This is a placeholder for ideas on what theories help us make sense of e-consultation.

We have run a series of workshops in which researchers brainstormed and discussed these issues. Now we have put an outline of our thinking online here, for other researchers and practitioners to comment upon, and edit. The idea is to create a synthesis of theoretical understandings of consultation and e-consultation.

In the most recent workshop, held in the European Conference on E-Government in Marburg, a dozen researchers in e-government brainstormed the features one would expect in a good consultation, then grouped these features into categories. Each category represents a value by which one might judge consultations as better or worse than others.

We now need researchers and practitioners to tell us what are the best way to evaluate each of these value sets. Please register on this site, then e-mail your chosen username to d.r.newman@qub.ac.uk to get permission to edit these wikiwiki pages.

• Marburg workshop, 27 Apr. 2006
• Cape Town workshop, 24 Aug. 2005
• Copenhagen workshop, 23 Aug. 2005
• Theory-building workshop, 17 May 2005
  • Discussion
  • Case: tax credit consultation
• Theory-building workshop, 7 Dec. 2004
  • Brainstorming
  • Afternoon session
• Comments from online discussions - suggestions from some mailing lists
• Diagramming theories - some diagrams that might help