Maturity in Decision-Making (MDM): a method to measure e-Participation systems in virtual communities

The participation of citizens in the decision-making of a community is the essence of a democracy. As the number of citizens grew, direct participation became utopia and delegated to elected representatives. The spread of internet allied to the population pressure for transparency in government's decisions brought mass participation back to the table. The communication channels are there, though citizens' participations have not been effective frequently because their suggestions are not mature. This paper presents a method, maturity in decision-making (MDM), for measuring the maturity of a group for a decision considering the risk of group-thinking, shallow analysis or even polarisation. We have applied the method in two scenarios with promising results.