Facebook: Game-over in Han-over 2. December 2011 – 15:02 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Protecting citizens' data (photo by jaime.silva, Flickr)

The Region of Hanover (yes, that’s the correct English spelling) has dropped its Facebook page due to data protection concerns. Kommune21, an E-Government magazine, reports that recent statements from some of Germany’s regional Data Protection Commissioners (the best known example coming from Schleswig-Holstein) led the region to take drastic steps, despite the advantages of the Facebook page in reaching younger users.

As Berlin celebrates its millionth Facebook fan, this will continue to keep concerns about data protection protection high on the agenda. The Schleswig-Holstein Data Protection Commissioner’s controversial findings earlier this year ordered all organisations in his state to drop their Facebook pages and cease to use the Facebook ‘like’ button on their websites. This is because data about users is sent to servers in the US and, according to the Commissioner, not enough is done to inform users about what data are collected and what happens to them.

The Commissioner also raised concerns about the use of the Facebook “Like” plugin, which allows users to recommend a page to their Facebook friends by clicking on a button on the website concerned instead of pasting a link onto Facebook. It would appear that information about users, even those who do not have Facebook accounts, are sent to Facebook and logged-in users of the social networking site can be tracked across websites.

At the start of September, Heise, a German publisher, got itself into trouble with Facebook for developing a ‘Like’ plugin that first has to be activated by the user, in order to avoid sending any data to Facebook without the user’s consent. The dispute appears to have been resolved since Heise developed an alternative logo and only shows the Facebook logo once the user has clicked on it to activate the sharing function. You can see it in action on heise.de (the ‘Empfehlen’ button at the end of each article).

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Presenting the “Matrix of Civic Implication” 14. November 2011 – 23:06 by Asociacion Ciudades Kyosei / Pedro Prieto-Martin

The Asociación Ciudades Kyosei is a small civic organization whose aim is to foster Civic Engagement by means of ICT. It was founded in 2006 and is the oldest Spanish NGO devoted to the promotion of (e)Participation. In the last years we were researching on the field of Civic Engagement and ICT, with a special focus on Latin-America and Europe. Our work combines a critical attitude with an applied, hands-on focus, and has (1) theorized about Civic Engagement, (2) analysed the best design practices for (e)Participation systems, as well as (3) analysed the difficulties that exist to promote innovation in the ICT for Governance field. Our research has been widely recognized as refreshing and insightful.

In this PeP-NET post we would like to share a tool we have developed, “The matrix of civic implication”, whose main aim is to support the development of conceptual clarity when analyzing participatory venues and participatory initiatives. If used wisely, we think the matrix is a powerful “tool”, that goes beyond alternative models (like OECD, IAP2 or Fung’s), and should allow researchers, practitioners and the ‘man in the street’ to better understand the core dimensions of participatory activities.

 The Matrix of Civic Implication

Since Sherry Arnstein presented her “Ladder of Citizen Participation” in 1969, tens of models have been proposed with the aim to describe “participation”.

The problem with these models is that they tend to be either too basic -and thus they add less value- or they are too complex and specialized, and in this case they are too cumbersome to be applied.

For this reason… a lot of confusion exist in this field.

Our matrix tries to find a pragmatic balance between usefulness and complexity, and provide a tool that is at the same time powerful, practical and easy to use. It allows practitioners and theorists to compare in a matter of minutes different Participatory experiences. The model was developed to be applied to “municipal participation” initiatives, but it can be applied to other kind of participatory experiences.

The Matrix identifies four fundamental dimensions of participatory initiatives, which be informally “visualized”, and thus make this model especially suitable for comparing initiatives:
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CFP: Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government 12. October 2011 – 17:16 by Centre for E-Government

In modern democracies, people are to be empowered by means of information and communication technologies. Transparency and access to data, new ways of interacting with government and democratic institutions cause profound changes in society. Social media and the new forms of societal behaviour, including content generation, collaboration and sharing as well as network organisation change our understanding of politics and business. Governmental and private internet services have increased the citizens’ independence and flexibility. However, enthusiastic ideas and projects often failed to produce the expected results as technology is only the basis for new forms of organisation and interaction. CeDEM12 seeks to critically analyse present and future developments in e-democracy and open government. >> http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

CeDEM12 presents the following tracks:

• E-Participation
• Government 2.0
• Social/Web Media and Public Administration
• E-Politics and E-Campaigning
• European Citizen Initiative
• Participatory Budgeting
• Bottom-Up Movements
• Open Data and Open Access

Publications:

Important Dates: 

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Birmingham Civic Dashboard: E-Government to We-Government via Open Data 6. October 2011 – 18:31 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Birmingham Civic Dashboard screenshot

In its recent consultation document ‘Making Open Data Real’, the UK Government expresses high hopes for open data, heralding it as possibly “the most powerful lever of 21st century public policy”. Following several years of open data advocacy, activism and hack days, in the UK open data is moving towards the mainstream thanks to unanimous backing from the coalition government and the opposition.

The latest move in open data comes from Birmingham City Council, which today launched its ‘Civic Dashboard’. This is a web site publishing raw customer services data along with a slick visualisation, which was made possible by a grant that Digital Birmingham received as a result of winning a competition run by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

The Civic Dashboard draws its data from the customer service centre set up as part of the Council’s Business Transformation programme. An extract of data about all customer enquiries, whether by telephone, internet or email, is recorded by the customer relationship management system and fed into the Civic Dashboard in an aggregated (anonymised) form once per day. Where the data is geocoded, it can be presented on a map to show how many contacts originate from a particular ward or constituency. You can even see which channels the enquiries come through, which shows that the Council receives far more enquiries by telephone than through other channels.

This is an important step towards bridging the gap between eGovernment and ‘weGovernment’. Coming from the Council that was heavily criticised for spending £2.8m on its website as part of its eGovernment transformation, especially by Birmingham’s vocal social media users, opening up the data that is produced in the background shows what the new infrastructure can do beyond serving up static content. Doubtless there are many more datasets that exist as a result of the transformation programme, and if these are released in the future, perhaps Brummies will feel they got a better deal out of transformation than they first thought.

This itself is quite a paradox: such a handover of control to the citizen wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the huge transformation programme because IT is absolutely necessary for the collection of data in a reusable form.

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International Joint Workshop on Immigrant Inclusion by e-Participation 2.-3.11.2011 (IJW11) 5. October 2011 – 10:08 by irmatolonen

Immigrant Inclusion by eParticipation (IIeP) –project is organizing an international joint workshop dealing with immigrants and cultural minorities and their e-participation processes on November 2-3 2011, Helsinki, Finland.

Target groups: Authorities in national and local level involved in e-democracy and e-governance, persons from immigrant and multicultural non-governmental organisations as well as researchers and others in related fields interested in e-democracy and inclusion of immigrants in participatory decision-making.

Aim of the International Joint Workshop: Creating a discussion forum and a dialogue between authorities, NGO actors and immigrant societies on immigrant inclusion by e-participation.

There will be cross-border exchange of best results as experienced in practice, in projects or in research. The sessions will all have participatory elements such as discussions, collaboration, brainstorms and debates and will utilize participatory tools and methods. E-participation will be also possible, the links will appear later.

The event is free of charge, but make sure you register by the 21st of October 2011, since the venue only has a limited amount of seats.

Keynote speakers, Presentations, Abstracts and Biographys
The keynote speakers and their preliminary topics are:

Nico Carpentier, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, UK
“Mediated participation. ‘New’ technologies’ claims to increased participation, novelty and uniqueness”

Edward Andersson, Deputy Director of Involve, UK, Expert on methods of participatory decision making
“Engaging for the long term -Successful strategies and examples”

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Open Data in Germany and the UK 26. September 2011 – 13:52 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

e.gov conference, Belfast

At the “Open.gov & e-participation” conference in Belfast on 22nd September I said a few off-the-cuff words about open data in Germany before presenting DEMOS-Plan, the spatial planning consultation software that we have developed together with the local authority in Hamburg.

I think it’s fair to say that the open data debate is not quite as far ahead in Germany as it is in the UK. Although there are good examples (MOGDy, Apps4Berlin, Berlin’s new open data portal, the Bremen open data recommendation) here of local authorities and third parties opening their data and demonstrating what they can do, the UK government’s commitment to opening data as demonstrated by data.gov.uk and its recent consultation on ‘Making Open Data Real‘ show that the debate has moved on from ‘whether’ to ‘how’.

However, I argued, based on experience of eParticipation more generally, when Germany does catch up it will commit to well thought-out solutions that are implemented sustainably. The examples I used were Hamburg’s social media guidelines — which I have previously mentioned on PEP-NET and which describe in detail how Hamburg handles social media — and our own DEMOS-Plan, which is fully integrated into Hamburg’s infrastructure, is ‘business as usual’ because it will from now on be used for all local plan consultations in Hamburg, and is backed up by a procedure that gives citizens and stakeholder organisations a legal right to participate in urban planning, both online and offline.

If things happen in a similar way, I think open data will take off in Germany and many of the same issues that the UK is wrestling with will apply: so it will be necessary to think about the costs of opening datasets and to decide on which ones have priority. How do you decide which datasets are worth the investment? Do you assume that businesses will be built on the data public bodies publish, or do you prescribe a specific purpose that data should be used for? The UK government is quite clear in its white paper that enabling service users to make a more informed choice about which providers they use is an important motivation.

One issue that I think will be get more attention in Germany than in the UK is data protection. You get a good idea of how jealously Germans guard their privacy if you have a look around a residential area with Google Street View — in some cases, so many houses are blurred out that it is pretty much useless. Or see the Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein’s (Data-protection Commission for the State of Schleswig-Holstein’s) decision that Facebook pages and ‘like’ buttons on third-party websites contravene data protection law and should be stopped with immediate effect. In this context, I find it difficult to foresee Germany adopting an ‘open by default’ policy with regards to data. The risk that personal data could slip through the net could be too high.

So I think the German public sector is working on these issues and when the strategy is nailed down, it will be embedded for the long term. In short, open data will at some point be business as usual, even if it Germany doesn’t do ‘open by default’.

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New quality scheme for public engagement software 7. September 2011 – 10:33 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE

The Consultation Institute  (TCI) have launched what they believe to be the first quality scheme for public engagement software.  Software vendors can apply for their tool to be tested against the principals of the TCI consultation charter which is a set of good practices.   Assurances are also sought from existing customers and the package of training, support and help are scrutinised.

This results in a test report, including actions and recommendations for product development enhancement generated by experts in eParticipation.  Software and services which meet a certain grade will be granted the use of a logo which can be used on all marketing materials as a sign of product confidence.

An announcement will be made on 29^th September regarding the first vendor to achieve successful accreditation during the annual TCI ‘Technologies for public engagement and consultation event’ (London).

For enquiries, please email Fraser.henderson@btinternet.com

Posted in good practice, Tools | 2 Comments »

Frankfurt Social Media Newsroom: Interview with Nikolaus Münster, Head of Press & PR, Frankfurt am Main 6. September 2011 – 15:15 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Nikolaus Münster is Head of Press and Public Relations at the City Council in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. I spoke to him about the city’s “Social Media Newsroom“, which gathers content from all of its social media channels and presents it on one website.

Nikolaus gained inspiration for the idea when he took part in a European exchange programme in 2009, completing a secondment at Birmingham City Council. That is where I met him and where he learned about Birmingham News Room. Apart from anything, I think this is a nice bit of European best practice exchange, which can often be hard to quantify. It’s also nice to see Frankfurt getting something in return for the Christmas Market that they send to Birmingham ever winter!

John Heaven (JH): What is a Social Media Newsroom?

Nikolaus Münster (NM): Our Social Media Newsroom brings together all of our social media channels on one website. The user can view this site to see news about the city on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and other media at a glance.

We have been using these means of communication for a while now. Since 2009 we have been on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. When we started we wanted to gain experience before actively publicising our social media presences. Now, social media are central to our communication strategy.

JH: What is the main aim of the Newsroom?

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Ashoka Challenge – Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition 26. August 2011 – 14:38 by Asociacion Ciudades Kyosei / Pedro Prieto-Martin

Ashoka Foundation, with the support of Google, has launched Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition. Well, it was launched more than one month ago, but you still have 19 days (till Sep 14th) to present a proposal.

This competition is very related to the e-Participation field, as Ashoka considers it as linked with the fields of “Citizen participation” and “Journalism”.

Ashoka and Google are seeking innovations that will allow global citizens to have a voice and the information they need to make change. The competition welcomes solutions that work with any communication or information technologies—not just the Internet. The contest is open to solutions around the world: you ara allowed to present you entry in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Thai, Indonesian, Mandarin or Japanese.

Some of the benefits mentioned for participants are:

• Connect to a global online community that supports the impact you are making, or seeking to make, on the ground.
• Gain visibility with our community and our competition partner, Google.
• Position yourself as a candidate for an Ashoka Fellowship within our News & Knowledge program.

The prizes of the competition are:

• One of four US $5,000 cash prizes in unrestricted funding to boost your project.
• Consideration for an Ashoka Fellowship—complete with a three-year living stipend, international recognition, and access to a network of systems-changing social entrepreneurs.

Have a look at the webpage of Ashoka Changemakers for more details.

PS: By the way, there is an entry for our Kyopol System. We would be more that pleased if you’d like to give us any feedback about our proposal.

Posted in calls & tender, ICT, inclusion | No Comments »

Call for tenders: implementation of European Commission Open Data portal 23. August 2011 – 16:48 by Rolf Luehrs

The European Comission published a call for tender to implement an European Commission Open Data Portal.

The purpose of this tender is the purchase of services:

- to develop and administer a web portal to act as single point of access to data sets produced and held by European Commission services (and by extension to data sets produced and held by other European Institutions/bodies and other public bodies);

- to assist the Commission with the definition and implementation of a data set publication process;

- to assist the Commission with the preparation of data sets for publication via the portal;

- to assist the Commission in supporting for engaging the stakeholders’ community interested in re-using the published data sets.

Deadline: September 19th. For detailed information see : http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/open_data/call_tenders/index_en.htm

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