European Science Foundation Programme:
Towards Electronic Democracy: Internet-based Complex Decision Support (TED)
Workshop on
Human-Computer Interface Issues in e-Democracy
Manchester Business School,
Manchester, UK
November 9th – 11th, 2005
First Announcement, Call for Contributed Papers and Application for
Support for Doctoral Students and Young Researchers
The advent of web-technologies has brought the possibility of supporting
geographically and temporally dispersed group decision making.
Technically it is now possible to discuss issues, debate objectives,
formulate problems, access data, analyse models, conduct sensitivity
analyses, vote, decide and implement actions, all without the group
meeting other than virtually. However, while the technology is available,
it is not clear that valid methodologies for its use are. Indeed, even
the concept of validity is not well established in this context. It is
far from clear that untrained users interacting with web-based group
decision support systems (wGDSS) will understand the cognitive tasks that
face them. Hence neither may the system inform their judgements and
understanding nor may their inputs inform the decision making process.
With training such as can be provided within organisations, these
cognitive issues may be overcome. However, when the context of use of a
wGDSS is that of substantive or deliberative e democracy, there is less
opportunity to provide prior training in the use of the tools and the
citizens’ interactions may be neither effective nor well founded.
The European Science Foundation programme Towards Electronic Democracy
(TED) is focused on the development of methods to address societal issues
via the WWW using the methodologies of modern decision analysis and
support to involve citizens and stakeholders in the actual process of
decision making: a true step towards e-democracy rather than the e-
administration techniques that so far have lain at the heart of e-
government initiatives. At TED’s heart is a vision to develop
methodologies which enable multiple decision analyses to be communicated,
explored and, indeed, built over the WWW, thus providing the mechanism by
which stakeholders may be drawn more closely into the decision making
process. Technically, the vision is achievable, though many issues remain
to be addressed fully. What is less clear is whether the many assumptions
about the cognitive abilities of the users are tenable. Can we expect all
citizens in society to be able to comprehend the decision model(s) and
interact, inputting their understandings, perceptions and judgements and
so contributing to decision making process? Do such uses of wGDSS in e
democracy risk a modern version of GIGO – garbage in, garbage out?
The workshop will focus on the human-computer interface issues of wGDSS,
firstly seeking to identify the issues that need addressing and secondly
to outline programmes of research.
The workshop will be held over three days at Manchester Business School.
There will be a mix of four keynote papers from invited speakers,
contributed papers, a PhD Q&A session and a closing discussion session to
map out a research agenda to define and assess the validity of interfaces
of web-based decision support systems. Software demonstrations can also
be arranged. There will be no parallel sessions so that the discussion of
issues may grow continuously over the three days. Numbers will be limited
to about 50 participants.
Full Details of Workshop:
http://infodoc.escet.urjc.es/ted/documentos/MBS_Nov_2005_Call_no_fields.pdf
Note that the above call contains details of:
1. Registering for the conference
2. Submitting contributed papers (closing date Sept 5th, 2005)
3. Applying for support for doctoral students and young researchers to
attend the workshop (closing date Sept 5th, 2005)
Full Details of ESF TED Project:
http://infodoc.escet.urjc.es/ted
http://www.esf.org/ted
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