A Semantics-Based Consultations Workbench

Econsultations constitute an effective means to inclusive and informed participation of citizens and society in policy, decision and law formulation processes, and an answer to democratic deficit issues. Econsultation platforms need to support all stages of consultation processes including agenda setting and topics raising, legislation proposal publicity, notification of developments, proposal debate and commentary, collection, analysis and synthesis of views. In this paper we present the design of an open platform assisting policy makers and the civil society in the set-up, enactment, management and federation of inclusive and informed digital consultations. The proposed platform employs semantic techniques, such as semantics, content annotation and summarization to support the consultation processes and provide targeted and digested information to participants, and facilitates tailoring of Econsultation procedures by offering basic Econsultation activities as building blocks, which can be combined according to contextual needs. The platform also enables distinct Econsultation processes to be federated, allowing the exchange of information, which may be subject to different semantic annotations and classifications, according to the rules of each Econsultation process