Design considerations for supporting online, analytic-deliberative, public participation

“Meaningful participation” can be defined in terms of access to voice and competence of knowledge(s) that fosters shared understanding about values, interests, and concerns. Recent research about “analytic-deliberative” decision processes shows that meaningful public participation is possible, and decision outcomes are improved. The analytic component provides technical information that ensures broad-based, competent perspectives are treated. The deliberative component provides an opportunity to interactively give voice to choices about values, alternatives, and recommendations. Unfortunately, such public participation has been expensive and time consuming, and thus involved small groups. An Internet system that includes geographic information system technology that supports an analytic-deliberative process might be one way to facilitate meaningful participation in large groups, while holding down the cost to all publics who wish to participate. However, the core question underlying this system design addresses how to structure analytic-deliberative process to support democratic decision-making: What system designs and capabilities support structured analytic-deliberative process, while enabling a flexible process of participatory (re)articulation of decision process goals and objectives? Our approach to this question is two-part: informed by principles of deliberative democracy and rationalized in terms of analytic-deliberative process, we analyze methods of structured participation and develop a normative framework of participatory actions; and through a user research strategy that enables us to empirically challenge assumptions in this framework while iteratively refining the system design to better reflect the needs and perspectives of actual users.