarding deliberation, e.g. how the outcomes were informed to the citizens, and which consensus was reached. Although this work seems similar to Rowe and Frewer's work, it provides guidelines to evaluate and to implement participation methods, whilst [START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF] provide a framework for evaluation.

There are also more detailed descriptions, although superficial ones, for running participation methods [START_REF] Slocum | Participatory Methods Toolkit -A practitioner's manual[END_REF]. The author also highlights the need of correctly selecting a participation method to achieve an expected outcome. It considers four determinant characteristics for this choice: participation objectives; topic to be discussed; participants and their expertise; available time when searching for a solution; and budget available when running the method.

Rowe and Frewer [START_REF] Rowe | A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms[END_REF] wrote about a topology of participation mechanisms. The authors describe the most relevant variables of these participation methods. They are: participants' selection method; information elicitation facilitation; information input form; information transfer form and information aggregation facilitation. These variables are described by the authors because they alter the effectiveness of the participation mechanisms.

After analyzing the abovementioned works, we have summarized our findings in a general set of characteristics used to describe a participation method, and also essential to be considered when building a public participation process. These are Participants selection, number of participants, form of participation, access to information, duration and presentation of results. Discussion over these characteristics are presented in details on [START_REF] Slaviero | Métodos de participação e Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação : transformando participação em eParticipação[END_REF].

We also applied these characteristics to the methods previously presented in [START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF], in order to show the coverage of these characteristics when used to describe participation methods. Table 1 shows the result of this description.

Guided discussion

Citizen and Government

Open

Press release As Phang and Kankanhalli [START_REF] Phang | A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives[END_REF] mentions, each of the participation methods characteristics will have an influence in the building of an eParticipation environment. In our proposal, these characteristics will help us to establish principles for the specification of eParticipation environments.

When establishing principles for specifying these eParticipation environments, one must note that authors strongly recommend that these environments follow characteristics or principles of virtual communities [START_REF] Maciel | E-Democracy: Concepts, Experiences and Challenges[END_REF]. On this matter, in [START_REF] Maciel | E-Democracy: Concepts, Experiences and Challenges[END_REF] authors proposed three categories of principles for building eParticipation virtual communities: technical and content design; participants' social behavior; and interface design. Our principles relate to their technical and content ones. However, our work is based on participation methods and their characteristics and requirements. We describe these principles in detail in Table 2.

We can also associate these principles back to the participation methods. We notice that there are common principles to most of the participation methods. This occurs because such methods have similar deliberative characteristics associated to their execution, which demands that specific principles are followed. Table 3 shows these relationships, which will afterwards be used in our ontology for supporting the specification of eParticipation environments.

Table 2. Principles related to each characteristic identified

Presentation of results

P19: Environment should allow making information available about deliberation made on it. P20: Environment, via government, should allow to report the outcome of the deliberation, in a general way, for participants

ICTs to Enable eParticipation

The use of ICTs to promote citizens' participation is evidenced in works [START_REF] Phang | A framework of ICT exploitation for e-participation initiatives[END_REF], reports and analysis of ways to promote citizens' participation [19] [11]. In order to add the "e" in participation, it is important to use tools which support all the stages of online participation processes. In the literature, there are many definitions for these ICTs [START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF] [14][4] [START_REF] Thorleifsdottir | DEMO-net: Deliverable 5.1 Report on current ICTs to enable Participation[END_REF]. This plurality of definitions may be upsetting when selecting ICTs to build an eParticipation environment. Distinct definitions often mix technologies and tools, making it harder to understand which ones are tools and which ones are technologies and the possible reuse of these tools in other eParticipation initiatives.

Aiming at classifying tools for eParticipation, we consider, from the related works, tools in which the end user is the citizen or the government, i.e., there are interaction among the users using these tools. The tools analysed were the ones described by Thorleifsdottir & Wimmer [START_REF] Thorleifsdottir | DEMO-net: Deliverable 5.1 Report on current ICTs to enable Participation[END_REF], which are the most complete description of these tools when compared to other analyses.

By analyzing these tools, we also notice that some functionalities are transverse to many tools, e.g. the need for a profile to register the citizen. We call these functionalities ICT components. The following are the components identified, and the tools that implement these functionalities:  Chat: provides a space for free discussion among participants, with no focus on a single subject. Related ICT: eParticipation Chat Rooms  Profile: allow the user to register for an environment, virtually becoming a part of it. This component can be considered fundamental when you want to start a process of participation, as participants must identify themselves. Related ICTs: all those described.  Forum: Unlike Chat, a forum is structured by topics, to facilitate discussion.

Discussion is free, but moderation may be needed. ICT identified: eParticipation Discussion Forum / Board  Debate: enables debating about a given topic. In this debate, citizens share their opinions and vote against, neutrally or favorably to a topic. An interaction language may be used to structure discussion, such as DemIL [START_REF] Maciel | DemIL: an online interaction language between citizen and government[END_REF]. ICT identified: ePanel, eDeliberative Polling.

 Information Provision: allows one to make information available for citizens through a number of sources: audio, video, wikis, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, links or documents uploaded. ICTs identified: Podcasts, Wiki, Blog, and FAQ.  Petition: Employ when creating petitions. These petitions can be created when citizens want to gather signatures for a specific topic to be discussed by the government. ICT identified: ePetitioning.  Meeting: ICT for creating meeting spaces between citizens and government.

Meeting can take place in real time or not. Government and citizens are may exchange opinions. ICT identified: Webcast.  Survey: provides a way for creating a set of questions to be answered by citizens.

ICT Identified: eConsultation, eDeliberative Polling.  Poll: Component for creating a single poll with one question to be answered by citizens. In this component, citizens do not need to be identified; however, it is possible for them to do so. ICT identified: eConsultation, eDeliberative Polling.  Voting: ICT Component for creating an official voting. Like a poll, a question may be answered by the citizens. However, the citizen must be identified as a registered voter, although this registration would not be necessarily related to his/her choice. When implementing this component, additional security questions must be considered. ICT identified: eVoting.  Alert: ICT component that account for sending citizens alerts about topics of their interest or to call them to participate in a given participation process. ICT identified: Alert services, online newsletters, Listserv.

It is important to notice that although the Demo-net report presents these tools, they are not final, and many other tools may be employed. However, they represent a great number of ways for implementing participation processes. Moreover, the ICT components identified are not final. They will need to be adapted to distinct contexts of participation. The goal when summarizing these ICT components is to extract their common functionalities, in order to allow the reuse of these functionalities in other eParticipation initiatives, and thus help the selection of ICTs to implement when specifying an eParticipation environment.

Connecting Principles with ICT Components

In order to have an eParticipation environment, the principles described in Table 2 need to be implemented by the ICTs, which are built by ICT components, primarily. The principles are related with these ICT in Table 4.

When associating principles with ICT components identified, some interesting issues arise. Petition component did not have any principle associated to it. One may argue that this is because this is not a formalized participation method, but a way for citizens to start a participation initiative. Regarding the principles, P15 was mentioned both as being implemented by Debate or by a Meeting. The selection of the component in this case depends on how the government will interact with citizens. Another intriguing question is that not all principles have a relation with a component. This means that these principles were not thought of when using these tools, but may also mean that the ICTs implicitly implement these principles. In order to organize uncovered principles, five additional components are suggested in order to complement these missing principles.  Selection: Component for selecting participants in a given participation process.

Principle identified: P2.  Environment Organization: Component for organizing the environment according to the number of citizens. This organization may be conducted by adapting the interfaces for multiple users, e.g. when these are in a forum. Principles identified: P4, P5, P6.  Duration: Component to organize the duration of the processes. Principles identified: P17, P18.  Moderation: Component that deals with moderation, e.g. allow selecting a moderator, and giving this citizen power to moderate discussions. Principles identified: P12,P14.  Result: Component that organizes the results and output them adequately, according to the specification of the process. Principles identified: P19, P20.

Description of the extension of the ontology

When building an eParticipation environment, many questions arise. Who will the participants be? What are the outcomes? How will citizens interact? How will they be selected? All these questions will influence the specification of an eParticipation environment.

Ontologies are adequate to answer these questions. Given these and many other advantages of ontologies [START_REF] Noy | Ontology development 101: A guide to creating your first ontology[END_REF], we propose the use of an ontology to help the specification of these systems. When using concepts to describe the characteristics of participation methods and ICT along with ICT components and principles and properties among all these concepts, we can turn the ontology into a powerful mechanism to support the designer when specifying an eParticipation environment. By using ontology, the decision when choosing ICTs to build the environment is now shared between ontology and designer of the environment, with the ontology being a knowledge base that can be expanded by the very designer, if there is the need for doing so.

An initial version of the ontology and a model for applying this ontology in the specification of an eParticipation environment has been mentioned before [START_REF] Slaviero | Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments[END_REF]. This ontology is called ePDO (eParticipation Domain Ontology). In this work, our goal was to expand it by defining the relationship among participation methods and ICTs in order to support the designer in the specification of these environments.

The abovementioned sections elucidate the relationships among participation methods and ICTs that a designer would search when building an eParticipation initiative. This information will allow us to evolve the ontology previously described in [START_REF] Slaviero | Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments[END_REF]. A new version of ePDO is presented in Figure 1 and explored in details on the following subsections. We omitted some concepts to make it clearer for the reader to understand the new additions to ePDO.

Figure 1.

A portion of ePDO [START_REF] Slaviero | Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments[END_REF], painted, and new terms, unpainted.

New terms and properties of the ontology

New concepts and properties must be added to the ontology to allow a designer to use it as a support for specifying an eParticipation environment. These concepts are:  Characteristics: Class containing the characteristics described as relevant to define participation methods, as mentioned in Section 2.  Principles: This class contains as subclasses each principle captured from the characteristics of participation methods.  ICT_Domain: This class contains two subclasses: ICT_Component and ICT_Tool. The former contains as subclasses the components identified in the ICTs, while the latter contains the ICT tools described by [START_REF] Thorleifsdottir | DEMO-net: Deliverable 5.1 Report on current ICTs to enable Participation[END_REF].

The evolution of the ontology is not complete if concepts are added. It is necessary to add the knowledge to relate these concepts so that the ontology will contain the knowledge to help a designer in the specification of the eParticipation environment.

These new properties (along with their inverse properties) are the following:  builds/isBuiltBy: Relationship between an ICT Tool and the ICT components necessary to build one ICT Tool, as described in Section 5.  Demand/isDemandedBy: Relationship between participation methods and principles, as in Table 3.  Implements/isImplementedBy: Relationship between ICT components and principles, as in Section 6.  hasCharacteristic/isCharacterizedBy: Relationship between participation methods and characteristics, as in Section 4.1.  identify/isIdentifiedBy: Relationship between characteristics and principles.

A method for using the ontology

Suppose that a designer need to build an eParticipation environment (e.g. a referendum) as a demand given by the government. In this referendum, people of a country will one question to answer. Citizens will be able to discuss these questions and the alternatives to the latter.

Guided by the ontology, the designer starts by describing the characteristics of the referendum. The ontology has the knowledge to associate characteristics of a referendum to principles (through the identifies property). Each principle is related to ICTs components (through the implements property). These ICT components, when aggregated, will build one or more ICTs (shown by the property builds). At this time, the designer will have the information of which ICTs he will need to design and implement to build this eParticipation environment. Figure 2 illustrates this process.

Conclusions and Future Works

This paper proposes the use of an ontological approach to support the specification of eParticipation environments. To perform such a task, we analyzed the relationship between participation methods and ICTs, defining principles for building eParticipation processes and ICT components to use when building such processes In this paper, the knowledge acquisition was in evidence, rather than an implementation of the ontology.

One thing that should be mentioned is that, when using ontologies to specify eParticipation environments, the designer, from the very beginning, may find dependencies and necessary components to build these environments, which makes it important to implement an environment aligned with the citizens' needs and the outcomes expected, essential to perform an efficient eParticipation process [START_REF] Velikanov | Requirements and tools for an efficient eParticipation[END_REF].

As future works, we intend to seek to reuse the ontology in other parts of the software lifecycle of the building of eParticipation environments [START_REF] Happel | Applications of ontologies in software engineering[END_REF] aiming at automating the process of building these environments [START_REF] Slaviero | Towards an Ontology to Support the Deployment of eParticipation Environments[END_REF] and using components as building blocks to implement them [START_REF] Maciel | Platform Design Details to Support eParticipation Environments Deployment[END_REF]. Testing with designers with expertise in electronic government using the ontology to specify eParticipation environments will be performed, in order to validate and to improve this solution.

  should allow the access of participants through registration, as in a virtual community. P2: The environment should allow the selection of participants through a selection tool. P3: Environment should allow the sending of requests of participation by the government, calling citizens to participate in activities Number of participants P4: Environment should allow structuring the environment for a small number of participants P5: Environment should allow structuring the environment for medium number of participants P6: Environment should allow structuring the environment for large number of participants Form of participation P7: Environment should allow the definition of exhibition and propagation of information by the participants. P8: Environment should allow the definition of free discussion spaces. P9: Environment should allow creating surveys with multiple questions. P10: Environment should allow creating polls with a single question. P11: Environment should allow creating a debate between citizens and government exchanging opinions. P12: Environment should allow the presence of moderators in discussions. P13: Environment should allow the citizen to vote in one or more opinions. P14: Environment should allow the moderator to regulate opinions, when they are not in accordance with pre-established rules. Access to information P15: Environment should allow the insertion of information (text, image, video, links, among others) by citizens P16: Environment should allow the insertion of information by the government (.e.g. open data). Duration P17: Environment should allow the administrator to put a timestamp on participation processes. P18: Environment should allow the environment to have a participation process with no established ending date.

Figure 2 .

 2 Figure 2. Knowledge discovery process on the ontology.

Table 1 .

 1 Definition of Rowe and Frewer's participation methods[START_REF] Rowe | Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation[END_REF] according to characteristics extracted.

		Participants	Number	Form	of	Access to inf.	Duration	Presentation
		Selection	of part.	part.				of results
	Referenda	Mandatory	Large	One-question	Government	Predefined	Official
				poll				release
	Public	Open	Large	Open		Government	Open	Press
	hearings/			discussion			release
	inquires
	Public	Selective	Medium	Survey		Government	Predefined	Press
	opinion	(rep.)	(between					release
	surveys		100 and
			1000
			citizens)
	Negotiated	Selective (i.)	Small	Guided		Government	Open	Official
	rule-making			discussion			release
	Consensus	Selective	Small	Guided		Citizen	Predefined	Press
	Conference	(rep.)		discussion			release
	Citizens'	Selective	Small (12/	Guided		Citizen and	Predefined	Press
	jury/ panel	(rep.)	20 citizens)	discussion	Government		release
	Citizen/ public	Selective	Small	Guided		Citizen and	Open	Press
	advisory	(rep.)		discussion	Government		release
	committee
	Focus groups Selective	Small (5 to
		(rep.)	7 citizens)

Table 3 .

 3 Relationship between participation methods and principles

	Participation Method	Associated Principles
	Referenda	P1,P6, P13, P16, P17, P20
	Public hearings/ inquiries	P1, P6, P8, P13, P16, P18, P19
	Public opinion surveys	P2,P3,P5, P9, P10, P16, P17,
	Negotiated rule-making	P2,P3, P4, P11, P16, P18, P20
	Consensus Conference	P2,P3,P4, P7, P11, P12, P14,P16, P17, P19
	Citizens' jury/ panel	P2,P3,P4, P7, P11, P12, P14, P15, P16, P17, P19
	Citizen/public advisory committee P2,P3, P4, P7, P8, P15, P16, P18, P19
	Focus groups	P2,P3, P4, P11, P12, P14, P15, P16, P18, P19

Table 4 .

 4 Relationship between ICT components and Principles

	Component	Principles implemented
	Chat	P7
	Profile	P1
	Forum	P8
	Debate	P11
	Information Provision	P15, P16
	Petition	No principle identified
	Meeting	P11
	Survey	P9
	Poll	P10
	Voting	P13
	Alert	P3

Acknowledgment. Authors would like to thank FAPEMAT, UFMT/Uniselva and CAPES for partial funding to support this research.


Marius Rohde Johannessen

Skiftenes Leif

Øystein Flak

Saebø

Choosing the right medium for municipal eParticipation based on stakeholder expectations

Keywords: eParticipation, stakeholder theory, social media, media choice

This paper examines the expectations and communication needs of relevant stakeholder groups for municipal eParticipation in a small Norwegian municipality. We identified relevant stakeholder groups with the municipality, and asked them about their communication preferences through a combined Delphi study and survey approach. The findings show that information about local issues, information about issues relevant for the individual stakeholder, and dialogue on business' needs and employment are the three most important communication needs. E-mail and the municipal web site are the two preferred modes of communication, with social media ranking third. For dialogue and participation, a face to face meeting is the preferred mode of communication. Our findings show that effective municipal communication requires a number of different media, depending on what is being communicated. We conclude by outlining a framework for media choice in eParticipation.

Introduction

Digital media are increasingly used by governments and political parties in their communication with citizens, business and organisations. It has been claimed that digital media "are set to transform political structures and organisations, political campaigning, lobbying strategies and voting patterns" [START_REF] Kitchin | Cyberspace: The world in the wires[END_REF]. In Norway, the vision for digital communication is to be among the best in the world on digital citizen dialogue, digital services and efficient eGovernment [START_REF] Kjensli | eKommune 2012: Lokal digital agenda[END_REF]. Politics as a field is becoming more and more dependent on good media and communication skills [START_REF] Mazzoleni | Mediatization" of politics: A challenge for democracy?[END_REF], but information overload and filtering problems presents government with massive challenges related to media choice [START_REF] Gurevitch | Political communication -old and new media relationships[END_REF], and there is often a gap between government choice and citizen expectations [START_REF] Ebbers | Electronic government: Rethinking channel management strategies[END_REF].

Deliberation in various digital media can increase the political sophistication of citizens [START_REF] Gastil | Increasing political sophistication through public deliberation[END_REF], and online participation extends the political centre by including more citizens, but may also increase the distance between the ones in the centre and those in the periphery [START_REF] Davis | New media and fat democracy: The paradox of online participation[END_REF], widening the gap between those who are "inside" and "outside" of the public debate. Participants in political deliberation initiatives are rarely representative of the general population, but organising deliberation programs in different settings such as online surveys and discussions, face to face meetings or informal dinners could include citizens with more diverse backgrounds [START_REF] Carr | An Evaluation of Three Democratic, Community-Based Approaches to Citizen Participation: Surveys, Conversations With Community Groups, and Community Dinners[END_REF]. The fact that today's government is technocratic and relies ever more on expert reports and opinion further alienates the average citizen, who feels s/he has nothing to contribute to a debate where the focus is on consultancy reports and numbers [START_REF] Rayner | Democracy in the age of assessment: Reflections on the roles of expertise and democracy in public-sector decision making[END_REF].

To include more citizens in the decision making process, governments have attempted to implement various participatory techniques, but these are often biased towards the socio-cultural background of government officials, and leaves little space for the actual needs of citizens [START_REF] Rayner | Democracy in the age of assessment: Reflections on the roles of expertise and democracy in public-sector decision making[END_REF]. Thus, our first aim is to discover what various citizen groups actually want to talk to government about, and through which medium they prefer to communicate. We have focused on the municipal level, as this is where the diversity of citizen interaction is largest in Norwegian government.

While political parties have embraced technology, they are yet to embrace the social concepts underlying the technology [START_REF] Jackson | Building an Architecture of Participation? Political Parties and Web 2.0 in Britain[END_REF]. A recent study defines both the social and technical concepts of technology for research, and calls for practical applications of the theoretical framework [START_REF] Johannessen | Defining the IT Artefact in Social Media for eParticipation: An emsemble view[END_REF]. This leads us to our second objective, which is to aid practitioners in government who are uncertain about which medium they should use for various eParticipation efforts. Thus, our research questions for this study are:

1: Who are the stakeholders in eParticipation at the municipal level? 2: What are their communication needs and media preferences? 3: How can practitioners choose media for various types of communication?

To answer these questions, we conducted a Delphi study of the various citizen stakeholder groups, and distributed a survey to capture the opinions of stakeholders who did not want to take part in the Delphi study. Finally, based on the findings from the Delphi study and survey we applied the theoretical framework of Johannessen and Munkvold [START_REF] Johannessen | Defining the IT Artefact in Social Media for eParticipation: An emsemble view[END_REF], and synthesised several existing frameworks for technology choice and communication to create a tool that could help practitioners in government in choosing the right technologies for different communication needs.

Theoretical Premises: Technology Evaluation through genres

While our study identifies citizen preferences for eParticipation, there is still the need to transfer this knowledge to governments' technological choice so that government can decide which tools to use for which purpose. Existing literature has several examples of this, but mostly focuses on either communication or technology. A synthesis between these studies could lead us towards a more holistic solution.

The eParticipation tool assessment [START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF] combines the analysis of technical functionality with several other factors such as the level of participation it can address and the stages in the decision making process that are supported. Existing frameworks address the technological requirements of eParticipation well, but it is made from the perspective of government, and does not take into account the varying needs of different citizen groups, or the socio-technical nature of technology. However, to succeed, it is important to take citizens' needs into account [START_REF] Rose | Designing Deliberation Systems[END_REF], and to address technology from a socio-technical perspective [START_REF] Johannessen | Defining the IT Artefact in Social Media for eParticipation: An emsemble view[END_REF].

To extend the framework to include the socio-technical perspective so it can more easily be used to identify the communication needs of citizens, we used elements from genre theory. A genre is defined as "a typified communicative action which is invoked in response to a recurring situation" [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF]. Genres that are routinely enacted, such as questions to politicians, reports on potholes or specific types of input to the decision making process can be seen as a genre repertoire [START_REF] Orlikowski | Genre Repetoire: The Structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations[END_REF] of eParticipation. Genres are identified through similar form and function [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF], as well as technical functionality [START_REF] Shepherd | The evolution of cybergenres[END_REF], and can be analysed through the 5W1H framework, where you ask Why are we communicating, What is the content , Who are the participants, Where should the communication take place, When and How should we communicate. The framework helps uncover how and when the genre is enacted, in what situations it is used, who the participants are and why the genre is used [START_REF] Yates | Genre Systems: Structuring Interaction through Communicative Norms[END_REF]. Genre theory has been used in several previous studies of eParticipation [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Saebø | Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses[END_REF][START_REF] Saebø | Understanding Twitter Use among Parliament Representatives: A Genre Analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Rose | Democracy Squared: designing on-line political communities to accommodate conflicting interests[END_REF].

There are some examples of genre based methods for systems planning and development in government. Päivärinta et.al. [START_REF] Päivärinta | A Genre-Based Method for Information Systems Planning[END_REF] present a method for Information Systems Planning based on genre theory, where the communication genres are the deciding factor for the technological choice. The framework includes a stakeholder analysis of who the producer and the user of the information is, as well as genre and metadata analyses. Others have built upon this framework to create a method for development of eGovernment portals, where the genre perspective is extended through the inclusion of life-events in the planning stage [START_REF] Haraldsen | Developing e-Government Portals: From Life-Events through Genres to Requirements[END_REF]. In another example, genre theory have been used to help structure and plan discussion forums for local eParticipation through the 5W1H method [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF].

While both the assessment tools and the genre approaches are good, none of them address both the technological and communicative aspects of eParticipation. Combining the two into a genre and technological choice framework could aid practitioners in choosing the appropriate media for different eParticipation activities. In section five, we begin to sketch the outlines of such a framework, which combines the genre and technology analyses referenced in this section.

Research method

The findings reported in this paper are part of an on-going collaboration between the university and a municipality in southern Norway. The municipality has 8000 inhabitants, and relies heavily on agriculture. Three large fjords have led to a scattered population, with about half of the inhabitants living in the centre, and the rest spread out across the municipality.

As our objective was both to identify stakeholder groups and their preferences, we chose multiple research methods. By a multiple approach different aspects of reality may be explored to gain richer understanding of the research topics investigated [START_REF] Mingers | Combining IS Research Methods: Towards a Pluralist Methodology[END_REF]. Our first objective was to identify relevant stakeholder groups through a stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder theory was originally a set of tools and methods to identify relevant stakeholders [START_REF] Freeman | Strategic Management. A Stakeholder Approach[END_REF], and stakeholder theory has been adapted to the eGovernment field [START_REF] Flak | Stakeholder Governance: Adapting Stakeholder Theory to the e-Government Field[END_REF][START_REF] Scholl | Involving Salient Stakeholders[END_REF]. Our stakeholder analysis was conducted in collaboration with politicians and government officials in the municipality, and we came up with a total of 23 local stakeholder groups. Stakeholders with similar characteristics were then grouped into 10 panels for the Delphi study, which provided us with a list of stakeholders from politics, government administration and civil society.

Data collection took place between April and November 2011. We collected our data using the Delphi method [START_REF] Okoli | The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications[END_REF][START_REF] Schmidt | Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques[END_REF]. The Delphi method is well suited for studies where "judgmental information is indispensable", and has been used for concept and framework development in Information Systems studies [START_REF] Okoli | The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications[END_REF] and public policy development [START_REF] Rayens | Building Consensus Using the Policy Delphi Method[END_REF]. The method consists of three phases: Brainstorming of issues, consolidation, where the list is narrowed down, and finally the ranking phase, where the participants attempt to reach consensus on which of the identified issues are most important [START_REF] Okoli | The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications[END_REF][START_REF] Schmidt | Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques[END_REF]. The respondents were asked to provide a qualitative answer to the question what do you want to communicate with government about, and which media would you prefer to use? In addition, there was a short text explaining the purpose of the study.

The municipality recruited participants based on our stakeholder analysis, and these were invited to take part in the Delphi survey. The survey was distributed to 80 participants, of which 22 chose to participate. In addition to this, we distributed a regular survey to the municipality's inhabitants, which resulted in 36 additional respondents.

We were not able to reach consensus, as the participants lost interest in the study after the first round of ranking. This is a common problem with the Delphi method, but fortunately the amount of data from initial rounds is often rich enough that we can draw some conclusions, as shown by Päivärinta & Dertz [START_REF] Päivärinta | Pre-determinants of Implementing IT Benefits Management in Norwegian Municipalities: Cultivate the Context[END_REF]. In our case, both the brainstorming and first ranking phases provided insights into the communication preferences for the different stakeholder groups, as well as their preferred communication technologies for each form of communication.

The brainstorming phase identified 31 different communication categories, which were narrowed down to ten in the consolidation phase. Eight of these were ranked by more than 50 per cent of the participants, and thus considered to be at least moderately important for a majority of the respondents. The survey data confirmed these as the most important issues. Finally, we asked the respondents to report which communication technology they preferred for each of the communication categories, and found that more than 70 per cent prefer some form of digital communication.

Treating the communication categories as genres of communication [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF], we combined the technological framework of Tambouris et. al. [START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF] and the genre based frameworks [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Päivärinta | A Genre-Based Method for Information Systems Planning[END_REF][START_REF] Haraldsen | Developing e-Government Portals: From Life-Events through Genres to Requirements[END_REF] to create an overview of which technologies are suited to which communication genre.

Results

Who are the stakeholders?

Stakeholder groups were identified in collaboration with representatives from the municipality. The objective was to include every government and civil society group that has a need to communicate with the municipality.

In eGovernment we usually discuss three main stakeholder groups: Politicians, administration and the civil society [START_REF] Grönlund | Elektronisk förvaltning, elektronisk demokrati: visioner, verklighet, vidareutveckling[END_REF]. For the municipality, it was important to solicit opinions from these as separate stakeholders. The relation between politicians and the administration was mentioned as very important, due to the different responsibilities of these groups.

Defining civil society stakeholder groups is more difficult, as they can be divided in several ways, such as age, education, ethnicity, business owners and associations. We attempted to include as many groups as possible, and came up with eight civil society stakeholders: Business, Service users, associations, expats, immigrants, youth, senior citizens and finally a group for the "silent majority" of citizens with no organizational membership. The identified stakeholder groups are listed in Table 1.

Table 1: Municipal stakeholder groups 4.2 What are the communication needs?

The reported communication needs from the initial brainstorming session are listed in table 2. It is worth noticing that some of the reported needs are available today if you know what you are looking for, but these are reported to be either hard to find, of poor quality, or in a language which is not easily understood by ordinary citizens. The 31 communication needs of the initial brainstorming were reduced to ten in the consolidation phase, and the consolidated list was presented to and approved by the participants. The ten remaining factors were grouped in the categories information dissemination, public services and public dialogue, as the qualitative data from the first phase revealed that these were the three main concerns for the participants. 4 shows the communication needs that were important to the different stakeholder groups. We were not able to solicit answers from all of the civil society groups identified by our stakeholder analysis. Hence, some of the groups from table 1 are excluded from table 4. None of the stakeholder groups ranked report problems with services as important. Tailored and local information are important to almost all of the stakeholder groups, and the qualitative data shows that these are even more important than the table suggests: "Calling them does not work at all. It would be a lot more efficient if there was one person responsible for one area. We are located on an island where it can take one year for a light bulb to be changed, just because the right people aren't told about the problem" (Associations respondent 1).

Except for the administration, all the stakeholder groups wanted to report problems with the physical infrastructure, such as potholes, missing streetlights, poor road maintenance in winter etc. Again, this is a very important issue also in the qualitative data set from the brainstorming phase: "My main communication need is to comment on municipal services such as [problems with] garbage disposal and snow clearing" (Associations respondent 5).

indication that governments' social media presence should include some form of feedback option. Another interesting observation is that public meetings also received a high score. This indicates that, at least in small communities, physical contact is deemed important for dialogue. Even so, the trend is clear. In most cases, some form of digital communication is the preferred option, while physical contact is still in some cases seen as important. 5 Discussion: Towards a framework for media choice

Knowing the communication needs and media preferences of the stakeholder groups in our case municipality, we are now able to move on towards the next phase, choosing the appropriate technologies for each communication need. The reported communication needs are translated into genres in our proposed framework, based on the phases from [START_REF] Päivärinta | A Genre-Based Method for Information Systems Planning[END_REF] and expanded with the technological framework [START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF].

Identify stakeholders and producers and users of information. A stakeholder analysis, such as the one presented in table 1, tells us who should participate in the communication. The next step is to identify producers and users of information (PUI entities), so that we know who should initiate and who should respond. See [START_REF] Päivärinta | A Genre-Based Method for Information Systems Planning[END_REF] for more on PUI entities.

Identify communication genres. For eParticipation, the first step has too often been based on the needs of government. Our identification of the communication needs of various external and internal stakeholder groups (tables 2-5), allows us to create genres that are grounded in citizen and other stakeholder needs. Identifying genres based on these communication needs can be done through the 5W1H method, as shown by [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF]. Who/m is excluded from 5W1H, as it is addressed in the stakeholder analysis.

Define and gather metadata about the various genres. This should be done in collaboration with the stakeholders. Typical metadata varies depending on the type of communication, but could include preferred medium (see table 6), response time, reference number, and for government, issues such as archiving and access might also be necessary for compliance. This step overlaps with the technological analysis. These steps are shown in Table 7, with an example of a finished analysis in Table 8.

Table 2 : Communication needs

 2

	Communication needs	Description
	Report problems	Report problems with physical infrastructure
	Information: Nature	Information about local areas for hiking and fishing
	Tourist information	Information about what happens, where to sleep and what to do
	Municipal news	News about what happens in the municipality
	Website links	Links to local web sites
	Planning information	Information on construction, road works
	Inform on political decisions	Information about decisions made by the municipal council
	Debate urban planning	Create a forum for debate
	Citizen surveys	Conduct surveys on big and important issues
	Feedback	Receive feedback from municipality after making contact
	Referral to laws	case correspondence from the municipality should include
		references to relevant law
	After hours contact	The municipality should be available after 4PM
	Accessible information	Policy documents are difficult to understand, and should be made
		more accessible to ordinary citizens.
	Geographic information	Citizens should be informed on issues in their neighbourhood.
	Rapid feedback	When contacting the municipality, receive feedback and case status.
	Comment services	Comment and provide feedback on municipal services

Table 3 : Consolidated list of communication needs, grouped by category

 3

	Information dissemination	Public services	Dialogue
	Generic information	Service dialogue	Forum for debate
	Information tailored to individual needs	Evaluation of existing services	Business dialogue
	Local information	Report problems with services	Municipal surveys
		Report problems with infrastructure
	Table

Table 6 : Media preference for each communication category Preferred medium Percentage for each communication need

 6

		Generic information	Local information	Tailored information	Service dialogue	Evaluation of services	Report problems w/infrastructure	Forum for debate	Business dialogue	Municipal surveys
	E-mail	66	60	75	47	47	74	39	38	63
	Internet	78	62	58	56	61	53	61	62	69
	Social media	22	24	14	22	17	15	42	44	20
	Mobile devices	16	19	25		9	35	6	18	14
	Service bureau	8	16	14	14	12	32	12	18	6
	Public meetings	8	5	6	19	12	6	46	41	9

Respondents were asked to pick the most important issues, and to rank them from least to most important. Table 5 shows how many of the participants who included each item in their list of most important issues. While democratic dialogue is an important issue for eParticipation, a majority of our respondents call for information tailored to individual needs, dialogue on the needs of business, a way to report problems with the physical infrastructure or information about things happening in their local area, such as planned construction and power outages. The ranking confirms these as the most important issues.

How can practitioners choose media for various types of communication?

In addition to asking about the communication needs of the stakeholder groups, we also asked them which communication media they preferred to use for each category. The findings are summarized in table 6. There were no notable differences between the stakeholder groups' preferences, so we do not report the results of the individual groups. The participants were able to choose more than one media preference for each communication need. Based on the input from the brainstorming phase, we grouped the media preferences into six categories. Four based on technology, and two physical contact points.

Internet, as in the municipality's web site or other web sites is by far the most popular medium overall, along with e-mail whereas social media and mobile phones are less popular. Age does not seem to play an important role as the distribution between age groups is fairly similar. In terms of dialogue, social media scored higher, which is consistent with the idea of social media as a two-way medium, and an Analyse available technologies. The last step is shown in Table 9, with an example analysis in Table 10. Based on Tambouris et.al. [START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF], we analysed the communication media the stakeholders prefer to use for the specific genre. The technology evaluation includes the technical functionality, the level of participation and stage in decision making process (based on OECD recommendations) the medium can accommodate, and actors. Activities and outcomes are other important factors in eParticipation [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF], and these have been added to the original technological analysis to provide a more holistic picture. While our example includes only one technology, in most cases there would probably be many suitable systems, consistent with a multichannel strategy [START_REF] Ebbers | Electronic government: Rethinking channel management strategies[END_REF]. Based on tables 8 and 10, our example genre and example technology are not wellmatched if the reported metadata item "case number" is seen as very important. Using a Facebook page or group would not generate case numbers, does not allow reported cases to be stored in a database, and privacy issues related to ownership of data could also be an obstacle for this particular genre. This short example shows the importance of addressing both the technology and the users' preferences for communication before starting on an eParticipation project, and we believe our framework could serve as a guide in this sense.

Limitations and future research

While this study provides insights into the communication needs and media preferences of various stakeholder groups, there are some limitations that need to be addressed. As we were not able to reach consensus in the Delphi study, we were unable to create a definite list of communication needs to be addressed. However, we were still able to identify some needs, and through the survey that was distributed later, we also got data to verify the findings from the Delphi study. Our findings should however be read mainly as qualitative and interpretive, and within the contextual limitations of a small Norwegian municipality, rather than quantitative.

Our combination of the eParticipation technology framework and genre frameworks is mainly based on theory and inspired by the findings on communication preferences. A logical next step in this research would be to verify the framework through testing it in government. Specifically, validation of a common list of communication needs and the appropriate technology to support each communication need is considered to be an important contribution to further practical development.


Shun Shiramatsu

Robin M E Swezey

Hiroyuki Sano

Norifumi Hirata

Tadachika Ozono

Toramatsu Shintani

Structuring Japanese Regional Information Gathered from the Web as Linked Open Data for Use in Concern Assessment

Keywords: Linked Open Data, concern assessment, information structuring, public involvement

We are developing an eParticipation web platform based on Linked Open Data that targets regional communities in Japan. To increase transparency and public participation, we aim to utilize web contents related to target regions for sharing public concerns among citizens, government officials, and experts. We have designed a Linked Open Data set called SOCIA (Social Opinions and Concerns for Ideal Argumentation) to structure regional web contents (e.g. regional news articles, microblog posts, and minutes of city council meetings) and utilize them for eParticipation and concern assessment. The web contents are semiautomatically structured by our text mining system, Sophia, on the basis of regions and events extracted from news articles on the web. Minutes of city council meetings stored in SOCIA are annotated with discourse salience in order to visualize topic transitions in a meeting transcript. We also developed a prototype debate support system called citispe@k that uses SOCIA to help citizens share their concerns. Users can submit agendas, ideas, questions, and answers by referencing the structured regional information in SOCIA. Moreover, they can annotate SOCIA data with tags representing criteria for assessing concerns or utterance intentions.

Introduction

In addition to having endured huge earthquakes and a nuclear catastrophe, Japanese regional communities face ongoing social issues. Besides, the issues and risks have become diversified: radiation pollution, climate changes, financial problems, aging population, welfare problems, etc. Public involvement, i.e. citizen participation in deciding public policy, has thus become more important, especially in regional communities. Although public involvement is characterized as an interactive communication process among stakeholders [START_REF] Jeong | Discourse analysis of public debates: A corpus-based approach[END_REF], stating opinions is not easy for Japanese citizens because they tend to be reticent, and are not experts about the diversified social issues. To facilitate public involvement, we are developing an eParticipation web platform, O 2 ,1 based on Linked Open Data (LOD).

LOD, semantically connected data with universal resource identifiers (URIs) and the resource description framework (RDF) can be used for supporting citizens' deliberation because the LOD mechanism enables sophisticated information provision with semantic links [START_REF] Heath | Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space[END_REF]. Our platform aims to increase transparency, participation, and collaboration in Japanese regional communities. We focus on transparency and participation by using web contents as background information related to regional concerns.

To increase transparency and participation in regional communities, it is important to share public concerns among citizens, government officials, and experts. Background information should be structured and open in order to facilitate assessing and sharing public concerns. We have developed an LOD data set called SOCIA (Social Opinions and Concerns for Ideal Argumentation) that consists of Japanese regional news articles, microblog posts, and minutes of city council meetings. SOCIA is designed to be used for supporting concern assessment. It is semi-automatically structured by our text mining system, Sophia, on the basis of regions and events extracted from news articles on the web. Minutes of city council meetings stored in SOCIA are annotated with discourse salience in order to visualize topic transitions in a meeting transcript.

Sophia is a mining and intelligent pre-processing platform that classifies and clusters news articles and tweets. SOCIA is a data set desined for structuring public debate and regional information. Citispe@k is a web application that supports public debate related to regional issues identified by Sophia using SOCIA.

Literature Review

Linked Open Data for Open Government

LOD plays an important role in fostering open government [START_REF] Hochtl | Linked open data -a means for public sector information management[END_REF]. There are over 20 international open data platforms in the open government community: Data.gov, Data.gov.uk, Data.gov.au, data.gouv.fr, India.gov.in, etc. 2 Data.gov and India.gov.in are in progress on making their open data platform Data.gov open source [START_REF] Howard | White house to open source data[END_REF]. Joinup,3 a collaborative platform in Europe, proposes Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS), which describes semantic assets, that is, a collection of highly reusable metadata and reference data [START_REF]ISA: Improving semantic interoperability in european egovernment systems[END_REF]. In Japan, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) operates a web site called "Open Government Laboratory"4 as an experimental web site towards realizing eParticipation and eGovernment. It also launched the "Apps for Japan" project, which utilizes various type of data for tackling the unprecedented damage wrought by the Great East Japan Earthquake [START_REF]Open government laboratory to launch the "apps for japan[END_REF].

There are several competitive challenges designed to promote the use of LOD: Challenge.gov and the New York City Challenge in the U.S., the Open Data Challenge in Europe, and the LOD Challenge in Japan. SOCIA and citispe@k, which we developed, received the ChallengeDay Award at LOD Challenge Japan 2011. 5

Supporting Analysis of Public Debate

Providing background information related to public debate is impotant in order to support concern assessment. In view of this, argument visualization is an effective approach for supporting eParticipation [START_REF] Benn | Argument visualization for eparticipation: towards a research agenda and prototype tool[END_REF]. Jeong et al. visualized the difference in cognition for several topics among participants in public debates using the co-occurrence of terms [START_REF] Jeong | Discourse analysis of public debates using corpus linguistic methodologies[END_REF]. Visualizing an overview of public debate is also effective for grasping the background. Several argument visualization tools currently exist [START_REF] Kirschner | Visualizing Argumentation: Software Tools for Collaborative and Educational Sense-Making[END_REF]: Compendium [START_REF] Selvin | Hypermedia as a productivity tool for doctoral research. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia[END_REF], Cohere [START_REF] Liddo | Cohere: A prototype for contested collective intelligence[END_REF], MIT Deliberatorium [START_REF] Iandoli | Enabling online deliberation and collective decision making through large-scale argumentation: A new approach to the design of an internet-based mass collaboration platform[END_REF], Araucaria [START_REF] Reed | Araucaria: Software for argument analysis, diagramming and representation[END_REF], Discourse Semantic Authoring [START_REF] Kamimaeda | Evaluation of Participants' Contributions in Knowledge Creation Based on Semantic Authoring[END_REF][START_REF] Hasida | Semantic Authoring and Semantic Computing[END_REF], etc. Typically, these tools produce "box and arrow" diagrams in which premises and conclusions are formulated as statements [START_REF] Van Den Braak | A critical review of argument visualization tools: Do users become better reasoners?[END_REF]. We have developed a method for visualizing the transitions of a topic [START_REF] Shiramatsu | SalienceGraph: Visualizing Salience Dynamics of Written Discourse by Using Reference Probability and PLSA[END_REF] because understanding discussion flow requires overviewing the whole transition of a long meeting rather than local diagramming. O 2 , an abbreviation for Open Opinion, is a web platform for citizen participation in debates about regional issues. As shown in Fig. 1, the O 2 platform has three stages. In stage (1), the mining and pre-processing system, Sophia, crawls the web and gathers information from news articles, microblogs, and meeting minutes that can be used for debates. In stage (2), the system geographically classifies the gathered contents and clusters them by event. Relevant information is then structured and stored in the SOCIA data set in accordance with the SOCIA ontology as openly published Linked Open Data. In stage (3), the structured information is used for debate support, e-Meeting, and concern assessment. In this paper, we focus on the eParticipation system for supporting debates using web contents related to specific regions structured in SOCIA.

SOCIA: Linked Open Data set for eParticipation

The cycle of utilizing regional information in SOCIA for eParticipation is illustrated in Fig. 2. To help citizens understand public concerns and exporess their opinions, background information needs to be provided because most citizens are not experts about diversified public concerns. The opinions expressed can also be utilized as background information after being structured in SOCIA. For web contents (e.g. news articles, blogs, and tweets) to be used as background information, they need to be classified by region and then presented to citizens in an understandable way. Our platform and ontology can be used to structure news and opinions and then link them with regional issues. The data is openly published on the web using the SOCIA ontology,6 designed using tWeb Ontology Language (OWL) as shown in Fig. 3. Through this process, eParticipative data becomes re-usable and transparent. Text mined from the web is structured in the form of events by region, which are then used as discussion seeds to further build SOCIA. Citizens then create discussion topics out of each seed, e.g., a cluster of news articles related to the same event, and input their opinions by using the system, among other functionalities.

To improve the structuring accuracy, the history of how the LOD properties were annotated (e.g., which algorithm, which parameter, by whom is needed) because the automatic structuring by Sophia has an inherent error of a few percent. To maintain the annotation history, we defined the AnnotationInfo class, as shown in Fig. 4. Such meta-context information is necessary when the data set is used as a corpus for research on natural language processing.

The system first collects news articles, microblog posts (in this work, tweets), and minutes of city council meeting from the web along with necessary metadata (dates, emission sources, etc). It then classifies this crawled web contents by region and filters out contents unrelated to the interests of regional communities or to current events. Next, the system extracts target events from the news articles and microblogs, and links them using the ontology.

Citizens can then add further links to events, news articles, and microblogs, by creating relevant topics and can debate them by inputting their opinions, polling, or sharing further resources. Those resources and new links are also incorporated in the data set, as are the opinions and the discussion. This creates a virtuous cycle in which the intelligent platform, by creating understandable and relevant discussion seeds, involves citizens in eParticipation. The citizens add further data to the data set, making it grow over time, and this data can be used as input again (e.g. for training better learning models and developing better ontologies).

Classification by Region

After the mining, the gathered news articles and tweets are classified geographically (by the 47 prefectures of Japan). To this end, we use Transformed Weightnormalized Complementary Naive Bayes (TWCNB) algorithm [START_REF] Rennie | Tackling the poor assumptions of naive bayes text classifiers[END_REF]. In the classification, the feature vectors for each document consist of the TF*IDF value of morpheme bi-grams. To decide whether contents should be filtered out or not, we use a confidence threshold where the confidence value is defined as the difference between log scores of the highest-ranked class and that of second-ranked class.

We conducted a classification experiment through varying threshold of confidence value, using 8,811 news articles related to Japanese prefectures crawled from Yahoo! Japan News7 during Jun. 13 to Jul. 12, 2011, and 1,133 ones that do not related to any prefectures. The experimental result showed that the precision is 98.2% and the recall is 98.0% for the optimal threshold [START_REF] Swezey | Automatic detection of news articles of interest to regional communities[END_REF][START_REF] Swezey | An eparticipation support system for regional communities based on linked open data, classification and clustering[END_REF].

Clustering by Events

SOCIA stored 54,854 news articles, with about 13,000 ones classified as related to a prefictures. 8 The events are extracted as clusters of similar news articles [START_REF] Swezey | An eparticipation support system for regional communities based on linked open data, classification and clustering[END_REF]. The similarity between news articles are calculated as a cosine similarity which is weighted by a window function determined by for considering dates/times the news articles were published. As shown in Fig. 5, about 35,000 events were extracted through the clustering of these articles.

Analyzing Topic Transition in Transcript of City Council

For promoting the participation of young citizens in public debates, the use of smartphones is important tool. Browsing the long transcript of a public debate with a smartphone requires a lot of time and effort because the semantics essentially depends on the preceding context. The system automatically analyzes the topic transitions in the minutes of city council meetings stored in SOCIA. The analysis is based on our proposed metric for discourse salience, that is, reference probability [START_REF] Shiramatsu | A Game-Theoretic Model of Referential Coherence and Its Empirical Verification Using Large Japanese and English Corpora[END_REF]. The use case we consider is browsing past meeting minutes or related documents while attending a public meeting. In public meetings, participants sometimes reference a statement in a past meeting. Trying to find the referenced statement from the long meeting minute in order to confirm it on site would increase the cognitive load due to the need to grasp the topic transitions in a long discourse.

The topic transitions in a transcript of Nagoya city council9 on a smartphone can be visualized as shown in Fig. 6. The user can grasp the topic transitions from "SalienceGraph" shown on the right of the user interface. The horizontal axis corresponds to discourse salience, that is, the degree of focus on each term or latent topic. The vertical axis represents each sentence in the target discourse.

The GUI for the visualizer was designed in accordance with Shneiderman's Visual Information-Seeking Mantra, that is "overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand" [START_REF] Shneiderman | Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (3rd Edition)[END_REF]. After getting the overview of the topics, users may either browse the salience dynamics of a particular latent topic, or inspect the discourse at a particular point by consulting the record.

5 Citispe@k: Debate Support System Using SOCIA Citispe@k is a prototype web application that supports public debate by utilizing SOCIA. It provides mobility and reach by supporting web browsers running on smart phones and tablets. The term citispe@k is based on the idea that citizens speak about social issues and current events of the regions in which they live. Users can discuss and sort out regional issues by referencing news articles, tweets, or other relevant resources on the web by using citispe@k. By creating discussion topics or inputting opinions into the system, those topics and opinions are also stored as Linked Open Data in SOCIA. Fig. 7 shows a screenshot of citispe@k. The screenshot has lists of events or related information. Events recently updated are listed on the left of the screenshot. The system initially shows all events. The user can then limit the list to show only events related to a region. When the user selects an event from the list, information about the event is shown on the right side of the screenshot. Information consists of news articles, tweets, and events related to the event. Those resources can be easily shown and visualized in an iFrame without leaving the system. Users can append comments, e.g. ideas, questions, and answers, by selecting specific content provided by citispe@k. A comment can also be posted to Twitter (via @citispeak for now) to further its reach and be stored in SOCIA.

Users can create discussion topics related to events, news articles and tweets. The "View related topics" button (Fig. 8) is used to see topics related to the event being viewed. Users can create a new discussion topic about the event by clicking the "Make a new topic" button. The cycle of the discussions in citispe@k is that users browse events, get topics related to an event, and add their opinion to a topic of interest. The system supports adding web contents to topics as information sources for discussion as well as adding opinions to topics.

Citispe@k also has a function supporting concern assessment. The system aim to support the analysis of the trends in citizens' awareness, its background information, and the anxiety about social issues. For example, a committee for scientific verification of road construction in Aioiyama-Ryokuchi Park in Nagoya City analyzes road construction. 10 A report on their analysis was made based on several criteria: "economic chance", "life, educational or cultural chance", "safety, security", etc. Thus, classifing opinions on the basis of criteria is effective for concern adjustment. Citispe@k provides tags for such criteria. Users can add tags composed of criteria and polarity, such as "Environment +" or "Environment -". Citispe@k also provides tags that can be used to express the intention of an utterance, like "Question", "Idea", and "Refutation". If events or news articles have many such tags, the tags can be used to support the analysis of concerns. Fig. 9 shows an example of tagging an event. We designed the tags by referencing the QOC model [START_REF] Maclean | Questions, options, and criteria: elements of design space analysis[END_REF] and the Deliberatorium [START_REF] Iandoli | Enabling online deliberation and collective decision making through large-scale argumentation: A new approach to the design of an internet-based mass collaboration platform[END_REF] for supporting concern assessment through public debates using citispe@k and the contents in SOCIA.

Conclusion

We are developing an eParticipation web platform called O 2 with the aim of increasing transparency and participation in Japanese regional communities. Our Sophia text mining system automatically structures news articles, microblog posts, and transcripts of city council meetings and stores them in SOCIA, an LOD dataset designed for supporting concern assessment. Our Citispe@k web application helps citizens debate issues by utilizing regional information structured in SOCIA. It also enables assessment of public concerns through manual annotation of criteria tags. As the next step, personal data will be incorporated into SOCIA to facilitate collaboration among citizens.

Fig. 1 .Fig. 2 .

 12 Fig. 1. Outline of O 2 , eParticipation Web Platform

Fig. 3 .Fig. 4 .

 34 Fig. 3. Core classes for structuring regional information in SOCIA ontology

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Distribution of news article counts per event

Fig. 6 .

 6 Fig. 6. Visualization of topic transition in a transcript of city council meeting

Fig. 7 .Fig. 8 .

 78 Fig. 7. Screenshot of citispe@k

Fig. 9 .

 9 Fig. 9. Annotating selected event with tags representing criteria

http://open-opinion.org/ (in Japanese)

http://www.data.gov/, http://data.gov.uk/, http://data.gov.au/, http:// www.data.gouv.fr/, http://india.gov.in/, etc.

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/

http://openlabs.go.jp/ (in Japanese)

http://lod.sfc.keio.ac.jp/challenge2011/result2011.html (in Japanese)

http://data.open-opinion.org/socia-ns

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?c=loc

The number of news articles stored in SOCIA was counted on Mar. 16, 2012. It has been constantly increasing.

http://www.gijiroku.jp/gikai/c nagoya/index.html

Acknowledgments. This work was supported by SCOPE, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan.