The conference “Towards e-Democracy: Participation, Deliberation, Communities“ (in short, TED06) will take place from 24 to 26 October in Mantova, Italy.

For the past four years the European Science Foundation programme Towards Electronic Democracy (TED) has focused on the development of methods to address societal issues via the WWW and favour e-participation using the methodologies of modern decision analysis and support to involve citizens and stakeholders in the actual process of decision making: a true step towards e-democracy rather than the e-administration techniques that, by and large, have been emphasised by e-government initiatives. At TED’s heart is a vision to develop methodologies which enable multiple decision analyses to be communicated, explored and, indeed, built over the WWW, thus providing the mechanism by which stakeholders may be drawn more closely into the decision making process.

This conference occurs at the end of TED’s funding cycle and aims both to reflect on progress over the project and to set future research agendas.

The conference will be hosted by the University of Mantova and will be kindly sponsored by the Township of Mantova.