Section: Application Domains

Sustainable Development and E-democracy

Following the Rio Conference (1992) and the Agenda for the 21st Century, local territories are now directly concerned with the set up of actions for a sustainable development. In this frame, ICT tools have been supposed to be very efficient to re-engage people in the democratic process and to make decision-making more transparent, inclusive and accessible.

The emerging research field of E-democracy (so called Digital Democracy or eParticipation), concerned with the use of communications technologies such as the internet to enhance the democratic processes is now a very active field. Though still in its infancy, a lot of literature is already available (see for instance : http://itc.napier.ac.uk/ITC/publications.asp or http://www.demo-net.org/ for a global view of work in Europe).

Intermed (cf. section  7.1.2 ) is a sustainable development project concerned with water management. IN this project AxIS' usage analysis tools will help to understand: how the e-democray platform developed within the project is really used, which are the barriers to overcome to increase citizen participation in public decision making, how to reinforce the link between government and the governed population.,