Citizens Participation in Public Decisions: The Open Source Role

Abstract

This article explores the emerging challenges and opportunities of Open Source Software used in Public Sector as an instrument and method to ensure and to encourage citizen participation in public decisions in e-Democracy projects. The main aim is to verify the presence of these projects and to check if they’re realized using Open Source Software and what are the reasons which support this choice. The Open Source can be considered also as an operating model which is used to the development of the software itself. This operating model is based on the democratic principle of sharing information and results, of transparency and participation among community members, in order to achieve common goals. For these characteristics it can be successful used in other fields. The paper will verify, through a research regarding the Italian Regional Administrations how the OSS can be considered a useful operating model that allows to include citizen in public decisions as well as a software.