**1. Introduction**

As exemplified by the social protest movements of 2010 (e.g., the revolution in Arabic countries) and 2011 (the Spanish '15M Real Democracy, Now!'), there is growing pressure on governments to increase civic participation in the managemen<sup>t</sup> of society. The traditional democratic model encounters significant difficulties when it is expected to react effectively within complex, uncertain and dynamic environments. The democratic legitimacy of public institutions is being questioned by a better educated, more reflexive and more critical citizenry.

There is a need for new models of participation that can make use of the potential of the Knowledge Society (KS) and respond to the challenges (transparency, participation, control, etc.) that it generates. The determination of a model of participation that is most appropriate for a given epoch is by no means an original topic of debate and discussion; as Ibn Jaldun concluded more than six centuries ago [1], this problem may only be resolved if the dynamic of the system is understood and the system is self-organised and adaptive [2].

Participation must have a practical outcome; citizens must be able to see its impact and results. Joint and in-house evaluation procedures should be developed in order to measure the scope and impact of e-Participation experiences. Evaluation allows the visualisation of the results of an initiative and the degree of achievement in terms of the proposed objectives; it is also an expression of rigour, transparency, analysis and continuous improvement which can reinforce the consistency and credibility of participatory experiences.

Evaluation should aim to undertake the most rigorous analysis possible of the di fferent stages and the results achieved by the e-Participation experiences. It should provide an assessment of the scientific rigour of the methodology: the e ffectiveness, e fficacy and e fficiency (EF3-approach), as well as the economic, social and environmental impacts of the actions.

Macintosh and White [3] put forward three arguments for a rigorous evaluation framework: (i) the increasing amount of information available on the internet requires new knowledge and information managemen<sup>t</sup> systems; (ii) the range of stakeholders demands personalised communication integrated with the delivery of relevant information; and (iii) information systems design must move towards more collaborative working environments to support a partnership of governmen<sup>t</sup> and civil society.

Aichholzer and Westholm [4] argue that the evaluation of e-participation is indispensable if knowledge of greater precision and objectivity is wanted about the e ffectiveness, the value, the success of an e-participation project, initiative or programme.

In the last 15 years, a number of e-participation experiences have taken place and many of them have made extensive use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Some examples and descriptions of e-participation experiences can be found in [5–9]. Many of these projects have made a contribution to the revitalisation of democracy by increasing transparency in governance and creating new political spaces for communication and participation.

Since the emergence of e-Cognocracy as a new model of citizen participation [10–12] in 2003, it has been widely studied from a variety of perspectives and viewpoints: political, sociological, scientific, technological and economic [13–17]. However, an integral evaluation of the impact of the application of e-Cognocracy in real-life situations has ye<sup>t</sup> to be undertaken.

This paper presents a theoretical framework for selecting the most appropriate participation model, based on structural equations, which identifies the relevant factors for an integral evaluation of e-Cognocracy; the evaluation simultaneously considers (EF3-approach) its e ffectiveness (doing what is right), e fficacy (achieving goals) and e fficiency (doing things correctly). The framework was applied to the evaluation of a real-life practical initiative on the design of cultural and sporting policies for the Municipal Council of Cadrete, Zaragoza. The implementation resulted in the extraction and identification of a series of relationships that allow the advancement of an EF3-participation acceptance model (EF3-PAM), in line with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) [18] and the work of Delone and MacLean [19].

The structure of the article is as follows: after this brief introduction, Section 2 deals with the evaluation of e-Participation; Section 3 offers an evaluation of E-Cognocracy and presents the case study; and Section 4 details the main conclusions that can be drawn from the work.

#### **2. The Evaluation of e-Participation**
