A New Agenda for E-Democracy

Forum Participants Richard Allan, MP, Secretary, UK Parliament e-Democracy Group Joanne Caddy, Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development, OECD Stephen Coleman, Oxford Internet Institute, UK Pierre de la Coste, author of L’Hyper-République, Paris Chrisoph Dowe, Politik Digital, Germany William Dutton, Oxford Internet Institute, UK Paul Herrnson, University of Maryland, College Park, USA Norman J. Jacknis, Westchester County, New York, USA Peter Kellner, YouGov, UK On May 7, 2004, the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), Oxford University, UK, hosted a day long forum on electronic democracy. The forum was co-sponsored by the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR), University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA. Professors Stephen Coleman of OII and Donald F. Norris of MIPAR were the principal leaders of the forum. They were assisted by Professor William Dutton, OII Director, and Ms. Victoria Nash, OII Policy and Research Officer. The forum was supported by funds from British Telecom, Cisco and the U.S. National Science Foundation (Award No. IIS-0425766). The purpose of the forum was to bring together leading practitioners and academics in the field of electronic democracy for a focused discussion on this important subject. Forum participants included 25 practitioners (16 from the UK and Europe; eight from the U.S.) and six academics (four from the UK and Europe; two from the U.S. — not including the program leaders). Professors Coleman and Norris selected the practitioner participants based on the e-democracy programs, projects or initiatives that they or their organizations and governments had developed and/or operated. The academic participants were invited based on their theoretical insights or empirical knowledge about e-democracy. All participants are considered to be on the leading edge of e-democracy practice or theory. In addition to their participation in the forum, the practitioners also provided written policy or project briefs describing their e-democracy initiatives. The following is a summary of a report written by Professors Coleman and Norris that presents the results of the forum. The full report is available at the following urls: www.oii.ox.ac.uk and www.umbc.edu/mipar.