Affiliations: De La Salle University, Manila. E-mail:
[email protected]
Abstract: The use of information technology in governance generally, and in
legislative processes specifically, has emerged as a significant trend over the
last decade. The design and mobilization of such technologies in diverse
settings have shown significant progress over time; however, such technologies
and related practices continue to reflect limitations and difficulties. This
study seeks to address a number of existing limitations in the use of
technology in e-legislation. Using an applied research design combined with
rapid applications development, the project examines avenues for
e-participation in the current investigation-legislative practices of the Blue
Ribbon Committee of the Philippine Senate. The project's applications
development phase uses Web 2.0 as a platform, and combines it with electronic
document and natural language techniques, thus enabling a shift from dominantly
information dissemination approaches to multi-directional exchanges supported
by new techniques like the automatic categorization of comments. The study
explores the potential and the limitations of new technologies, and highlights
the need for new institutional policies and capacity building to ensure the
success and sustainability of e-participation initiatives. The technologies
created can be considered as possible future directions by lawmakers in
countries that are seeking to move beyond e-legislation practices that focus
primarily on uni-directional information dissemination, into more participatory
approaches.
Keywords: e-Participation, e-Governance, natural language processing, information extraction, semantic analysis, document management