Introduction

The IMPACT Project contributes to the policy formulation stage of the policy modelling cycle; it is that stage where the objectives of future laws and regulations are discussed by the general public and stakeholders who have an interest in the policy. For instance, in the project, we consider comments to the Green Paper Copyright in the Knowledge Economy. By and large, each comment presents just one point of view, according to the respondent's agenda; however, taken together, the comments present a range of arguments for or against particular policy proposals. In this sense, comments from the policy formulation stage can be represented as an argument amongst the respondents about what should be done to address the issues under discussion.

The Structured Online Consultation tool (SCT) is a component tool in the IMPACT Project that is used to construct and present detailed online surveys that solicit feedback from participants concerning issues of public policy.  The SCT addresses key problems in policy formulation such as:

• How do we form cohesive representations of policy discussions from divergent comments? 
• How can users register agreement or disagreement with particular parts of the debate?
• How can analysts automatically process the information from the survey?

To address these questions, the SCT is underpinned by a computational model of argumentation, incorporating fine-grained, interconnected argumentation schemes that capture typical patterns of argumentative reasoning. While the public responds to easy to understand questions through the tool's interface, the answers are associated with the computational model and so the SCT supports automated reasoning about arguments.

We present a series of posts about the SCT.  In this first post, we briefly outline the motivation for the SCT. In the second post, we discuss argumentation and a particular scheme that is central to policy-making, Practical Reasoning (reasoning about what to do), along with some elements of the formal representation. In the final post, we provide some indicative screen shots to give a sense of how users will work with the proposed tool.

Motivation

There are several current policy-making support tools in the European Union and the United States which use currently available wiki, comment, email, or social networking technologies:

• The United Kingdom's Cabinet Office Public Reading (temporarily disabled) uses a website that unfolds the proposed bill, allowing online readers to look at specific sections and to use a threaded comment facility to respond to a particular portion of the bill or previous comments.
• The UK Prime Minister's Office ePetition, the European Commission The European Citizens' Initiative, and the US government's White House Petitions allow citizens to electronically create, sign, and submit petitions. The tools, which enable respondents to submit petitions, are web-based versions of what is has been traditionally accomplished manually.
• The US General Services Administration is creating a 'crowdsourced' network of expertise ExpertNet Consultation.
• The RegulationRoom is an academically hosted facility for commenting on proposed legislation, providing guidelines for effective comments.

Broadly, such tools attempt to leverage current technologies to draw in greater citizen participation to policy-making by making participation easier and improving the informativeness of feedback. However, some of the drawbacks of these tools are:

• It is difficult to get an overview understanding of the whole policy, the bearing of comments to portions of the policy, or the relationships among the comments themselves.
• Further analysis is done ''manually'' by analysts, making the contribution of the responses to the development of the policy opaque.
• Responses can be unstructured and unsystematic, introducing inappropriate, irrelevant, or unspecific responses.
• Underlying motivations and justifications such as social values can be obscured.
• Where respondents are signatory to a petition, it is unclear just what is being endorsed for they may agree or disagree with only part of the petition (or some combination).
• The comments are not represented in an analytic form and do not support automated processing, which is essential for handling large volumes of data.

Addressing or avoiding these limitations would greatly increase the effectiveness of contributions from the public and positively impact on policy making.

In the IMPACT project, various tools address different problems. The SCT provides structured arguments about policy to users on the web in natural language such that users register agreement or disagreement with specific portions of the argument. Yet, associated with the natural language expressions, there are formal counterparts, thus enabling automated processing. Furthermore, the arguments are analysed in terms of relevant elements that may otherwise remain implicit such as social values, actions, and circumstances.

In the next post in this series on the SCT, we discuss argumentation and a particular scheme that is central to policy-making, Practical Reasoning, along with some elements of the formal representation.