Users of the EuroPetition service

There will be four main actors in the system:

• Local Authorities / Project Partners will coordinate the discussion boards and moderate local petitions
• Citizens will sign petitions
• Lead petitioners (usually citizens though in some cases elected officials in Local Authorities) will instigate and market petitions.
• The Project Team will moderate and support petitions for the European Parliament and Commission – as well as training Local Authorities to take on this role in the future.

Citizens will either be recruited for the site or be introduced to it via one of the offline marketing activities or events planned. Citizens will then access the EuroPetition service, using any standard Web-Browser on Dial-up (or Broadband) Internet access on any standard PC.  Much of the content will be available to non-registered users however anyone wishing to post content will be asked to sign-up and join the site – as per other social networking sites such as Facebook.

Once on the site the user will be able to select their area of interest and either browse latest postings and petitions or add their own contribution.  Users will be encouraged to migrate between informal social networking and more formal engagement with decision makers through specific ePetitions and other online tools.

The site host will aim to encourage the debate and will regularly post short videos which will provide a quick, easy and engaging digest to the site and signpost users to key petitions and parts of content.  They will also recruit and train site moderators from the user community.

Users will also be encouraged to attend online and offline events in order to create a sense of community and focus related to petitions.

Users will be recruited on one of two bases:

1. They have a strong interest in a particular topic and will benefit from the petition tools available on the site
2. They are prominent members of their community and can benefit from using the tools in order to create an online community to complement their offline activities.