Citizen participation in the era of Open Government. Insights from the scientific literature

Citizen participation is an issue with growing presence in government activity; as a result, this topic is facing new challenges and opportunities for development. In recent years, citizen participation has put particularly emphasis on the use of new information technologies turning out in electronic participation (e-participation). In this vein, participation is directly tied to new technologies as its best tool. The democratization of Internet and new technologies have established participation as one of the central pillars of Open Government (OG), together with transparency and collaboration (Obama, 2009; Lathrop, D, and Ruma, L, 2010; Lee and Kwak, 2012 ; Meijer, Curtin and Hillebrandt, 2012; Gascó, 2013; Oszlak, 2014).This research analyzes the relationship between participation (focused on e-participation) and Open Government through a literature review as a meta-analysis. The paper shows data and features of OG and participation, including how, who and where it is analyzed, and which are the most used concepts in OG and participation. Thus, the scope of the study about citizen participation within the field of open government becomes clear. Finally, the paper concludes offering some reflections about the new features of citizen participation in an increasingly digitalized context and penetrated by social technologies.