Citizen participation in decision-making: can one make a difference?

Big Data promises benefits for society as well as business. Do policy
makers know how best to use this scale of data driven decisionmaking
in an effective way for citizens? Citizen participation is
portrayed in literature as a key component in policy decisionmaking.
Yet, this decision-making process to date is often driven by
other stakeholders such as scientific experts, academic institutions,
national and international governing bodies, to name but a few.
Furthermore, there is scant literature on the best way to create
policy for new technology, taking into consideration the voice of
the citizen. The prevailing question, therefore, is what extent does
citizen participation in decision-making make a difference to shaping
policy for technology? Our paper explores an experimental method
for citizens to make a difference to European policy decision-making
on the future of technology and the impact on society. Employing a
case study of Irish citizens as part of the CIMULACT (Citizen and Multi-
Actor Consultation on Horizon 2020) project this paper reports a new
methodology for gathering citizens’ perspectives on future decisionmaking
policies on technology. The findings reveal key advantages
and disadvantages to this methodology. This paper makes a number
of contributions to both the academic and practitioner communities.