Information and Organization 24 (2014) 195–213

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Success factors in designingeParticipation initiatives

Eleni Panopoulou⁎, Efthimios Tambouris, Konstantinos TarabanisUniversity of Macedonia, Egnatia 156, 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece

a r t i c l e i n f o

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +30 2310 891588.E-mail addresses: epanopou@uom.gr (E. Panopou

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2014.08.0011471-7727/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 2 April 2013Received in revised form 29 July 2014Accepted 12 August 2014Available online xxxx

Electronic participation (eParticipation) refers to the use ofInformation and Communication Technologies to enhance politicalparticipation and citizen engagement. During the last few years,eParticipation researchers have focused on analysing the field,investigating the main challenges, studying different initiatives, andproposing relevant evaluation criteria. However, current literaturelacks comprehensive studies for understanding the factors influenc-ing success when designing eParticipation initiatives. The main aimof this paper is to determine a concrete set of success factors to beconsidered when designing an eParticipation initiative. For thispurpose, we review the literature on eGovernment success and oneParticipation success and evaluation, andwe conduct a European-widesurvey and desktop research amongst eParticipation practitioners.By comparing findings from the literature and the practitioners'research, we thereafter construct a proposed model of eParticipationsuccess factors. The model includes 23 success factors and specificactivities associated with each factor. We anticipate that our modelwill be useful to both eParticipation researchers and practitionersinterested in the design of eParticipation initiatives.

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:eGovernmentElectronic governmenteParticipationElectronic participationSuccessFactorDesignModelPractitionerSurveyEurope

1. Introduction

The persistent problem of fluctuations of citizens' political interest and trust in modern democracies hasbeenwidely discussed over the last two decades (Hendriks, 2009;Miller & Listhaug, 1998;Newton, 1999;Vande Walle, Van Roosbroek, & Bouckaert, 2008). Phenomena of political alienation and dissatisfaction of thepublic have been observed (European Commission, 2013; Lyons & Alexander, 2000) both amongst younger

lou), tambouris@uom.gr (E. Tambouris), kat@uom.gr (K. Tarabanis).

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(Snell, 2010) and older populations (Jennings & Markus, 1988) of western societies. Literature suggests thatpolitical trust and dissatisfaction are interconnected, and that the declining political trust is a consequence ofcitizens' dissatisfaction frompolitical leaders and political actions. However, it is also supported that decliningtrust is not merely a reflection of dissatisfaction but also a powerful cause of it (Chanley, Rudolph, & Rahn,2000; Hetherington, 1998), implying thus a downward spiral phenomenon.

Literature further suggests that fluctuations on political trust and engagement are generally dysfunctionalfor democracy (Schyns & Koop, 2010; Van deWalle et al., 2008). Different solutions have therefore emerged,such as pursuing more participatory forms of democracy, citizen-centeredness and enhanced citizenempowerment (European Commission, 2006; McHugh, 2006). In fact, recent research shows that socialforces such as the development of strong bonds and the sense of community exert positive and significanteffects on political efficacy and political trust (Anderson, 2010). At the same time, the recent advancements ofinformation and communication technologies (ICT) and the successful application of these advancements toother parts of social and business lives paved the road for harnessing similar benefits also in the governanceand democracy field (Coleman & Gøtze, 2001; Mambrey, 2004). Research suggests that using the internet tointeract with government and to improve policy participation can have a significant positive effect onrestoring public trust (Moon, 2003; Parent, Vandebeek, & Gemino, 2004). Thus, electronic government(eGovernment) and electronic participation (eParticipation) can be seen as a means towards restoringpolitical trust and citizen satisfaction in western democracies. Although the exact boundaries betweeneGovernment and eParticipation are not clearly defined in the literature, eParticipation is widely consideredas a part of eGovernment and quite often an eParticipation initiative is implemented as part of an overalleGovernment implementation and strategy. This approach is also adopted in this paper.

In recent years, the potential of ICT to increase political participation and to address the growingdemocratic deficit has been the subject of academic debate (Breindl & Francq, 2008; OECD, 2003). Scholarssuggest that technology alone cannot provide a solution and that in-depth analysis of the eParticipation fieldis needed. In Europe, different approaches have emerged exploring this multidisciplinary field frommultipleperspectives (political, social, technological, procedural, etc.). These include a characterisation framework byMacintosh (2004), a domain model by Kalampokis, Tambouris, and Tarabanis (2008), a literature review bySæbø, Rose, and Flak (2008), an eParticipation analytical framework (Smith, Macintosh, &Millard, 2008) andother efforts for scoping the field, the research challenges and gaps (e.g. Aichholzer et al., 2007; Macintosh &Coleman, 2006;Macintosh, Coleman, & Schneeberger, 2009; Tambouris, Liotas, Kaliviotis, & Tarabanis, 2007).Over the last years, eParticipation research has been systematically funded in Europe providing theopportunity to pilot test a number of participatory tools and practices in different countries and settings.Between 1999 and 2010 the EuropeanUnion has fundedmore than 35 eParticipation research projects with atotal budget of over 120 M€ (Tambouris, Kalampokis, & Tarabanis, 2008).

At the same time, governments and local/regional authorities in Europe have started implementingeParticipation initiatives of different aims and scale. For example, an analysis of eParticipation initiatives andstate-of-play across Europe is provided by Panopoulou, Tambouris, and Tarabanis (2009) and Tambouris et al.(2012)whilst national-level studies for Germany and theUnited Kingdomhave been published by Albrecht etal. (2008) and Kearns, Bend, and Stern (2008) respectively. According to these studies, most initiatives inEurope focus on providing information, deliberation and consultation facilities with their scope and technicalimplementation varying significantly between simple polls and complex consultations.Most initiatives targetthe local and national levels with results indicating a more productive activity at the local level. Finally, mostinitiatives operate as an alternative, additional communication channel targeting mostly at “legitimisation”rather than active citizenship (Tambouris et al., 2013). Despite the differences in the quantity and type ofeParticipation implementations in different European countries, results from the aforementioned nationalstudies (Albrecht et al., 2008; Kearns et al., 2008) seem to agree on a few universal conclusions: (a) severallighthouse projects exist in different European countries in an otherwise fragmented, underdevelopedlandscape consisting mostly of one-off initiatives such as pilots and trials; (b) there is a need for morewide-spread offerings that are also better integratedwith public institutions; (c) current good practice shouldbe highlighted and promoted in order to ensure wider take-up and inspiration; (d) although numerousdescriptive reports on individual initiatives exist, there is still a lack of comparative empirical analyses,evaluations and longitudinal studies. According to Albrecht et al. (2008, p.5), this lack is the reason why“well-founded empirical, representative and generalizing statements concerning the effects or success factorsof eParticipation are still not possible”.

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Although more and better eParticipation offerings that exploit current good practice seem to be inevidence, practitioners' experience in eParticipation is still poorly addressed in current publications andresearch efforts across Europe, including efforts to produce tangible success factors and practical guidelinesfor designing an eParticipation initiative. So far, researchers have proposed different evaluation instrumentsto measure success at a post-implementation phase (Aichholzer & Westholm, 2009; Loukis, Xenakis, &Charalabidis, 2010;Macintosh &Whyte, 2008). The proposed success indicators aremeasured during or afteran eParticipation initiative and typically include the number of participants and the level and quality ofparticipation. However, there is a lack of publications focusing on identifying the factors that should beconsidered when designing an eParticipation initiative with the aim to ensure its proper implementation andoperation and to maximize its potential for success. This is exactly the research gap targeted in this work.Additionally, ourwork addresses the lack of empirical research on eParticipation success factors by organisingand conducting the first European-wide survey of eParticipation practitioners.

The main objective of this paper is to identify a concrete set of success factors to be taken underconsideration when designing an eParticipation initiative. Thus, work reported in this paper focuses on aproactive, pre-implementation success factors' model rather than on a post-implementation successmeasuring tool as the ones proposed in the literature so far. We set out towards this objective examiningboth the available literature and actual practitioners' experience. In specific, we perform a systematicliterature review on eParticipation and eGovernment success fromwhich a set of success factors is extracted.Then, we undertake a questionnaire survey and a desktop research (i.e. examining initiatives' websites andsearching online for official documentation, media references, articles in journals and conferences) amongsteParticipation practitioners in Europe and use the findings to validate the success factors identified fromliterature. Finally, we construct and present our proposed model of eParticipation success factors.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The methodology followed in this work is presented inSection 2. Section 3 reports the literature review and the success factors as derived from literature. Thepractitioner survey and desktop research is reported in Section 4 along with a discussion of results. Thefinal proposed model of success factors for designing eParticipation initiatives is presented in Section 5,whilst Section 6 discusses and concludes our work.

2. Methodology

The methodological approach followed in our work is comprised of two distinct phases: the literaturereview phase and the survey and model phase, each presented in the following subsections.

2.1. Literature review phase

The first part of our research aimed to elicit success factors from relevant global scientific literature. Asthe theoretical starting point for our work we used the existing literature regarding eParticipation andeGovernment success factors. Although the field of our research is eParticipation, it was decided forcompleteness to also include the field of eGovernment in our review for two reasons: first, eParticipation isconsidered a part of eGovernment and quite often eParticipation initiatives may be part of an overalleGovernment implementation and strategy; and second, we expected that relevant literature ineParticipation would be limited and thus, eGovernment literature would greatly contribute to our work.

Hence, a systematic literature review was conducted according to the steps indicated by Webster andWatson (2002) and Levy and Ellis (2006). The literature review was conducted in databases of scientificliterature (Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar), searching for publications in peer-reviewed journals orproceedings using the following keywords: eParticipation, eGovernment, success, factor, and framework. Thesearchwas limited to publications from the last decade, i.e. after 2000, in order to include only themost recentevidence of eGovernment and eParticipation success in our research.

However, this initial literature investigation resulted in an imbalanced sources' representation in eachfield. We identified a large number of references for eGovernment but only a limited number foreParticipation. As a result, we decided to expand our investigation of eParticipation literature and alsoexamine the proposed frameworks for evaluation but from the perspective of an initiatives' design phase.Thus, a new search in scientific literature was performed with the same standards (peer-reviewed

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journals or proceedings within the last decade) but using the following keywords: eParticipation andevaluation.

The gathered literature was then examined and refined so that the final list of references included onlypapers that propose specific, explicitly named as such, success factors and evaluation criteria. From thesefactors and criteria we selected only the ones that are relevant to the initiatives' design phase. Followingthe directions for a systematic literature review (Levy & Ellis, 2006; Webster & Watson, 2002), weorganised these factors according to a concept-centric rather than an author-centric approach. Morespecifically, we extracted the main concepts from the literature and documented them in a concept matrixmapping each concept to the publications referring it.

2.2. Survey and model phase

The second part of our research had a European focus as it aimed to elicit European eParticipationpractitioners' opinions on what drives success and compare these to the literature findings. This was mainlyachieved through a qualitative survey amongst eParticipation practitioners across Europe. In order to increasethe validity of the survey results, we also performed a desktop research as an additional method foridentifying practitioners' success factors. This research included examining the initiative websites and otherofficial documentation, media references, articles in journals and conferences, etc. In specific, this phaseinvolved five distinct steps as follows.

Step 1. As a start, we identified 255 eParticipation initiatives from 23 European countries, of which 230included sufficient contact details (Panopoulou et al., 2009). The initiatives were identified in thefollowingways: (a) through desktop research in relevant literature and theweb (i.e. using keywordssuch as “eParticipation”, “consultation”, “petitioning” and “citizen forum” in Google's search engine;especially for EU-level initiatives, EU policy documents and EU Institutions' websites wereexamined), (b) through relevant award schemes (i.e. eEurope Awards for eGovernment, UKe-Government National Awards, and the Stockholm Challenge Awards) and online databases (i.e.ePractice.eu, e-participation.net database, peopleandparticipation.net and the EuropeanCommission's database of eParticipation Preparatory Action projects), and (c) through contactswith experts and project owners in the field i.e. through contacts in the “eParticipation andeDemocracy Network” community in ePractice.eu portal, in the “Democracies Online” forum, inworkshops by the European eParticipation study and in the different conferences attended by theauthors.

Step 2. A qualitative survey was used to elicit practitioners' input. Qualitative research is inductive,focusing on subjects' experience and the meaning behind it, thus, it was considered ideal fordiscovering novel or unanticipated findings (Bryman, 1984; Creswell, 1994). As the circumstances(i.e. geographical dispersion of survey subjects) and the limited resources did not allow tophysically meet the identified practitioners, we prepared a structured questionnaire with allrelevant survey questions to be filled in by practitioners. The first part of the questionnaireincluded identification questions (e.g. name, scope, start and end dates). The second part of thequestionnaire included five questions intended to gather practitioners' opinion on success factorsby inquiring overall results, initiative's innovation, lessons learnt, problems encountered andcritical success factors. These were open questions, hence respondents did not select, rank or ratepredetermined factors but rather were free to provide any factor they felt relevant.

Step 3. The contact persons of the 230 gathered initiatives were contacted and kindly requested toprovide the name and contact details (email and telephone) for the initiative responsible thatwould be most relevant to answer to our survey. Then, the indicated persons were directlycontacted by our team and sent with the questionnaire. This step lasted for about four monthshence providing sufficient time to the practitioners to ask for clarifications wherever needed andto draft their answers. Assistance was provided through email but also through telephone whenneeded. Overall, 40 questionnaires were returned amounting to a 17.4% response rate.

Step 4. We performed methods' triangulation (Patton, 1999) in order to validate the information gatheredfrom the practitioner survey. In specific, we further used one additional research method foridentifying practitioners' success factors, namely desktop research. This research included examining

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the initiatives' website and searching online for official documentation, references by the media andarticles in journals and conferences. Amongst the numerous references located we were able toidentify some sources discussing specific success factors. Most such references were available inePractice.eu, a portal of European practitioners in eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth, and inconference papers/presentations, whilst fewer were found in official documentation and mediaarticles. We should point out here that desktop research took into account only the success factorsmentioned as such in the documentation—authors did not try to elicit factors or evaluate statedfactors. Overall, desktop research contributed success factors to 7 initiatives.

Step 5. Thefinal step refers to analysing and comparing the gathered evidence from the literature review andthe practitioner survey and desktop research. This was performed through two non-automated(performed by the authors and without using any text mining tool) checks. First, we examinedwhether practitioners (questionnaire survey and desktop research) mentioned each of the factorsspotted in the literature review. Second,we examinedwhether the practitioners contributed any newfactors not mentioned in the scientific literature. Even if just one practitioner mentioned a factor, thisfactor would qualify for inclusion in the proposed factor list. The final result was the validated modelof eParticipation success factors.

The response rate (17.4%) of the email survey is relatively low, however we consider it satisfactory for anemail survey that provided no incentives to respondents (e.g. nomonetary or publicity incentives). However,it is worth noting a few limitations that affected the response rate. We believe that the response rate wouldhave been higher if a screening of initiatives was performed, e.g. we intentionally did not exclude initiativesthat were officially terminated as someone might still be available to respond to the survey. Moreover, thequestionnaire was only available in English and all written and verbal communications with practitionerswere also performed in English. Thus, practitioners with poor English skills may have been discouraged totake part in the survey. However, as a mitigationmeasure to this limitation, desktop researchwas performedutilising the web-based automatic translation services, so it included evidence offered in different languages.

3. Literature review

This section presents the results of our literature review. As explained previously, the literature reviewhas been conducted in the field of both eGovernment and eParticipation. We therefore present the resultsof each field in the relevant sub-sections followed by a discussion.

3.1. eGovernment success factors

We have focused our eGovernment literature review in 7 publications which, after reviewing theavailable literature, propose specific and relevant success factors for eGovernment initiatives.

Evangelidis, Akomode, Taleb-Bendiab, and Taylor (2002) were probably the first to propose successfactors for eGovernment implementations. Their approach included technological/implementation factors,social/human factors, financial and legal factors, however they only analysed the first two factor categories.

Gichoya (2005) proposed a categorisation of key factors in ICT implementation in government resultingfrom a combined work of literature review and preliminary studies within the context of KenyaneGovernment. According to Gichoya, factors for success may be categorised to drivers and enablers. Driversencourage or reinforce the successful implementation of ICT projects, whereas enablers are the activeelements present in society that help to overcome the potential barriers. Furthermore, Gichoya also proposedfactors for failure since their presence constraints the proper implementation of ICT projects. Factors forfailure were categorised into barriers and inhibitors. Barriers act as occurrences that hinder ICTimplementation; inhibitors do not necessarily prevent the implementation of ICT projects but rather preventadvancement and restrict successful implementation and sustainability.

Chircu and Lee (2005) argued that successful eGovernment implementation can be achieved byincreasing the potential value and reducing the associated risks. Based on this approach and theexamination of successful local, federal and state eGovernment initiatives in the USA, they proposed sixkey success factors for maximising eGovernment value.

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The most comprehensive, although highly IT oriented, contribution to eGovernment success factorscame probably from Gil-Garcia and Pardo (2005). Examining the latest literature in public administration,Gil-Garcia and Pardo made a thorough review of publications in the field of eGovernment success factorsand IT success factors, resulting in a comprehensive list of challenges and success factors, classified in fivechallenge categories.

At the same time, Torres, Pina, and Royo (2005) studied the features relevant for successfulimplementation of eGovernment by interviewing 8 regional and local governments across EU employing atwo-round Delphi process. According to this paper, success will come by tackling all the issues identifiedunder the following categories: major drivers and barriers for eGovernment development, benefits foradministrations and governments, priorities for creating benefits for the citizens, and fears in eGovernmentimplementation. It should be noted that information and facilities of eGovernment web sites (e.g. facilitatingarchive search, including a FAQ section)were also reported but are not considered further as they do not offerany input relevant to our research, i.e. they are not relevant to designing an eParticipation initiative.

Altameem, Zairi, and Sarmad (2006) studied the literature with the purpose to identify the factorsleading to success and failure of eGovernment implementations. Their proposed model included threefactor categories, namely governing factors, technical factors and organisational factors.

More recently, Rose and Grant (2010) performed a literature review on the experiences of differentgovernments to identify critical planning and implementation issues that may impact the successprobability of eGovernment. Based mostly on a marketing approach, they came up with six differentcategories of critical issues for success: programme management, customer relationship management,product-related, place-related, promotion-related, and price-related issues.

The aforementioned publications employed different categorisations and study perspectives within theeGovernment field. Nonetheless, a concrete set of factors may be extracted from each of these sevenindividual works. We present these factors in Table 1. Furthermore, an extended table mapping literaturedata with the extracted success factors is presented in the Appendix A.

Table 1Success factors for eGovernment.

Success Factor Evangelidiset al. (2002)

Gichoya(2005)

Chircu andLee (2005)

Gil-Garciaand Pardo(2005)

Torres et al.(2005)

Altameemet al. (2006)

Rose andGrant(2010)

Scope and goals ✓ ✓ ✓

Vision/strategy ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Organisational structures,processes and data

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Integration and compliance ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Management and planning ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Security and privacy ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Employee training ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Sustainability ✓ ✓

Organisational culture andcollaboration

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Digital divide, disabled and desiredtarget groups/user training

✓ ✓ ✓

Change management ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

User needs and expectations ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Support from government/management

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Technology advances/constraints

✓ ✓

Good practice ✓ ✓

Funding ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Value for citizens ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Value for government/organisation

✓

Leader/champion ✓ ✓ ✓

Policy and legal environment ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Promotion plan ✓ ✓

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3.2. eParticipation success factors

We have focused our eParticipation literature review in 4 publications, one addressing key challengesfor success and three describing specific evaluation criteria for determining success.

More specifically, Sæbø et al. (2010) provided a critical review of the existing literature in order toidentify key challenges for designing and managing political discussion forums (which can be regardedas the dominant tool used in eParticipation). Based on a previously defined model (Sæbø et al., 2008),they conceptualised eParticipation as a sociotechnical system with five elements (activities, actors,contextual factors, effects and evaluation) and proposed key design andmanagement challenges for eachelement.

Macintosh and Whyte (2008) proposed an evaluation framework comprised of evaluation criteria thatcovered three different perspectives of an eParticipation initiative, namely the democratic, project andsocio-technical perspective. The democratic perspective considers the overarching democratic criteria thatthe eParticipation initiative is addressing whilst the project perspective examines in detail the specificaims and objectives of the eParticipation initiative. Finally, the socio-technical perspective considers towhat extent the design of the ICTs used directly affects the outcomes.

The aforementioned framework by Macintosh and Whyte has been adapted and expanded within thecontext of DEMO-net project (Aichholzer et al., 2008) and within a later attempt to apply it in practice(Aichholzer & Westholm, 2009). In the latter, the framework was refined retaining the same threeperspectives and most of the criteria and introducing additional sub-criteria.

More recently, Loukis et al. (2010) developed a framework for evaluating eParticipation pilots in thelegislation development processes of parliaments. Based on Information Systems evaluation, publicparticipation evaluation and electronic participation evaluation efforts, Loukis et al. proposed a final set of48 criteria classified under three evaluation perspectives, namely process, system and outcome. Theprocess perspective assesses the process that has been followed in the particular eParticipation project,the system perspective assesses the usability and technical quality of the ICT that has been used, and theoutcome perspective assesses the results from a political viewpoint concerning stakeholders' extent ofparticipation, contributions, interaction and satisfaction, as well as impacts on the quality, the acceptanceand the applicability of the legislation under development.

As with eGovernment literature, the success factors extracted from eParticipation literature arepresented in the table below (Table 2), whilst the table depicting the mapping between literature data andthe extracted success factors is presented in the Appendix A.

Table 2Success factors for eParticipation.

Success Factor Sæbø et al.(2010)

Macintosh andWhyte (2008)

Aichholzer andWestholm (2009)

Loukis et al.(2010)

Scope and goals ✓

Organisational structures, processes and data ✓ ✓

Management and planning ✓ ✓

Security and privacy ✓ ✓ ✓

Employee training ✓

Sustainability ✓ ✓ ✓

Digital divide, disabled and desired target groups/usertraining

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

User needs and expectations ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Support from government/management ✓

Technology advances/constraints ✓ ✓

Good practice ✓

Value for citizens ✓ ✓ ✓

Value for government/organisation ✓ ✓ ✓

Promotion plan ✓

Participation process, policy making stage and roles ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Monitoring and evaluation plan ✓

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3.3. Discussion on literature review findings

Most factors extracted have beenmentioned in literature from both fields. However, 7 factors (i.e. “Vision/strategy”, “Integration and compliance”, “Organisational culture and collaboration”, “Change management”,“Funding”, “Leader/champion”, and “Policy and legal environment”) are only mentioned in eGovernmentliterature, whilst 2 factors (i.e. “Participation process, policy making stage and roles”, “Monitoring andevaluation plan”) are only mentioned in eParticipation literature. To a certain degree we find this differencejustified. eGovernment projects are usuallymuch larger, more permanent andmore strategically-driven thaneParticipation projects whichmay be of a short duration or of a limited scope. Hence, eGovernment literaturerefers to the importance of following a vision and strategy, of handling change and appointing a champion, ofconsidering organisational culture and collaboration, and of effectively managing funds. Similarly, thespecificity of eParticipation projects justifies the explicit reference of detailing the participation process andproperly aligning it to policy making. Nonetheless, we found that all factors extracted from the two literaturereviews were relevant to our research objectives and we decided to retain them all for juxtaposing topractitioner input.

Moreover, we noticed that some literature publications propose actual success factors (in the format ofnouns) whilst other publications actually propose the specific activities that should be performed to achievesuccess (in the form of phrases providing directions or guidelines). We found this differentiation interestingand helpful for our work, because it helped us enrich the finally proposed model with specific guidelines forinitiatives' design.

4. Practitioner survey

In this section we present and discuss the results of the practitioner survey and desktop research.Before that, we provide information on the profile of the surveyed initiatives.

4.1. Surveyed initiatives

Our research sample draws experience from initiatives originating from 12 different countries acrossEurope. These are Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia,Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Most of the gathered initiatives originate from Germany (10)and the United Kingdom (6). With regard to the level of participation, the initiatives in our sample belong toall different levels. There is one international initiative and 9 initiatives referring to the European level whilstthe rest 30 initiatives refer to specific European countries at the national (14), regional (4) or local (12) levels.Furthermore, 80% of the initiatives were initiated and owned by public authorities, bodies and organisations,whilst the rest 20%were owned by NGOs, private or independent institutions, universities, or political parties.Around 1/4 of the respondents to our survey were project managers/general directors and 1/8 were onlineeditors/moderators and facilitators, whilst fewer were communication and marketing managers, consultingofficers and website administrators. In overall, it was estimated from their job description that 2/3 of therespondents held a senior position.

4.2. Results and discussion

In Table 3 we provide the results of the practitioner survey and desktop research juxtaposed with theresults of literature review. The table depicts whether a factor was mentioned by practitioners as well asthe factor's frequency, namely the number of practitioners that proposed this success factor.

It is evident from Table 3 that practitioners' input justifies literature review findings. Practitionersmentioned most success factors derived from literature, and most factors were mentioned by manypractitioners. The fact that open questions were used in the survey (i.e. practitioners provided their ownsuccess factors, and no predetermined factors or proposed answers were provided) should behighlighted here.

Most practitioners reported three to four factors and elaborated each factor covering different notionsand considerations mentioned in the literature. They focused on their own experience, namely on successfactors that played a critical role in their own initiative according to its own specificities and needs. For

Table 3Success factors according to literature review, practitioner survey and desktop research.

Success Factor eGovernmentliterature

eParticipationliterature

Practitionersresearch

Scope and goals ✓ ✓

Vision/strategy ✓

Organisational structures, processes and data ✓ ✓

Integration and compliance ✓ ✓ (2)Management and planning ✓ ✓ ✓ (11)Security and privacy ✓ ✓ ✓ (5)Employee training ✓ ✓

Sustainability ✓ ✓ ✓ (2)Organisational culture and collaboration ✓ ✓ (1)Digital divide, disabled and desired target groups / User training ✓ ✓ ✓ (10)Change management ✓

User needs and expectations ✓ ✓ ✓ (18)Support from government/management ✓ ✓ ✓ (14)Technology advances/constraints ✓ ✓ ✓ (6)Good practice ✓ ✓ ✓ (3)Funding ✓ ✓ (4)Value for citizens ✓ ✓ ✓ (25)Value for government/organisation ✓ ✓ ✓ (6)Leader/champion ✓ ✓ (3)Policy and legal environment ✓

Promotion plan ✓ ✓ ✓ (15)Participation process, policy making stage and roles ✓ ✓ (9)Monitoring and evaluation plan ✓ ✓ (3)

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example, all practitioners involved in e-voting or e-polling initiatives reported “Security and privacy” as animportant success factor.

Practitioners did not mention six factors, namely “Scope and goals”, “Vision/strategy”, “Organisationalstructures, processes and data”, “Employee training”, “Change management” and “Policy and legalenvironment”. This is reasonable as some of these factors usually refer to larger, strategic implementations,e.g. “Scope and goals”, “Vision/strategy”. Similarly, it is possible that for the type of the surveyed initiatives(mostly stand-alone, small-scale applications or pilot trials with targeted objectives) factors such as“Organisational structures, processes and data”, and “Change management”were probably not dealt with bypractitioners. Another reason for this finding is what Borman and Janssen (2012) also suggest: some successfactors may tend towards being universal in nature whilst others are more context-specific. Thus,practitioners may have focused more on the context-specific success factors in their answers. For thesereasons we decided to maintain these six factors in our proposed model.

Another important finding of the practitioner survey and desktop research is that no new success factoremerged from it. In other words, practitioners only referred to factors already mentioned in the literature.This meant that current literature seemed to have captured all different success aspects for designing aneParticipation initiative. Furthermore, it was an indication that the factors of Table 3 were comprehensiveenough to allow us to proceed into drafting the proposed model of eParticipation success factors.

Before concluding the survey findings, we should point out that the figures provided in the last columnof Table 3 are presented only for completeness; the reader should not form the wrong impression thatthese figures are any kind of measure of importance or prioritisation of the reported success factors.

5. Proposed model of eParticipation success factors

In this section we present and discuss the proposed model of success factors for designingeParticipation initiatives. We constructed the model using the 23 success factors extracted from theliterature and practitioners. The corresponding activities associated with success factors were alsocollected through the literature review and practitioner survey. The final, proposed model of successfactors for designing eParticipation initiatives is provided in Table 4.

Table 4Proposed success factors for designing eParticipation initiatives.

Success factors Activities associated with success factors

Vision/strategy • Align to long-term goals and strategies• Coordinate with national, regional and local programmes

Scope and goals • Define clear and realistic goalsPolicy and legal environment • Align to ICT policies and standards

• Use an appropriate legal framework• Acquire a deep understanding of the relevant processes,policies, laws and regulations

Support from government/management • Ensure political will and drive• Ensure strong, consistent and active commitment by toppolitical persons and government executives

Management and planning • Appoint an experienced Project Management andBusiness Management expert

• Employ standard methods for system analysis and design• Follow a performance measurement methodology andperform risk management

• Ensure availability and adequacy of needed resources(time, financial, technical and human resources)

Funding • Consider various funding optionsOrganisational structures, processes and data • Ensure that internal organisation structure and processes are

appropriate for handling the newinitiative—redesign may be needed

• Ensure that online services are appropriatelyconnected with offline actions

• Ensure a clear delineation of responsibility and accountabilityalso for the online services

• Ensure that processes for the online services'operation and update exist

Integration and compliance • Address problems of integration/compatibility with othersystems and standards

Security and privacy • Build an absolutely secure system• Protect participants' personal data (privacy)• Ensure confidentiality from third parties (e.g. hackers)but also from government

• Convince citizens that the system is fully secure and privateTechnology advances/constraints • Keep up with technological advances, modernization and

globalization especially when such advances are used bycitizens in other interactions (e.g. in e-commerce)

• Consider infrastructure and information constraints• Ensure technical quality

Good practice • If available, exploit available good practice ICT solutionsOrganisational culture and collaboration • Ensure cross-departmental collaboration and knowledge-sharing

• Avoid cultural conflicts and problems inside the organizationUser needs and expectations • Identify all relevant stakeholders and involve

them in the design process• Address user needs and expectations• Consult users continuously and get feedback throughdemonstrations and prototypes

• Design a system that is appealing, yet simple and easy to use• Consider error handling, easy reversal of actions, and helpdesk• Ensure system's appropriateness for the targeted participants

Value for citizens • Ensure transparency• Offer improved quality and efficiency to users• Offer flexibility, e.g. combine online and offline channels for eParticipation• Ensure that government responsiveness and accountabilityis not lessened for online services

• Consider citizens' convenience, e.g. one-stop solutions also for eParticipation• Ensure that the online content is clear and understandableby citizens, of appropriate quantity and quality

• Ensure that feedback is provided to participants• Show how the initiative strengthens the decision-making process

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Table 4 (continued)

Success factors Activities associated with success factors

• Pursue quality and pluralism of contributions• Target improved citizen satisfaction and wellbeing

Value for government/organisation • Plan for effectiveness, reduced time and cost for the organisation• Use the initiative to actually strengthen thedecision-making process

• Target improved satisfaction of decision-makersand public servants

• Pursue added-value for the government, e.g. by increasingcountry's competitive advantage and improving theimage of administration

Digital divide, disabled and desired targetgroups/user training

• Ensure access for all citizens, e.g. through public access points• Ensure that the initiative's target group is actually involved(e.g. young/old people, minorities, etc.)

• Ensure that the disabled are offered equal chances to participate• Address the issue of digital divide• Educate and train users• Aim at representation and political equality

Employee training • Educate and train staff• Acquire skilled personnel

Participation process, policy makingstage and roles

• Define the involved actors and their roles and responsibilities• Define the scope of the process and link it to decision-makingstages and to the wider political landscape

• Put in place processes for conflict resolution and consensus building• Consider ways to capture audience attention and involvethem in in-depth engagement

• Plan for contributions' analysis (e.g. data mining or otheralgorithms may be needed)

• Ensure that feedback mechanisms are incorporated inthe participation process

• Ensure high-quality moderationChange management • Mandate change

• Eliminate fear and deal with resistance to change• Consider internal leadership styles, culture and bureaucracy• Consider a reward system for employees

Leader/champion • Appoint a visionary champion to drive the initiativeboth internally and externally

Promotion plan • Set up a comprehensive promotion plan, utilizing the mostappropriate promotional activities for each stakeholder group

• Create awareness from the beginning; advertise initiative'svalue to citizens and other stakeholders

Monitoring and evaluation plan • Set up monitoring and evaluation mechanismsSustainability • Make provisions for the initiative's future maintenance and

improvement or expansion

Value for citizens

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6. Discussion and conclusion

Although there is ample literature for assessing success after an eParticipation initiative has ended, littleevidence exists on what to consider when preparing an eParticipation initiative so that the best possibleresults can be achieved. We believe that the model proposed in this paper narrows this literature gap byproposing a concrete set of success factors and associated activities for the design phase of an eParticipationinitiative. The proposed success factors and activities are adequately justified as they have been determinedthrough a systematic and comprehensive literature review in eGovernment and eParticipation and avalidation exercise capitalising on the experience of 40 practitioners across Europe. Moreover, the proposedsuccess factors cover awide spectrumof considerations including strategic,managerial, technical, operationaland societal aspects.

Following, we would like to discuss the nature of our research methodology and the resultingimplications as regards subjectivity, generalisability and replicability of findings. We believe that thepractitioner survey has been comprehensive enough having examined highly diverse initiatives as

able 5uccess factors for eGovernment.here: [1]: Evangelidis et al. (2002), [2]: Gichoya (2005), [3]: Chircu and Lee (2005), [4]: Gil-Garcia and Pardo (2005), [5]: Torres et

l. (2005), [6]: Altameem et al. (2006), [7]: Rose and Grant (2010).

Suggested by literature Success factor

Have clear targets for the project [1]Clear and realistic goals [4]Clearly define the goals and scope of theeGovernment initiative [7]

Set clear scope and goals

Vision and strategy [2]Long-term political goals and objectives [5]Vision, strategy [6]Build a strategy that has specific strategicthrusts and actions, political and bureaucraticsupport and sufficient funding, coordinate federal,provincial, and local eGovernment programs [7]

Act based on a vision/strategy

Have standardised and classified services, identifyrequired services of the establishment [1]Conduct Business Process Reengineering inpreparation for eGovernment [3]Previous business process improvement [4]Citizen relationship management (making better useof available information), organisation structure,business process re-engineering [6]Pay sufficient attention to change management policy,processes, laws and regulations, i.e. eGovernment is notjust about technology, ensure that internal governmentstructure and processes are redesigned to account forjob and information flow changes, ensure the cleardelineation of responsibility and accountability for allinformation and services provided. An eGovernmentinitiative should not be allowed to lessen the accountabilityof government officials, ensure processes that connect theelectronic services to follow-up on physical actions byapplicable government agencies are in place and that follow-upis built-in, ensure that processes are in place that will keep thesite up-to-date and running properly [7]

Re-align/optimise organisationstructure, data and processes

Address problem of integration [1]Poor data systems and lack of compatibility [2]Quality and compliance assurance [4]IT standards [6]

Ensure integration and compliance

IT project management and business management expertsshould lead, have a strategy for risk management,sub-divide a large project, employ standard method ofrequirements identification and systems analysis [1]Effective project, coordination and change management,coordination [2]Divide and conquer, build a prototype [3]Overall plan, planning, clear milestones and measurabledeliverables, well-skilled and respected IT leader[technical and social skills], good communication [4]Implementation, technical staff (lack in number and skills) [6]Centralise funding and control, ensure the availability ofintangible human resources such as time and energy,develop and utilise a performance measurement methodology.Ensure adherence to performance standards, Ensure that thesystem's architectural approach is finalised first.This will impact all the applications and services which come later,Upfront and ongoing expenses can be larger than expected [7]

Perform effectivemanagement and planning

Consider all aspects of security for the system [1],Concerns about security and confidentiality,Loss of confidentiality, Increased control by government [5]Security [6]

Address security andprivacy issues

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TSWa

able 5 (continued)

Suggested by literature Success factor

Ensure that issues of privacy and security[and perceptions of same] receive adequate focus [7]

Educate and train staff, Educate and train public sector employees,Invest in human resources for better ICT, Improverelationship between public and private sector [1]Skilled personnel [2]Training, Project team skills and expertise, Adequate training [4]Inability to use new technologies properly,Increased pressure from users/customers,Inability to cope with increased speed [5]Training, Technical staff [lack in number and skills] [6]

Educate staff

Develop a plan for maintainability [1]Ensure that processes are in place that will keep thesite up-to-date and running properly [7]

Plan for sustainability

Avoid any cultural and collaboration problems [1]Leadership styles, culture and bureaucracy [2]Cross-departmental cooperation, lack of cooperationbetween administrations, knowledge sharing inside the country [5]Collaboration, organisational culture [6]Actively engage all applicable governmental levels andagencies and ensure that an effectivegovernance system is in place and maintained [7]

Consider organisational cultureand ensure collaboration

Address the issue of digital divide, employ standard methods ofsocial intervention, educate and train customers [1]Lack of skills among citizens, free internet access, access for all citizens,access 24/7, not all will have access, digital divide,better internet penetration [5]Ensure the ability of citizens to use the technologies involved,ensure that a lack of access to eGovernment is notpresent for the disadvantaged. This increases the gap in the digital divide,ensure that persons with disabilities have access to eGovernment,educate citizens about the scope and use of the specific eGovernment initiative [7]

Consider the digital divide andthe disabled/educate users

Reduce bureaucracy and eliminate fear [1]Effective project, coordination and change management,leadership styles, culture and bureaucracy, attitudes [2]Mandate change [3]Resistance to change within administration,Increased control on individual performance, Job cuts [5]Change management, reward system [6]Pay sufficient attention to change management policy, processes,laws and regulations, i.e. eGovernment is not just about technology [7]

Manage the change

Understand the needs of the customer [citizen, private sector,other governments] [1]Rising consumer expectations, user needs [2]Continual feedback from partners users, ease of use, usefulness,demonstrations and prototypes, identification of relevantstakeholders, end-user involvement [4]Citizen-centric [6]Utilise pilot projects and get user feedback, ensureinvolvement from all stakeholders, including citizens ofvarious ICT means and capabilities, develop a clearunderstanding upfront of which services would mostpositively impact the citizens. User focus groups indicative ofa wide gamut of citizens and businesses should be engaged tocomment on various approaches, services, and designs,be aware of the expectations being created and the impact ofnot meeting them, ensure that the information and servicesprovided are useful to the citizens, businesses and othercustomers, address language and communication issues [7]

Consider user needsand expectations

(continued on next page)

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T

Table 5 (continued)

Suggested by literature Success factor

Assess any political cost/implication [1]Government support, external pressure anddonor support, donor push [2]Executive leadership or sponsorship [4]Strong leadership from government, lack of politicalwill and drive [5]Top management support [6]Ensure strong, consistent and active leadership by toppolitical and bureaucratic management, ensure support ofsenior bureaucrats [7]

Ensure support fromgovernment/management

Technological change, modernization and globalization,infrastructure, technology [2]IT infrastructure, national information infrastructure [6]

Keep up with technologyadvances/considertechnology constraints

Good practice, transfer of ICT idolisers [2],Current or best practices review [4]

Exploit good practice

Finance [2]Adequate and innovative funding [4]Dedicated budgets [5]Funding [6]Consider various funding and system management options,including public, private, or a combination of both [7]

Ensure adequate funding

Offer one-stop eGovernment solution [3]Improved access to administrators and information,more transparency, improved efficiency, more cost-efficiency,participate more in democracy, improved quality,improve citizens' wellbeing, better customer satisfaction, more flexibilityRelative advantages, quality [6]Ensure that eGovernment does not lessen the responsiveness ofgovernment officials. It may be easier to provide a slow response to anelectronic communication than to a person on the phone or face-to-face [7]

Consider value for citizens

More flexibility, reduce cost, give country competitive advantage,rationalise procedures, improve image of administration,asset in European integration, improve local businesses' health,absence of real change [5]

Consider value forgovernment/organisation

Appoint visionary change agent [3]Leadership [6]Ensure strong, consistent and active leadership bytop political and bureaucratic management

Appoint a leader/champion

ICT policy [2]Information technology policies and standards, legislative support,strategic outsourcing and public/private partnerships [4]Long-term political goals and objectives, availability ofapproved standards, appropriate legal framework [5]Policy and legal issues [6]Understand the legal ramifications of false or incorrect information,pay sufficient attention to change management policy, processes,laws and regulations, i.e. eGovernment is not just about technology [7]

Align to policy andlegal environment

Awareness [6]Convince citizens that eGovernment has value for them [7]

Set up a promotion plan

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regards country of origin, activities' type, and respondents' job position. Obviously, a certain degree ofsubjectivity in the reported results does exist as they have been gathered in a qualitative way accordingto authors' interpretation of practitioners' input. One could argue that this subjectivity as well as thespecific and unique context of the surveyed initiatives prohibits generalisability and replicability. Theanswer to such potential criticisms is that a certain lack of objectivity, generalisability and replicabilityis completely acceptable in qualitative research, not to say originally sought for. In qualitative researchthe focus is on understanding and interpretating complex social phenomena under a fluid and flexibleprism so that abstractions, patterns and concepts inductively emerge in a natural, unbiased manner

Table 6Success factors for eParticipation.Where: [1]: Sæbø et al. (2010), [2]: Macintosh and Whyte (2008), [3]: Aichholzer and Westholm (2009), [4]: Loukis et al. (2010).

Suggested by literature Success factor

Clarity of objectives [4] Set clear scope and goalsWhich politicians and administrators should beinvolved in the participation process,and what are their roles? [1]Process quality [3]

Re-align and/or optimiseorganisation structure,data and processes

Project management [3]Adequacy of time, adequacy of resources(human, technical, financial) [4]

Perform effective managementand planning

Trust and security [2]Trust and security [3]Participants' personal data protection [4]

Address security andprivacy issues

Sustainability [3] Educate staffWhat considerations should be made in the design andongoing maintenance of the forum? [1]Sustainability [3]Willingness of stakeholders to reuse the systems and processes [4]

Plan for sustainability

eParticipation exercises can be invalidated if they are unrepresentative,and risk favoring the already privileged technology-literate elite,user competence needs to be developed not only to becometechnological literate but even more training and education isneeded for major stakeholder groups in participationprocesses and use of web applications [1]Representation, political equality, accessibility [2]Representation, political equality, accessibility,engaging with a wider audience [3]Accessibility by people with disabilities, extent of participationof less politically involved groups [e.g. young people, minorities,lower socio-economic classes, etc.] affected by the legislationunder development, extent of participation of citizens affectedby the legislation under development, extent of participation of themain interest groups affected by or associated with the legislationunder development, extent of participation of independent experts [4]

Consider the digital divide,the disabled and the desiredtarget group/educate users

Major user groups need to be identified and addressed whendeveloping political discussion forums [1]Engaging with a wider audience, appeal, navigation andorganisation, efficiency and flexibility, error recovery [2]Navigation and organisation, efficiency and flexibility,error recovery, process quality, appeal and usage [3]Appropriateness of the ICT system for engaging thetargeted participants, general ease of use of the ICTsystem by the participants, organisation, simplicity andclarity of screens, simple error handling, user control ofthe pace of interaction, easy reversal of actions, ease ofaccessing the background information provided to the participants,ease of posting a contribution in the forum, technical quality[response time, downtime, etc.] [4]

Consider user needs andexpectations

Clarity concerning the main political sponsor, commitment of thecompetent politicians and public servants, extent ofparticipation of members of the parliament, extent ofparticipation of experts from the responsible/competent ministry [4]

Ensure support fromgovernment/management

System security [3]Technical quality (response time, downtime, etc.) [4]

Keep up with technologyadvances/considertechnology constraints

Process quality, good practice [3] Exploit good practiceProviding feedback to citizens, appeal, obtaining betterinformed opinions, trust and security, relevance and legitimacy,content clarity, responsiveness, appeal and usage [2]Obtaining better informed opinions, trust and security,

Consider value for citizens

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Table 6 (continued)

Suggested by literature Success factor

relevance and legitimacy, content clarity, responsiveness,appeal and usage, feedback behaviour [3]Quantity and quality of the background informationprovided to the participants (how complete, objective,correct, reliable, relevant, useful and clear/understandablethis information was), feedback to the participants concerninghow their contributions will be [or have been] used andintegrated in the parliamentary decision-making process,the time required to complete the process in relation to thetime previously needed, the multiplicity of channels forparticipation provided to stakeholders, informed contributions,quality of contributions, pluralism of contributions, extent ofinteraction among participants' [number of contributionson other participants' contributions], generation of usefulinformation, knowledge and views concerning the topic ofthe legislation under development, which can be useful forimproving it, extent of strengthening the parliamentarydecision-making process, satisfaction of the citizens whoparticipated, satisfaction of the independent experts whoparticipated [4]

Cost effective analysis of contributions [2]Effectiveness [3]The time required to complete the process in relation tothe time previously needed, impact on perceived transparencyand trust to government, extent of strengthening the parliamentarydecision-making process, satisfaction of the members of parliamentwho participated, satisfaction of the experts from theresponsible/competent ministry who participated [4]

Consider value forgovernment/organisation

Appropriate promotion to potential participants [4] Set up a promotion planAre the actors primarily the receivers of proposals or commentsderiving value from the participation process, or are theydirectly engaged?, what considerations should be made inthe design and ongoing maintenance of the forum?,eParticipation projects cannot focus on the provision of asoftware solution, without considering the governanceimplications of what they do or the wider political landscape.The challenge is to not make assumptions about howeParticipation will contribute to political realities [1]Engagement, transparency, enabling more in-depth consultation,conflict and consensus, community control [2]Conflict and consensus, community control, support of engagement,transparency and accountability, feedback behaviour,community development, scope of deliberation, interaction [3]Clarity concerning the participants and the roles andresponsibilities of each, quality of the facilitator/moderator,analysis of contributions of participants, publication of theresults and conclusions of the analysis of contributions,feedback to the participants concerning how their contributionswill be [or have been] used and integrated in the parliamentarydecision-making process, adequacy of the whole e-participationproject design, extent of conflicts management and consensusbuilding, impact of participants contributions on the legislationunder development, impact on acceptance andapplicability of this legislation [4]

Detail the participation process,policy making stage and roles

To evaluate and potentially improve the outcome of sucheParticipation initiatives, indicators and baselines forthe desired outcomes and evaluation criteria that need tobe established, and data collected and analyzed accordingly.Learning could then result in improved practice,including tool or service redesign [1]

Plan for monitoring andevaluation of the process

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(Bryman, 1984; Creswell, 1994). Furthermore, as Lee and Baskerville (2003) explain, the statistical,sampling-based concept of generalisability should not be applied in nonstatistical, nonsamplingresearch that seeks to generalise empirical descriptions to theory.

Process and results reported in this paper are in line with previous research on success factors. Inspecific, our experience and findings from the practitioner survey and desktop research support threeconclusions that were previously provided by Borman and Janssen (2012). First, a comprehensive modelof success factors should include factors that are not only focused on outcomes and on the implementationprocess but also on the operating environment. Indeed, our proposed model includes all these three typesof factors. Second, success factors may be context-specific or universal in nature or even somewherein-between. For example, there are factors identified in our survey that may apply to all eParticipationinitiatives (e.g. scope and goals, promotion plan) whilst others may apply to initiatives of a specific type(e.g. security and privacy). Third, research should not be limited to trying to extract success factors that arepresent in a case or project but also consider success factors that may be absent. This was evident frompractitioners' feedback who effortlessly contributed factors their initiatives lacked.

We envision our model being used by practitioners not as a cookbook but rather as a guidance. Softwareengineers designing eParticipation systems could use the model for improving system design and efficiency.eParticipation practitioners can adapt the model according to their specific aims and circumstances (e.g.political, social, cultural and linguistic circumstances) and focus more on the success factors that seem to bemost important for their own initiative. As our survey also showed, most practitioners found only a fewsuccess factors as decisive for their initiative. Hence, if practitioners identify these factors from the beginningand focus their attention on resolving related issues, then the initiative's success potential can be improved. Inthis context, we believe that the proposed model constitutes a useful tool for different kinds of practitioners.

We believe that our model will be useful also to academics for further advancing research in theeParticipation field. One direction for further research would be to closely study the relationship betweensuccess factors and types of eParticipation initiatives, as we expect that specific factors will relate more tocertain types of initiatives. For example, addressing security issues will most probably relate more withinitiatives involving voting or polling procedures. However, other, less obvious relationships can be alsounveiled following this research direction. Results from this research would provide further guidance topractitioners implementing a specific type of eParticipation initiative. Another research directionwould be toperform a practitioners' survey following a quantitative method, so that the gathered measurable results areused to statistically assess each factor's relationship to success. It would also be interesting to study themodel's application on a certain case and study how and to what degree the model actually providedguidance and contributed to success. Finally, work reported in this paper could also feed back to the differentevaluation frameworks for eParticipation providing an opportunity to refine the proposed evaluation criteria.

Acknowledgement

Authors would like to acknowledge that the work reported in this paper has been partially funded bythe European Union under the “Study and supply of services on the development of eParticipation in theEU (European eParticipation)”, a study conducted on behalf of the European Commission—more details athttp://islab.uom.gr/eP/. In addition, the authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers andthe editor for their useful comments which assisted in substantially improving the quality of this paper.

Appendix A

In this appendix, we present the mapping between literature data and the extracted success factors foreGovernment (Table 5) and eParticipation (Table 6).

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