Online citizen participation in parliamentary work. TAB-Fokus

Online citizen participation can help to improve relations between citizens and the state as well as to strengthen confidence and legitimacy. For more than ten years now, the German Bundestag has been testing different procedures of online citizen participation. The procedures contribute to the transparency of parliamentary work and are assessed positively both by observers and participants. In most cases, participation shows a high level of quality, but falls behind expectations with regard to the figures. An exception to this is e-petitioning which achieves the highest level of popularity among the different participation procedures. In order to consolidate and further develop online citizen participation, particularly consultative approaches have to be considered. Early stages of opinion formation have proven to be a good point in time for this purpose. From a strategic point of view, a continued careful and successive development of online participation services as well as a stronger conceptual integration of these services into the parliamentary work are recommended.