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Current research project

In April 2007 I started a new research project at the Oxford Internet Institute. I have been granted a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (funded by the European Commission under its Sixth Framework Programme) to conduct my post-doctoral research on the topic of 'E-democracy technologies and the problem of public trust'.

The aims of e-democracy are to increase people's choices as to how they can participate, have their voices heard and their views considered, and to restore their trust in government - but does this governmental strategy really work? I will focus on the question 'Does e-democracy increase trust in government, and, if so, under what conditions?'

The current search for technological solutions to the problem of distrust in government seems to be paradoxical because, to increase public trust and confidence, governments will be relying on information and communication systems that themselves require a high level of trust. Information technology is poorly understood by many people, which may reduce their trust in the technology, as well as in governments that use ICTs. Socio-economic variations amongst citizens in terms of age, gender, income, education, geographic location and other characteristics are also expected to influence their level of trust in ICTs. A second question will therefore be examined: 'How does trust or distrust in e-democracy technologies influence the use of these technologies and tools?'

In my research I will investigate four e-democracy case-studies. More information will follow soon...

Past research projects

In April 1999 I started to work parttime at the University of Amsterdam on my first European project called SOEIS. The abbreviation SOEIS stands for "Self-Organization of the European Information Society". In February 2000 I started to work full-time on a EU project called FASME. The main objective of FASME was to develop an application which facilitates the administrative services needed when citizens change the place where they live, e.g. car registration services and driving licence. The technical platform was a so-called JavaCard; a Smartcard based on the object-oriented programming language Java. In order to base all technical developments on the actual needs and demands of those people who will use the JavaCard, the user needs were identified during workshops with users and civil servants from different countries. At the same time, the technical specifications of the application scenarios were defined and generalised in order to obtain a framework for the modelling of processes, access rights, and access needs.

At the University of Amsterdam we were responsible for the more social aspects. We analysed the social, institutional, political and legal issues related to the design and the implementation of the FASME-system. We also analysed interests of various groups involved in the use of the FASME-system and issues that may influence the acceptance of the system by the larger public. The emphasis was put on privacy issues, information ownership issues and administrative and legal issues. As the FASME system was meant for use in all European countries, the analysis included a description of the differences between social, institutional, political and legal issues in the countries involved. The Amsterdam Team consisted of Dr. Peter van den Besselaar, Dr. Sally Wyatt, Anne-Marie Oostveen, Erica Gasataya and Iam Hooijen.

From the 1st of October 2001 we started to work on another EU project called TRUEVOTE. The TruE-Vote project aimed at developing a secure and trusted voting system, where "secure" concerned the technological aspects and "trusted" the social ones. In this 18 month project we investigated the technical feasibility and the social acceptability of introducing electronic voting systems.

Improving citizenships and e-democracy through networking technologies is part of the overall goal of creating the Information Society which needs to be validated through concrete initiatives. These 'experiments' (even though the word is not probably the best as people are involved) have to consider several issues including:

•  giving everybody access to the Information Society;
•  providing people with a more convenient access to government information and services;
•  closing the communication gap between citizens and government institutions, i.e., giving people a chance to directly dialogue with their representatives, both at local and national level;
•  introducing new voting systems.

These topics are to some extent independent, but also mutually coupled. Moreover, it is necessary to consider the strict interplay between the technological and the cultural, socio-political aspects. A new technology for voting may be accepted or rejected by citizens depending on the socio-technical context in which it is proposed to them.

More information about my previous projects can be found by following the 'project' links on the right of this webpage.
 

   eTRUST

 TRUE VOTE
 FASME
 SOEIS

 TRIPS