Ubiquitous Participation Platform for POLicy Makings (UbiPOL): A Research Note

• Published in: International journal of electronic government research 2010-01, Vol.6 (1), p.78-106
• Main Authors: Irani, Zahir, Lee, Habin, Weerakkody, Vishanth, Kamal, Muhammad, Topham, Shaun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Advertisements; Algorithms; Citizen participation; Citizens; Cryptography; Data encryption; Data mining; E-government; E-voting; Electronic voting systems; Engines; Everyday Life; Government; Government computer systems; Government policy; Governments; Identity; Identity management; Ignorance; Information technology; Mining; Mining industry; Motivation; Opinion; Participation; Platform; Platforms; Policies; Policy implementation; Policy Making; Policy sciences; Political aspects; Political communication; Privacy; Public policy; Sentiment analysis; Technology application; Tracking; Transparency; Wireless communication; Wireless communication systems; Wireless networks; Workflow
• ISSN: 1548-3886; 1548-3894
• DOI: 10.4018/jegr.2010102006

The purpose of UbiPOL project is to develop a ubiquitous platform that allows citizens be involved in Policy Making Processes (PMPs) regardless of their current locations and time. However, literature highlights one of the foremost reasons that make citizens de-motivated in engaging themselves in policy making—the ignorance of germane policies and PMPs within the government organizations. It is highly suggested that while more citizens find connections between their everyday life activities and pertinent government policies, the more they become pro-active or motivated to be involved in PMPs. For this reason, UbiPOL aims to provide ‘context aware knowledge’ provision with regards to policy making, i.e. through UbiPOL enabling citizens in identifying any relevant policies along with other citizens’ opinion ‘whenever they want’ ‘wherever they are’ according to their everyday life pattern. As a result of this platform, citizens are anticipated to be more acquainted with the newest relevant policies and PMPs for their participation during their routine life activities. Moreover, this platform is also anticipated to provide policy tracking functionality through a ‘workflow engine’ and ‘opinion tag’ concept to improve the transparency of PMPs. As a final point, the platform intends to facilitate policy makers to collect citizen opinions more efficiently as the opinions are collected as soon as they are created in the middle of citizen’s everyday life. UbiPOL provides security and identity management facility to ensure only authorized citizens can have access to relevant policies according to their roles in PMPs. The delivery of the opinion and policy data over the wireless network is secure as the platform use leading edge encryption algorithm in its communication kernels. UbiPOL is a scalable platform ensuring at least 100,000 citizens can use the system at the same time (e.g., for e-Voting applications) through its well proven automatic load balancing mechanisms. The privacy ensuring opinion mining engine prevents unwanted revealing of citizen identities and the mining engine prevents any unrelated commercial advertisements are included in the opinion base to minimize the misuse of the system.