Archive for July, 2008
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8. July 2008 – 11:26 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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The vast amount of different websites and services on the web seems to be impossible to categorize. Can we even call something like Google docs a website or is a more a less a piece of software running in a browser (which is an even broader term)? But there is a growing group of website that have distinct properties distinguishing them form the mass. These sites behave more like utilities (water or electricity) than a service – hence the term describing them: utility computing. These perform a simple task very well and provide the tools to others to build on top of it.
A popular and still recent example would be Twitter. This microblogging site gets much more powerful when services build on top of it are used than if one just uses Twitter itself. Examples of these added services are Tweetscan (a search engine tailored to Twitter), Twitterfeed (a tool that allow you to integrate your own RSS-Feeds to Twitter) or Twellow (Yellow pages for Twitter). Another example would be Google Maps – the service in of it self in basic but delivered in a very sophisticated and high performance way. But the additional services and the uses of Google maps by others really make it what it is.
The way this interaction between websites is made possible through so called APIs, short for Application Programming Interface. These are a set of rules which describe how the interactions have to be performed, which kinds of interactions are possible, etc. APIs power many different services on the web and also on local computers. The browser you are using most certainly interacts with your computers operating system through its APIs right now.
As with public utilities this kind of websites develop cottage industries improving and building on what is provided by them. But has these added services highly depend on the utility site there are some consequences. Utility sites have to be highly reliable and cannot change their service to much along the way. On a more technical note the API has to be consistent and well worked out. If a website chooses to go along those lines and the cottage industries takes of there may even be a new kind of business model attached to that (take a look at that idea at Mashable).
There seems to be a general trend to more focussed services on the web which interact among each other to perform more complex tasks. The rise of utility websites is also an indicator for this trends besides for example the discussion about data portability, initiatives like Open Social or apps build on social networking platforms like Facebook.
PS: For the more technical minded readers: I suggest to listen to the FLOSS weekly episode on the ROCKS where later on in the program the developers discuss using utility computing (in this case Amazon S3) to build large cluster computers (e.g. super computers).
Posted in Trends | 2 Comments »
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7. July 2008 – 10:09 by Renate Mitterhuber
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That was the title of a workshop at a major Germany-wide conference in Leipzig with almost 1000 participants from public administrations. Topics during the two-day conference centred on the theme of eGovernment. Among the subjects discussed were trends and strategies of eGovernment in the future, acceptance (or otherwise) by users, and ways of improving the current situation in Germany.
I have been involved in the Hamburg administration for the past seven years with the issues of eGovernment and eParticipation and since October 2005 have been in charge of the department responsible for the strategic long-term establishment of these topics in the Hamburg administration as a whole. So it was with happy anticipation that I made my way – slightly late – to the upstairs room in the spanking new futuristic building on the outskirts of Leipzig to improve my blogging skills.
The first surprise was that there were only five members of public administrations sitting in front of their PCs and busily practising constructing blogs and using administrative tools to put them into practical use. Two participants were from the same organisation, and one had to leave early because his boss called him away. That left just four administrations at this conference that had expressed any interest in using this no longer terribly new method of interaction. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Trends, TuTech, Visions | 2 Comments »
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4. July 2008 – 09:34 by Francesco Molinari
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On 1st July 2008 the European Commission, DG INFSO, Unit F4, hosted a workshop by invitation entitled “Living Labs for User-driven Open Innovation”. Aim of the workshop was to present and discuss the state of the art of European Living Labs under the operational, networking, and policy perspectives.
The establishment of a European Network of Living Labs is a policy initiative launched by the EU Finnish Presidency in November 2006 as a first step towards a new European Innovation System, entailing a major paradigm shift for the whole innovation process. “Typical” Living Labs are Public Private Partnerships where firms, public authorities and people work together in creating, prototyping, validating and testing new services, businesses, markets and technologies in real-life contexts, such as cities, city regions, rural areas and collaborative virtual networks between public and private players. The real-life and everyday contexts both stimulate and challenge research and development, as do public authorities and citizens not only participate in, but also contribute to an open innovation process.
One of the afternoon sessions of the EC workshop was entitled “The use of Living Labs in e-democracy: Citizen-driven Governance”. The keynote speech and the following discussion focused on the possible implementation of the Living Labs methodological approach in the (broadly defined) contexts of eParticipation, eGovernment and eDemocracy. From the debate it clearly emerged that several experiences are now ongoing in Europe that try to incorporate the “added value” of open innovation into the various pathways of interaction between citizens and decision makers. In particular, the benefits were highlighted from a careful preparation of the participatory trials, by means of the Living Labs methodology, to avoid the most common pitfalls of current eDemocracy experiences, such as: lack of active involvement from citizens and/or stakeholders, mistrust from the people, skepticism from the politicians, and ultimately a low reusability of upcoming results within the public decision making process.
To increase the opportunities for cross fertilisation, a few suggestions were made by the audience, including a possible role for the PEP-NET community itself: as a practitioners network in the area of eParticipation, with some of its members holding a first hand experience in both Living Labs and eDemocracy, there can be certainly room for clustering and a reciprocal contamination with the most relevant, “citizen-driven” trials of the European Network of Living Labs.
Posted in good practice, Trends, TuTech, Visions | 1 Comment »
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3. July 2008 – 18:08 by Dan Jellinek
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In the past few weeks I have been writing a briefing for UK Parliamentarians on e-participation, on behalf of PITCOM, the Parliamentary IT Committee. PITCOM is a joint IT industry/Parliament grouping which is politically neutral, and set up by MPs (members of Parliament) and Peers (our word for the politicians in the House of Lords, our second chamber) to bridge the gap between politicians and the industry.
The briefing itself should be published in the next few weeks on PITCOM’s website, for free download, at: www.pitcom.org.uk in the section headed ‘briefings’.
One of the interesting topics to arise in the report came from an interview with a politician, Margaret Moran, whom PEP-NET members are due to meet in London in November. Margaret Moran is an e-participation pioneer who over many years has led extremely valuable projects including ‘Womenspeak’ and ‘Kidspeak’, which are online consultation projects with women and children who are affected by domestic violence. Other groups involved in this work included the Hansard Society and a charity called Women’s Aid.
Margaret told me that one of the keys to successful e-participation is to target ‘unheard voices’ – the hardest to reach groups within whatever area you are approaching. So for domestic violence, not only is this already a sensitive subject and a group of people who are hard to engage with because of anonymity and security concerns, but within this group their project also targeted for example women from the Bangladeshi community who might find it even harder to speak out for cultural and language reasons.
If you do not target such groups, she argues, then e-participation is just another way for voices to be heard that are already heard in other ways. But if you use the power of e-participation to allow remote, secure, anonymous consultation to target unheard voices, it is truly powerful.
Of course, such a task is not easy – by definition these groups of people are hard to reach. So outreach work is the key. You must go to where people are – whether it be school gates, community groups or whatever – and spread the wor about the online consultation or e-participation exercise. This is not a technology issue – it is spending time, money and effort in reaching people through ordinary channels, and also through partner bodies such as national charities that already work with marginalised groups of people.
This is an important message I think, and one that is developed in the report – I hope PEP-NET members will be interested to read it when it appears, and I will post another note on here when it is out.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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3. July 2008 – 11:48 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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The so called telecom package is a collection of amendments to existing European laws which will drastically change the organization of telecommunication in Europe and especially of the internet. The package will be the framework for the national laws concerning telecommunication. The purposed law has produced a lot of harsh criticism among members of the online community. This uproar is nothing less than the self-organized participation of the effected stakeholders of this law.
To better understand why the telecom package is criticised in such a fierce manner here are some statements form digital citizens of Europe. Laquadrature.net posted a document containing the most important regulations which will be put into place by the law. It also points out the problematic issues that laquadrature.net think could result from the law. For example it may be that the law would allow the Commission to “impose technical standards on content filtering and monitoring computing so called ‘trusted computing’. The Commission would be able to give the concerned by these regulation recommendations following a quick and undemocratic procedure, at the request of any national regulation authority (ARCEP, CSA, HADOPI in France, OFCOM in the UK, PTS in Sweden).” Another example is that the implementation of “technical measures” to prevent infringement of intellectual property can only be achieved by deep packet inspection or by using spyware on consumers’ computers. Slashdot thinks that the whole Peer-to-Peer infrastructure in Europe may be endangered by this. P2P is used for many legitimate purposes like Skype, the distribution of free and open source software and media content. Following the argumentation of laquarture.net and many others (as for example Members of the European Parliament) the different amendments may be a threat to privacy and freedom of internet users. It may also damage the European economy by hindering innovation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in News, Trends | 5 Comments »
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2. July 2008 – 14:38 by Orebro University
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Sweden has recently been in the international news for issues related to government surveillance versus privacy.
Last week, a controversial law was passed enabling the FRA (translated into English as the National Defense Radio Establishment) to collect any and all traffic crossing the Swedish borders. Earlier, only suspicion of crime would allow the FRA to listen in. While technically limited to international communications, any internal Swedish communication that might cross the border back and forth on its way through the Internet could be collected.
The law aroused public outrage, and some MPs broke the party line and voted against it. Nonetheless, after some amendments were made, it passed. The changes include a committee that must okay the FRA to listen in (there will be a need for a reason), and the Data Inspection Board will inspect FRA activities to make sure that the privacy and protection of sources laws are followed.
However, the criticism has not stopped. Opponents believe these changes are not enough and the law is excessively invasive into people’s privacy. Neighboring countries have also complained this law will allow surveillance of most of their citizen’s communications.
For more coverage (in English) see this website. Share your thoughts in the comment section!
Stockholm, Capital of Sweden
Posted in News, Trends | 3 Comments »
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2. July 2008 – 11:28 by Rolf Luehrs
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By today the 2gether 2008 started its two day festival in London, UK.
Digital innovations are changing our world, the way we perceive it and our notions of what is possible ….
But are we doing enough or being imaginative enough to harness the potential of internet, mobile and games technologies to:
- promote social progress,
- enhance the quality of public life and our collective well-being and
- tackle the problems facing the world at the outset of the 21st century ?
The first 2gether Festival will bring together over 300 innovators from a wide range of fields to focus on how using digital technologies we can generate real social benefits.
2gether08 is not just about wise words and rousing presentations. A defining hallmark of the Festival will be how we frame problems and work towards solutions. This is happening now in advance of the Festival and will continue during and after the event.
2gether08 live streams the event via mogulus right after the click!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in TuTech | No Comments »
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1. July 2008 – 15:37 by Danish Technological Institute
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As you may already be aware the European Commission (DG Information Society and Media) funded eParticipation Study – titled “Study and supply of services on the development of eParticipation in the EU” – is currently underway and in this connection the first wave of deliverable has now been prepared and submitted to the EC and a group of external peer reviewer (see www.european-eparticipation.eu for further details).
Deliverables include:
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Major factors shaping the development of eParticipation (D1.1a)
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Key actors in the EU in the field of eParticipation (D1.2a)
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Main benefits of the eParticipation developments in the EU (D1.3a)
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Mapping the state of play in eParticipation in the EU (D1.4a)
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First post-workshop report (D3.1b)
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Framework for eParticipation good practice (D4.1a)
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First newsletter (D6.3a)
In addition the following deliverables will be available end of July:
This first wave of deliverables will be updated for the next deliverables wave expected in October/November 2008. The second version of each deliverable will take into account comments by the European Commission and the project’s peer review group as well as further work conducted by the Consortium Partners in the intervening period.
You may view all deliverables in the publications/public deliverables section on www.european-eparticipation.eu or directly on http://195.251.218.37/eP//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=2
Please note that we are continuously looking for people with involvement or experience in eParticipation at the European level who will be able to guide use to relevant eParticipation initiatives, projects, events, etc. We are especially interested in examples at the European level, that may be considered as good practice, or from which lessons can be learned.
If you have not already done so, you may wish to register for the eParticipation and eDemocracy Network on http://www.epractice.eu/community/eParticipation.
Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, Business and Policy Analysis, Danish Technological Institute
Posted in News, Projects | No Comments »
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1. July 2008 – 11:41 by Birgit Hohberg
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How to motivate hundreds of pupils to discuss the topic genetically modified food and to work out hundreds of argumentation cards voluntarily three weeks on the Internet while having fun?
The project BioTalk had undertaken this difficult approach which sounds slightly unrealistic. In the course of the project the project group developed a specific eParticipation proceeding for adolescents in Hamburg that was applied successfully on the Internet. The project was based on a two-step procedure: in the preparation phase organised in cooperation with teachers, educational institutes and the department of education and sport the project group developed the framework and features of the following online participation process and tried to attract the pupils’ attention by several promotion activities. In the second phase the online discourse and integrated role playing game was set up and carried out on the TuTech’s online discussion platform DEMOS – a participation and argumentation support system which has been applied in several national and international public discourses so far.
The discourse project run through the three subsequent phases of broadening, deepening and consolidating the argumentation process in different kinds of forums and joint work arrangements. During the process the participants were asked to take over up to seven different roles – entrepreneurs, environmentalists, priests, farmers, politicians, scientists and consumers – and to explore the different role specific perspectives and arguments. They were also invited to fix and work out collaboratively those arguments within so called “argumentation cards” which offered a pro and contra field for all of the seven roles. These argumentation cards were based on a wiki-format to enable the team work of the different participants on the Internet.
In the end more than 300 pupils were attracted to join the eParticipation process about chances and risks of genetically modifies food. The discussion went on for three weeks carried by an enormous engagement of the young participants. Altogether, the pupils wrote more than 4000 single contributions. Furthermore, they collaboratively developed 170 argumentation cards covering the pro and contra arguments of seven different role perspectives each and wrote 70 individual stories dealing with specific aspects of the underlying topic. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in good practice, members, Projects, Tools | No Comments »
