Our presentation during the European Conference on E-Government of June 2011 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The full paper is published in the proceedings (2011, 399-405) and in the special issue on Technology Design for E‐Government: Issues and Implications of the International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development (2012, 4[1], 52-61).

1. the workload for
the structural implementation of e-democracy:
local government policy issues
combined with the policy cycle and styles of citizenship
Martijn Hartog | researcher | eSociety Institute

2. context
main interest:
the practical reality of implementing e-democracy
supporting existing local government democratic procedures
what ‘workload’ would large scale and structural deployment cause?
how many active policy dossiers does a city have?
what kind and what complexity?
what audience and what participatory interest?

3. research questions
how many policy issues are active at one time
how many citizens are interested in e-participation
how many policy issues should/could be supported by digital tools

4. research setup
number of policy issues: inventory of all municipal agendas
participatory value: position on a ‘policy cycle’
citizen’s interest: relate to ‘styles of citizenship’

5. research environment
a single municipality
The Hague, the Netherlands (450.000 inhabitants)
period: 1 council term - 3 years | issues: 1834 in total / 1223 policy issues

6. research result (1)
the number of issues in a municipal democracy
200-300 annually
issues divided along policy cycle
597
334
227
177
95
20
I III V
II IV
(0) agenda
preparation
determi
execution
monitoring
setting nation evaluation
total: 1223 policy issues

7. research results (2)
possible interest in democratic issues:
4 ‘styles of citizenship’
( outsiders / inactive )
dutiful / dependent
pragmatic / conformist
society critic / responsible

8. research results (2)
adaptation of 8 style generic ‘lifestyles model’ in Dutch population
developed for Ministry of the Interior | researched on population of The Hague

9. research results (2)
municipality of The Hague (450.000)
number of policy issues online | population interested
lifestyle population issues/1yr issues/3 years
outsiders (inactive)
dutiful 31.500 (7%) 73 (218)
pragmatic 157.500 (35%) 81 (243)
society critic 117.700 (26%) 180 (540)
policy issues/yr 275.000 (60%) 260 (1001)

10. research conclusion
large scale deployment of e-democracy
in the municipality of The Hague would mean
supporting 250 active online democracy dossiers annually
the questions:
what supporting process?
what organisation?
what online tools and representation?

11. prioritizing e-democracy issues
e-support for democracy may be estimated
using democratic desirability and operational complexity
democratic
necessity
the easy the challenge
high democratic necessity high democratic necessity
easy to realize hard to realize
operational
complexity
the extra the long term
low democratic necessity low democratic necessity
easy to realize hard to realize

12. future directions
a model for local governments:
fine-tuning the current model
review mapping using policy cycle / styles of citizenship
benchmarking smaller and medium sized cities
creating general model estimating municipalities ‘workload’ for e-democracy
online democratic dossiers:
designing online dossiers
what elements, what form, what quality

13. related questions
for all of The Netherlands it might mean 20.000 active policy dossiers online
how do these determine democratic quality?
what quality of democratic participation is possible?
what kind of design issues are associated with this?

14. full papers
Mulder, B. & Hartog, M. (2012), Determine the Workload of the Structural
Implementation of E-Democracy: Local Government Policy Issues, Policy Cycle
and Styles of Citizenship Combined, International Journal of Information
Communication Technologies and Human Development, special theme issue on
Technology Design for E-Governance: Issues and Implications, 4(1), 52-61, ISSN:
1935-5661, EISSN: 1935-567X
Mulder, A.W. & Hartog, M.W. (2011), The Workload for the Structural
Implementation of eDemocracy: Local Government Policy Issues combined with
the Policy Cycle and Styles of Citizenship, in Conference proceedings of the 11th
European Conference on e-Government, Academic Conferences, 399-405, ISBN:
978-1-908272-00-3 Book

15. the workload for
the structural implementation of e-democracy:
local government policy issues
combined with the policy cycle and styles of citizenship
Martijn Hartog (m.w.hartog@hhs.nl) | researcher | eSociety Institute