Paper Type
Short
Paper Number
PACIS2025-1274
Description
Public consultation processes are conducted by governments and other organizations, seeking opinions, suggestions and other types of inputs from stakeholders. This study explores how these processes, based on text-based submissions, could be made more inclusive and transparent, particularly for marginalized groups. Using a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, the paper describes a prototype of a Decision Support System (DSS), GenAIOpenGovDSS, which is based on NLP and GenAI. Using a recent example of public consultations on Responsible AI in Australia, the paper describes how the proposed DSS could help citizens and government decision-makers to analyze submissions, understand the main topics being discussed, and determine whose voices are being included or excluded. The system is designed to lower technological and linguistic participation barriers by empowering people to write their own submissions. The paper discusses theoretical contributions and opens interesting ideas for future research, including possible unintended consequences of this kind of systems.
Recommended Citation
Marjanovic, Olivera; Hristova, Diana; Abedin, Babak; and Dash, Saswat, "Supporting Digital Inclusion in Public Consultations Processes with a GenAI NLP-based DSS" (2025). PACIS 2025 Proceedings. 5.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2025/conftrack/conftrack/5
Supporting Digital Inclusion in Public Consultations Processes with a GenAI NLP-based DSS
Public consultation processes are conducted by governments and other organizations, seeking opinions, suggestions and other types of inputs from stakeholders. This study explores how these processes, based on text-based submissions, could be made more inclusive and transparent, particularly for marginalized groups. Using a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, the paper describes a prototype of a Decision Support System (DSS), GenAIOpenGovDSS, which is based on NLP and GenAI. Using a recent example of public consultations on Responsible AI in Australia, the paper describes how the proposed DSS could help citizens and government decision-makers to analyze submissions, understand the main topics being discussed, and determine whose voices are being included or excluded. The system is designed to lower technological and linguistic participation barriers by empowering people to write their own submissions. The paper discusses theoretical contributions and opens interesting ideas for future research, including possible unintended consequences of this kind of systems.
Comments
Diversity