| Abstract: | Most public policy problems are ‘wicked’, being characterised by high complexity, many heterogeneous views and conflicts among various stakeholders. Therefore citizens interested to participate in such debates in order to be sufficiently informed should study large amounts of relevant material, such as reports, laws, committees’ minutes, etc., which are in legalistic or in other specialist languages, or very often their substance is hidden in political rhetoric, putting barriers to a meaningful participation. In this paper we present the results of the research we have conducted for addressing this problem through the use of ‘Computer Supported Argument Visualization’ (CSAV) methods for supporting and enhancing e-participation in the legislation formation process. This approach has been implemented in a pilot e-participation project and then evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative methods based on the ‘Technology Acceptance Model’ (TAM), with positive results. Based on the conclusions of this evaluation an enrichment of the IBIS framework has been developed for improving the visualization of legal documents. |
|---|
Greek