The relationships between policies, their values, and outcomes are often difficult for citizens and policymakers to assess due to the complex nature of the policy lifecycle. With the opening of data by public administrations, there is now a greater opportunity for transparency, accountability, and evidence-based decision making in the policymaking process. In representative democracies, citizens rely on their elected representatives and local administrations to take policy decisions that address societal challenges and add value to their local communities. Citizens now have the opportunity to assess the impact and values of the policies introduced by their elected representatives and hold them accountable by utilizing historical open data that is publicly available. Using a qualitative case study in a UK Local Government Authority, this article examines how e-participation platforms and the use of open data can facilitate more factual, evidence-based, and transparent policy decision making and evaluation. From a theoretical stance, this article contributes to the policy lifecycle and e-participation literature. The article also offers valuable insights to public administrations on how open data can be utilized for evidence-based policy decision making and evaluation.

The concept of smart city is emerging as a key strategy to tackle the problems generated by the urban population growth and rapid development. It is widely recognised that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) play a key role in addressing some of the urban societal challenges such as improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. Although there are various ICT tools providing intelligence and services relating to energy consumption and monitoring processes, they mostly tend to work in isolation. Therefore, this paper presents the outcomes and impacts of the concept of DAREED which aims to deliver an integrated ICT service platform to drive energy efficiency and low carbon activities at neighbourhood, city and district levels. Furthermore, the research highlights the need for ICT-driven policy making using platforms such as DAREED in the context of e-Government. This paper contributes to the current understandings of e-Government literature in terms of how ICT can help public authorities and stakeholders such as policy makers to achieve and drive energy efficiency. From a practical stance, the paper offers valuable insights to public administrations on how ICT can be used to address pressing societal challenges such as efficient energy use and facilitate better policy making.

The importance of evaluation and optimization of electronic government (e-government) services is imperative if the government organisations are to have an effective impact on the success and take-up of the services offered. Transport For London's (TFL) London Congestion Charging (LCC) is one of the innovative electronic services (e-services) introduced by the United Kingdom (UK) government to the citizens. While some studies have addressed the impact of the introduction of the congestion charge there has been a dearth of research performed to address user (citizen) satisfaction of the online LCC system. Therefore, this research seeks to measure the citizen satisfaction of using the LCC online payment system offered by TFL. The citizen satisfaction in this context is measured using the four dimensions from the COBRA framework that comprise the cost, opportunity, benefits and risk assessment constructs. This paper presents the findings of a survey of 500 users of the TFL LCC online payment system. It also reports the qualitative feedback obtained from the participants that can be used to determine the areas that need further improvement in the current LCC e-service and potential influences on user satisfaction.