E-participation of citizens: regional level (the case of the Volgograd Region)

Abstract
The expert survey of government officials responsible for the information policy and using information technologies in their interaction with citizens in the Volgograd region was conducted to analyze the main aspects and prospects for e-participation development. The aims of the survey are to analyze the efficiency of e-participation services in the Volgograd region, to reveal the problems and obstacles that might limit the access to e-participation initiatives and to find the ways to overcome them, to evaluate the citizens' activity and awareness of government officials about the most important aspects of e-participation. The results of the expert survey show that the reasons for the insufficient level of e-participation in the Volgograd region are low activity of citizens, complexity of e-services and insufficient transparency of local governments. According to the experts’ viewpoint citizens of the Volgograd region have fewer opportunities in e-participation than citizens of the country as a whole. Only two e-participation mechanisms used in Russia are in demand in the Volgograd region – information delivery and citizens’ surveys. The research shows that local governments do not use many of the e-participation tools to interact with citizens.

Keywords
expert survey, e-participation, e-government, participatory culture, crowdsourcing, information policy, e-democracy, e-voting




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