Citizens Web Empowerment in European Municipalities

Internet contributes to the growth of new demand for citizen empowerment. These areas may be summarised as follows: (a) the request of access to authoritative, customized and immediately usable information; (b) the hope that a direct and informal relationship may be established with politicians and civil servants; (c) the desire of the citizens to be ``active players'' within the network. In the presence of a challenge such as this, we nevertheless note that the adequacy and characteristics of the web strategies of public administrations have, up to the present, not been subjected to thoroughgoing critical analysis. The aim of this article is three fold: (a) to provide some key-elements in order to define the content of an efficient web strategy, with regard to the issue of citizens empowerment, (b) to benchmark the degree of citizen empowerment of public administrations' websites across a network of European Municipalities, (c) to highlight the value elements of web 2.0 projects in European Local Governments, through an in-depth analysis of Venice case study.