A Domain Model for eParticipation

The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the field of public participation led to the emergence of electronic participation (eparticipation). The area of eparticipation is currently a rapidly evolving one. Although, a few eparticipation-related frameworks have been developed they actually aimed to address specific purposes. As a result, there is no work aiming to model the whole eparticipation domain. In this paper, a first attempt to model the domain of eparticipation is presented. For this purpose, we identify and describe the most significant aspects that characterize the eparticipation domain according to the relevant literature. In addition, we define a domain model in order to formally describe these aspects and the relationships between them. This model is illustrated using a set of Unified Modeling Language (UML) package and class diagrams.