Reframing E-participation for Sustainable Development

The role of digital technologies in the public administration has grown significantly in the last five decades, with over 80% of United Nations Member States currently using technologies for public governance processes. This trend has contributed to the evolution of e-governance practices. E-participation in particular, has become a norm in policy and decision-making in a growing number of countries and a key enabler for achieving the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with governments and people developing crucial abilities to create, use and share digital resources that allow them to interact with one another in multiple ways. These practices are pervasive and evolve rapidly, especially in emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This article introduces six sub-dimensions of e-participation, within the existing United Nations E-participation Index framework, that seek to capture the different levels of digital interactions between people and e-governments against the backdrop of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. These sub-dimensions are based upon an array of sources, including academic literature, expert group meetings held by UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and cases reported by countries in the UN E-Government Surveys. This approach aims to deepen the understanding of how governments adapt to enhance people’s ability and capacity to participate in digital governance, which is after all a fundamental aspect to building better, more effective and accountable institutions and constructing sustainable and inclusive societies – leaving no one behind.