José María Moreno‐Jiménez, Cristina Pérez‐Espés and Maria Wimmer
problems. The democratisation of this knowledge is the main aim of New Public Governance( NPG). Values of a global ambit, such as discussion, dialogue, the search for and dissemination of knowledge, the strengthening of ethical and moral values, learning, accountability, freedom, cohesion, equity, solidarity and education should be promoted in new models of democracy for the KS( cognitive democracies).
The determination of the most appropriate model of e‐governance( or e‐participation in policy making) for addressing the needs and challenges of a given epoch is by no means an original topic of debate and discussion( García and Moreno‐Jiménez, 2008). Neither is its assessment. In the last few years, more and more e‐ participation practices and methods( Rowe & Frewer, 2000; 2004) have been developed but there are almost no rigorous evaluation approaches ready for application in this field( Henderson et al., 2005; Janssen & Kies, 2005; Winkler, 2007); emerging frameworks are still embryonic( Macintosh & Whyte, 2008; Aichholzer & Allhutter, 2008).
Most contributions concentrate on the informational aspect of the accountability and transparency of websites and tools( Pina et al., 2007; Serrano‐Cinca et al., 2009a, b) or on benchmarking approaches to e‐ participation( UN, 2005, 2008) but they lack an in‐depth analysis of quality and neglect impacts. Others address wider ranging issues such as the quality of democracy( Coppedge & Reinicke, 1990; Diamond & Morlino, 2005) or governance( Skelcher et al., 2005; Schmitter, 2005) and offer relevant criteria that are not specifically adapted to e‐participation in policy making. Existing deficits regarding evaluation are confirmed by scholars calling for more research into the effectiveness of electronic forms of public engagement( Rowe & Gammack, 2004).
According to the European Commission, impact evaluation‘ identifies and assesses the problem at stake and the objectives pursued’; it assesses the final purposes of a particular policy instrument or a package of instruments( Hamelink et al 2008). Enhanced impact evaluation further provides information as to why the performance of a policy instrument was better or worse than expected, in order to derive best practices or feedback for improving the worse cases. The evaluation results show whether the e‐participation initiative has been successful.
Mamaqui and Moreno‐Jiménez( 2009) and Moreno‐Jiménez, Pérez‐Espés and Rivera( 2012a, b) proposed a methodology for the evaluation of e‐governance( e‐participation in policy making) models, particularly for the cognitive democracy known as e‐cognocracy, based on the three levels usually considered when analysing the behaviour of systems( Moreno‐Jiménez et al., 1998): efficiency( doing things correctly), efficacy( achieving goals), and effectiveness( doing the right things).
The next step is the development of a framework and a set of criteria, subcriteria and indicators for evaluating the impact of e‐participation experiences and collaborative democracy models in the context of the Knowledge Society and New Public Governance; more specifically, the evaluation of effectiveness( added public value). This paper presents some results of the application of this framework to real cases. The framework is currently being applied to a real‐life experience of e‐governance, based on the cognitive democracy known as e‐Cognocracy( Moreno‐Jiménez, 2003a, 2006), which was implemented in the municipality of Cadrete( Zaragoza), Spain. The methodology will be applied to a further set of e‐participation experiences to holistically integrate the impact of efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness into one comprehensive method.
The paper has been structured as follows: Section 2 explores the background to the evaluation of e‐ participation experiences in two contexts ‐ the Information Society and the Knowledge Society; Section 3 introduces a framework with the set of criteria, subcriteria and indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of e‐ participation experiences in the Knowledge Society; Section 4 describes the evaluation of a real‐life experience of e‐governance, based on e‐Cognocracy; Section 5 discusses the conclusions of the work and the orientation of future research.
2. Background
This section considers the different approaches followed in the scientific literature on the evaluation of e‐ participation in policy making( e‐governance) models. Firstly, it examines the more traditional techniques that focus on the informational aspect( efficiency and efficacy) of accountability and transparency of websites and
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