Success factors in designing eParticipation initiatives

•We perform a literature review of eGovernment and eParticipation success.•We conduct a survey amongst eParticipation practitioners across Europe.•We discuss the findings on eParticipation success.•We construct a model of 23 eParticipation success factors.

Electronic participation (eParticipation) refers to the use of Information and Communication Technologies to enhance political participation and citizen engagement. During the last few years, eParticipation researchers have focused on analysing the field, investigating the main challenges, studying different initiatives, and proposing relevant evaluation criteria. However, current literature lacks comprehensive studies for understanding the factors influencing success when designing eParticipation initiatives. The main aim of this paper is to determine a concrete set of success factors to be considered when designing an eParticipation initiative. For this purpose, we review the literature on eGovernment success and on eParticipation success and evaluation, and we conduct a European-wide survey and desktop research amongst eParticipation practitioners. By comparing findings from the literature and the practitioners' research, we thereafter construct a proposed model of eParticipation success factors. The model includes 23 success factors and specific activities associated with each factor. We anticipate that our model will be useful to both eParticipation researchers and practitioners interested in the design of eParticipation initiatives.