Egosta

Within the research project egosta (e-government Stakeholder participation framework) an online platform is being developed and tested to involve stakeholders in the development process of large e-government projects. egosta takes ups the positive effects of e-participation, to support the development of intuitive applicable-government applications that appeal to the stakeholders. Goals of egosta are the development and the test of a standard method and a standard tool to improve the information and communication between the project team and the stakeholders. On the one hand, stakeholders get informed about current status through the egosta platform. On the other hand they are also explicitly asked about their opinions, suggestions and concerns about specific elaborations to the VCD. Furthermore, they are asked to play a part and to discuss their opinions etc. within moderated discussion forums to discuss them with other stakeholders.

egosta will be implemented, tested and optimized as part of the Austrian participation in the development of the Virtual Company Dossier (VCD)  in the framework of the EU project PEPPOL (Pan European Public Procurement OnLine). The VCD enables tenderer in public procurement procedures to collect required suitability tests in an electronic dossier and to provide them in a package within European wide public procurement procedures. In the Austrain pilot project, a user-friendly VCD service will be developed. Strategically, the Federal Ministry of Finance in Austria secures a competitive advantage through participation in the EU project PEPPOL and through the early implementation of electronic procurement projects particular in small and medium-sized business.

The aim of egosta is to strengthen the acceptance of this new VCD application through targeted stakeholder participation in advance. Latest Web 2.0 technologies are being used to support the optimal participation of stakeholders. By participating in egosta all Austrian VCD-stakeholder are able to help implementing egosta. Though the participation behavior of stakeholders, it is possible to, for example, detect which web 2.0 technologies are used and which not. With the help of egosta information are available early and stakeholder may collaborate by commenting current projects results. The artifacts of participation will be developed through semantic analysis to find out where priorities are. In addition, with the help of egosta a joint development of a vocabulary, the development of governance, process, legal, data and infrastructure models, as well as a selection of the best alternative concept should become possible. This leads to a continuous exchange of experiences, ideas, wishes and criticism among stakeholders and the project team.