Archive for January, 2009
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15. January 2009 – 11:38 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Participation supported by electronic tools is not just limited to political topics – this has been stated in relation to eParticipation in many discussions. Keeping this in mind the Living Lab approach which aims at involving users and stakeholders into research and development processes by using innovative often time’s electronic ways of organising cooperation is a close cousin of eParticipation. Yesterday I visited the Living Labs Information Day held by the European Commission in Brussels. This event gave me an overview of the LL activity in Europe and the possibilities arising from this trend for player from the eParticipation field.
The projects presented at this event ranged from research in wearable computing involving test sites in the Aerospace, Construction and Automobile industry (wearIT@work) to projects working on environmental friendly lighting in urban areas and different developers of ICT tools sets to making working in a Living Lab context easier. Almost all research and innovation field were present at the event and could make a convincing case that the LL approach is significantly helping them to produce innovation in their field. Besides the variety of participants the number of ca. 250 also spoke to the importance of this approach. In the European Network of Living Labs alone more than 100 LL are involved. The EC also supports this community using different programmes but the representatives where clear that the EC´s job is to support the cross border aspects and not the local or regional development.
The complexity of LL project is very high as dozens and more stakeholders have to be involved in a multi-step development process. The deep experience of the eParticipation community to organise complex communication processes and to work out conflicts in these processes could be of great help to the many different Living Labs active in Europe. It therefore is useful to build contacts into the LL community and try to find possibilities to gain advantages from each other. On concrete step in this direction could be to look for potential partners for future project proposals to the European Commission in that community.
Posted in Trends, TuTech | No Comments »
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7. January 2009 – 17:27 by E-Voting.CC
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E-Voting.CC is currently working on a recent project to publish a magazine for the e-democracy community. The first issue of the magazine will deal with e-democracy in general, further issues will deal with e-voting in detail, e-participation projects and much more. The magazine will be distributed for free by post twice a year.
We will also include short news, detailed news, project news, recent developments and articles. We would be glad to get your input regarding projects and recent developments in the field.
Should you be interested in enrolling in our subscription list or should you want to contribute to our magazine, please send us an email (office@e-voting.cc) with your postal data, name and your email address.
We wish you a happy new year and we’ll inform you as soon as the magazine is available.
Daniel Botz, E-Voting.CC
Posted in News, Projects | 3 Comments »
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7. January 2009 – 11:04 by Hans Hagedorn
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One of the main challenges developing an international or pan-European online-dialogue lies in translating the user-generated comments. While the translation of editorial texts and navigation elements is a one-time-effort, the translation of user generated content (UGC) is a continuing, therefore expensive and time-consuming process. Language used in UGC resembles more natural, spoken language, which makes it difficult to translate automatically. Furthermore, you can not know for sure how much content the users will produce.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Trends | 5 Comments »
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7. January 2009 – 11:01 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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The Home Office in Great Britain adapted a plan which allows “police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant” according to the Times Online. This kind of remote search allows both police and MI5 officers to examine suspects’ hard drives, to install keylogging software or infect the targeted computer with other kinds of malware (viruses, rootkits etc.). This can be done to a suspect’s computer at home, in the office or in a hotel room. The plan for remote search in GB is based on a decision of the Council of ministers of the European Union from late 2008 which suggests adapting “operational measures, such as cyber patrols, joint investigation teams and remote searches to become part of the fight against cybercrime in the next five years”. I already discussed this decision and its possible negative implementations for privacy and internet freedom in an earlier article.
As the plan in GB is an adaptation of the Council of ministers decision it can be seen as a blueprint for similar laws in other EU states. Therefore it makes sense to take a look at what it allows officers to do:
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Posted in Trends | No Comments »
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6. January 2009 – 17:07 by Dan Jellinek
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Well, the economic background is very bad for this year, as I am not the first to point out, and this will inevitably make this year tough going for many of us in the e-democracy community. Those of us in the private sector will have to tighten our belts, and no doubt charities and non-profits will also suffer from a drop in donations and sponsorship.
Against this backdrop one area which might be given a long overdue boost is open source software, as discussed by Bengt and others on this blog. Previously a subject not given too much consideration by many governments and public sector bodies because it was considered a bit technical and perhaps too risky, I sense that in 2009 there will be a new wave of interest in open source solutions for public and civic services, driven by the tight financial climate.
If this does happen it will be a long-overdue and welcome development, in the UK at least. It may also offer the opportunity for innovation and e-participation projects to continue on lower budgets.
Other random predictions for 2009: I think that Facebook will continue to grow in use and importance across society, with a corresponding rise in e-participation uses either through Facebook groups and applications or just as an adjunct to other tools. Again, this could lower the cost of online e-participation for many groups, since they will simply have to master and use an existing set of online tools, with an ever-widening reach.
And as Rolf has noted, the use of the internet in European elections will be interesting to watch, post-Obama: it will be interesting to track that on this blog. My paper on Obama on behalf of the UK’s Parliamentary IT Committee has now been published.
What will Europe learn from his example, and how will Obama himself continue his online momentum once he comes into office in a couple of week’s time?
Happy New Year to all,
Dan.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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5. January 2009 – 12:25 by Madarász Csaba
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The New Year has just started (at least, some parts of our vivid European culture) and we might be full with ideas, recommendations and suggestions to make our place a better place for participatory culture.
As modern physics basic findings gives us a solid ground to understand, how our thoughts affects reality, we might experiance the possibilities of open thinking through a little excerise, based on e-participation principles – the feedback and idea management.
As this post has introduced a wish and a call (for sharing your ideas and voting on others), it is also introducing a service for testing – the Uservoice.
Visit the pages for adding your ideas:
http://pepnet.uservoice.com/
Posted in Tools, Visions | No Comments »
