The International Teledemocracy Centre - ITC
The International Teledemocracy Centre was established at Edinburgh Napier University in 1999. The centre is dedicated to researching innovative eGovernance systems that will strengthen public understanding and participation in democratic decision-making and support effective, accessible and transparent government.
ITC is part of the Centre for Social Informatics, directed by Professor Hazel Hall, and the Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation.
From September 2011, we are archiving this website. We are still here and continuing our research into eParticipation and public sector technology issues, but will record future work on the Centre for Social Informatics web-pages to reduce duplication.
ITC have been working on eDemocracy research and initiatives with a wide range of partners: parliaments, government departments and local authorities, NGOs, charities, youth groups, media and technical and research organisations. ITC have taken on a variety of roles: investigating, specifying, developing, piloting and evaluating eGovernance and eParticipation technologies and their relationships with society, while both following and furthering the research climate in these and related fields. This work can be summarised under 3 areas:
- concerned with technology-supported interactive communication between government and civil society, including a number of eParticipation projects;
- managing public agency information and knowledge, focusing on the use of technology for knowledge sharing and the development of organisational memories.
- The third research area is the societal effect of technology on the democratic process and the development of an e-participation evaluation framework.