Bringing social and technological innovation to the work of national, regional and local elected representatives: The eRepresentative Project

Members of elected assemblies have a number of overlapping roles. eRepresentative is a project of the European Commission’s IST programme, and has investigated the potential for ICT support for the committee-based legislative role in a secure, mobile context among members of five elected assemblies at national, regional and local levels. This paper describes the processes used for identifying user requirements and the web-based application that was developed to address them. It then describes the scenario-based evaluation process that was designed to cover not only technical functionality and usefulness/usability aspects but also the organisational factors contributing to the success or failure of such initiatives; initial findings suggest a positive response from potential users, elected representatives (and their staff) in particular. In a postscript, the potential for direct inclusion of citizens in the legislative process is considered.