Citizen Participation through E-Forum: A Case of Wastewater Issues

Abstract

To promote democracy, governments have encouraged citizens to voice their opinions on a number of issues. In this paper, the Government-to-Citizen (G2C) aspect of electronic governement, focuses on Citizen Relationship Management (CzRM). The highest stage of evolution in CzRM is participative democracy. One channel to promote participative democracy is through e-forums, which can enable a government to become “citizen-centric” to reflect the concept of good governance. In Thailand, e-forums have never been used as a formal consultative channel with citizens. The government has yet to organize a formal e-forum to consult citizens as it has done in off-line public hearings. In this research, a prototype of government e-forum was developed and evaluated. The application of the e-forum is to conduct an online hearing on wastewater issues.