Decision support services: A framework for distributed decision making over the Web

There has been a raise in the desire to participate in governmental decisions by citizens in recent years. This has motivated the emergence of hundreds of participatory instruments that facilitate the transmission of citizen concerns and desires. Similarly, there has been an increased use of information and communication technologies allowing citizens to contact and provide their preferences to the politicians. We develop here an architecture to support distributed decision making, allowing to construct and implement most participatory processes available. It is based on a standard that enables information exchange among various stages of the process, using XML standard and Web services.