Empowering open and collaborative governance : technologies and methods for online citizen engagement in public policy making The use of information and communication technologies to support public administrations governments and decision makers has been recorded for more than 20 years and dubbed e Government. Moving towards open governance roadmaps worldwide electronic participation and citizen engagement stand out as a new domain important both for decision makers and citizens; and over the last decade there have been a variety of related pilot projects and innovative approaches. With contributions from leading researchers Charalabidis and Koussouris provide the latest research findings such as theoretical foundations principles methodologies architectures technical frameworks cases and lessons learnt within the domain of open collaborative governance and online citizen engagement. The book is divided into three sections: Section one Public Policy Debate Foundations  lays the foundations regarding processes and methods for scoping planning evaluating and transforming citizen engagement. The second section Information and Communication Technologies for Citizen Participation  details practical approaches to designing and creating collaborative governance infrastructures and citizen participation for businesses and administrations. Lastly the third section on Future Research Directions of Open Collaborative ICT enabled Governance provides a constructive critique of the developments in the past and presents prospects regarding future challenges and research directions. The book is mainly written for academic researchers and graduate students working in the computer social political and management sciences. Its audience includes researchers and practitioners in e Governance public administration officials policy and decision makers at the local national and international level engaged in the design and creation of policies and services and ICT professionals engaged in e Governance and policy modelling projects and solutions. Publishers website Foreword: the research view Foreword: the policy view Preface Public policy debate foundations: processes and methods for scoping planning evaluating and transforming citizen engagement. Democratic legitimacy and recruitment strategies in e participation projects Martin Karlsson Collaborations for open innovation processes in public administrations Noella Edelmann Johann Höchtl and Michael Sachs An integrated methodology for the evaluation of e petitions Kostas Ergazakis Dimitrios Askounis Panagiotis Kokkinakos and Anastasios Tsitsanis Assessing a measurement model for digital political participation: a multidisciplinary point of view Stefano De Marco Mirko Antino and José Manuel Robles Online engagement from the grassroots: reflecting on over a decade of e petitioning experience in Europe and the UK Panagiotis Panagiotopoulos and Tony Elliman Evaluatine participationon projects and lessons learnt Euripidis Loukis Information and communication technologies for citizens participation. Knowing the law as a prerequisite to participative egovernment: the role of semantic technologies Daniela Tiscornia and Meritxell Fernández Barrera Regional participation model to engage citizens in distant decision making Sabrina Scherer Maria A Wimmer and Johanna Schepers Visualisaion of online discussion forums Mitja Trampus̆ Sinan Sen Nenad Stojanović and Marko Grobelnik Distributed discussion: an integrated eparticipation model for engaging young people in technology policy Ella Taylor Smith Simone Kimpeler and Pille Pruulmann Vengerfeldt Open collaboration in policy development: concept and architecture to integrate scenario development and formal policy modelling Maria A Wimmer Karol Furdik Melanie Bicking Marian Mach Tomas Sabol and Peter Butka Future research directions of open collaborative ICT enabled governance. ICT as the facilitatior of postmodern and empowered forms of citizenship: myth or reality Tit Neubauer Tina Vuga and Blaz̆ Ilc A critical analysis of EU funded eparticpation Pedro Prieto Martín Luis de Marcos and Jose Javiet Martínez ICT for governance and policy modelling: visionary directions and research paths Yannis Charalabidis Sotiris Koussouris Fenareti Lampathaki