Archive for May, 2009
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23. May 2009 – 17:23 by POLITECH
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After the Obamania that has inflamed the Web, we are still waiting at D-15 for the European Elections 2009 to take-off on the web.
Besides a slow campaign from our political parties in Europe, the European Parliament has decided to launch video campaigns through its YouTube channel (EuropeanParliament channel).
A young blond screaming out her lungs is the new Marianne of Europe on the Web …
The New European Marianne
The European Parliament of the Youth is not restless as well with a new clip on DayliMotion …
Should our political parties get some inspiration from our European Institutions?
The European Socialist Party is taking on some inspiration, as in its parody of the commercial “MAC versus PC” …
The European Green are coming back in force with Danny the Red (Daniel Cohn-Bendit nickname during the ’68 Revolution) and a “lipdub” (popular type of song in the Web):
Are we going to “lipdub” our way to the voting station?
Are we going to witness an Euromania before June 7?
Posted in News, Trends, good practice | No Comments »
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21. May 2009 – 12:41 by ASAEL
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El pasado 29 de abril de 2009, ASAEL celebró la Jornada “Participación de los Jóvenes en Europa: Luchando Juntos contra el Cambio Climático” en el Aula de Medio Ambiente Urbano, La Calle Indiscreta, con una duración de 9.00 a 18.00 horas.
La Asociación Aragonesa de Entidades Locales (ASAEL), a través del Proyecto “eCLAU”, aprobado dentro del marco del Programa Europeo “Jóvenes en Acción”, ha realizado unas Jornadas sobre la participación de los jóvenes en las políticas medioambientales de la UE, en concreto en la lucha contra el cambio climático a través de las nuevas tecnologías. Con la realización de estas Jornadas y por tanto con el Proyecto eCLAU se pretende acercar a los jóvenes al sistema democrático europeo promoviendo su participación en los procesos democráticos a través de las TIC y en concreto el uso de los foros.
El Presidente de ASAEL y la Directora del Instituto Aragonés de la Juventud, comenzaron abriendo el acto.
Posteriormente la Directora de Proyectos de ASAEL hizo una presentación del Proyecto eCLAU, a lo que le siguió la primera mesa redonda sobre “Participación en Europa”, que contó con la participación de una representante del Observatorio de Medio Ambiente que nos expuso las experiencias en la Comunidad Autónoma de Aragón en procesos de participación ciudadana en programas de gestión ambiental y también se contó para esta mesa redonda con un representante del Instituto Tecnológico Danés especialista en eparticipación que nos habló sobre eparticipación en Europa, su situación actual y potencial futuro.
La segunda Mesa Redonda versó sobre “Medio Ambiente y Jóvenes” y estuvo representada por un representante de la Oficina de la Comisión Europea en Madrid, que nos habló del Programa de Juventud y política de Medio Ambiente en la Unión Europea, también contamos con la presencia de representante de la Diputación de Zaragoza, de la asociación juvenil Sargantana y la Comarca del Maestrazgo (Teruel) que nos contaron sus experiencias en participación ciudadana.
La tercera mesa redonda que se celebró por la tarde con el título “Las Nuevas Tecnologías como instrumento para la participación en el Medio Ambiente”, contó con la participación de un especialista europeo que vino de la región Toscana en Italia y nos expuso la experiencia adquirida a través del proyecto Europeo Ideal-Eu, además participaron representantes del Instituto Aragonés de la Juventud y del Colectivo de Educación ambiental que expusieron experiencias de participación de los jóvenes en el cambio climático y algunas reflexiones sobre la utilización de las TICs.
La cuarta mesa redonda sobre “Cambio climático como área de participación” contó con la Jefa del Servicio de Educación Ambiental del Gobierno de Aragón que expuso las políticas de educación ambiental del Gobierno de Aragón como estrategia de participación en el cambio climático, la alcaldesa del ayuntamiento de Velilla de Ebro que nos contó experiencias en su municipio de asociaciones juveniles y el director de la Agencia de Medio ambiente y Sostenibilidad del Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza que expuso la situación actual en materia de medio ambiente en la ciudad de Zaragoza.
El acto fue clausurado por el Presidente de ASAEL y la Jefa de servicio de Educación Ambiental del Gobierno de Aragón, donde resaltaron la necesidad de llevar a cabo proyectos como estos para fomentar la participación de los jóvenes en la lucha contra el cambio climático y en temas relacionados con el medio ambiente en general.
La jornada, tuvo una gran repercusión en los medios aragoneses, su difusión se hizo a través del envío de más de 1400 cartas postales a entidades y colectivos como Ayuntamientos, Comarcas, Asociaciones Juveniles y entidades representativas aragonesas.
Los medios que asistieron al evento contribuyeron a su difusión tanto en radio como en televisión.
El público asistente fue muy elevado y muy representativo ya que se contó con la Representantes de Ayuntamientos, Comarcas, Gobierno de Aragón, Asociaciones Juveniles, Partidos Políticos, Scouts de Aragón, Clubs deportivos, jóvenes y en general ciudadanos interesados en la temática de la Jornada.
Dado el nivel de los ponentes, la amplia colaboración de las Instituciones aragonesas y el nutrido grupo de asistentes que acudió al acto, podemos asegurar que la Jornada, enclavada en el proyecto europeo e-CLAU, ha sido un éxito.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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21. May 2009 – 12:21 by ASAEL
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On April 29th, ASAEL held the Seminar “Youth Participation in Europe: fighting together against climate change”, in the Urban Environment room, la Calle Indiscreta, from 9am to 6pm.
The Aragonese Association of Local Authorities (ASAEL), through the project “eCLAU”, approved under the European Program “Youth in Action”, has realized a seminar about youth participation in EU Environmental policies, particularly in the fight against climate change through new technologies.
With the implementation of this conference and therefore with the project “eCLAU”, we want to bring closer young people to the European democratic system by promoting their participation in democratic processes particularly through ICT and the use of forums. Taking the advantage of the proximity of the European elections next June 7th and the climate change as one of the most active fields for participation.
The President of ASAEL and the Director of the Aragonese Youth Institute started opening the conference.Subsequently, the head of EU Project Department of ASAEL did a presentation of the overview project “eCLAU”.
After it followed the first round table “Participation in Europe”, that was held with the participation of the Representative of the Environment Observatory, who described the experiences in the Spanish region of Aragon in the processes of public participation in environmental management programs. We also counted on this round table with a representative of the Danish Technological Institute, specialist in eParticipation who talked about eParticipation in Europe, its current status and potential future.
The second round table was focused on “Youth and Environment” and gave the floor to a representative of the Office of the European Commission in Madrid, who talked about the Youth Program and Policy Environment in the European Union. This table showed us a good approximation on participation in Environment thanks to the presence of a representative from the Zaragoza´s Locality, the youth association and the Shire of Sargantana Maestrazgo (Teruel) who told us their experiences in citizen participation.
The fourth round table discussed on “Climate change as an area of participation” with the Chief of Environmental Education of the Government of Aragon who illustrated the environmental education policies as a strategy for participation in climate change; in addition to this, the mayor of the municipality of Velilla de Ebro explained us her experience of the local youth associations in this municipality and the director of the Agency for Environment and Sustainability of the City Council of Zaragoza who outlined the current situation regarding the environment in the city of Zaragoza.
The third round table took place in the afternoon with the title: “The new technologies as a tool for Environment’s participation”, with the participation of an European specialist who came from the Tuscany region in Italy who presented his experience through the European project Ideal-Eu. This table was completed with the experience of representatives of the Aragonese Institute of Youth and Education and a Collective of Environmental Education who exposed youth participation in climate change and some reflections on the use of ICTs.
The event was closed by the President of ASAEL and the Environmental Education of the Government of Aragon’s chief, where they expressed the need to carry out projects like this to encourage youth participation in the fight against climate change and issues related to the environment in general.
The conference had a great impact in the Aragonese media and press, and was disseminated by sending more than 1,400 invitations to organizations and groups such as municipalities, counties, youth associations and entities representing the Aragonese society.
Medias that attended the event contributed to its spread both in radio and television. The audience was very large and very representative as it included the representatives of municipalities, counties, Government of Aragon, Youth Associations, Political Parties, Scouts of Aragon, sporting clubs, youth and general public interested in the theme of the Seminar.
Given to the level of the speakers, the extensive cooperation of the Aragonese institutions and the large group of participants who attended the event, we can ensure that the conference, part of the European project e-CLAU, has been a success.
Posted in Projects, TuTech | No Comments »
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19. May 2009 – 17:43 by POLITECH
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Last December, a post was published under the title How we could syndicate eParticipation related resources really simple.
In his post, we’ve learned about social bookmarking and especially delicious.com.
Delicious.com is a Yahoo service allowing people to save their favorites online and share them with the community.
This post is going more into details regarding delicious.com and e-Participation
According to my own experience, delicious.com can be an excellent alternative to … Google. Indeed, if used smartly, it is possible to find very quickly and easily the sites you are looking for.
The idea is the following: people with the same interest are looking for the same websites. When they have found a good source of information, they save the URL, write some notes, share it with their peers. You may actually find out that an expert in the field is a person who has a large number of favorites with relevant tags and interesting notes.
So, the alternative to Google is to find these people and follow their findings.
This way, you may be sure that you can keep up to date with the most interesting stuff.
It is worth it becoming part of their network and it is even better if you start yourself by giving to this expert some information. Even if you are just a beginner, you may still be able to contribute to the community.
In our case, let’s see what the status of eParticipation is in Delicious.
A first task when looking for some information is to decide upon various key words to insert in the search field.
First of all, should we use eParticipation, e-Participation or both?
According to the tag cloud of Pep-net website, we can see that the word eParticipation is much more popular than e-Participation.
Is it the same on Delicious?
The way to find it is to lookup the following URLs:
http://delicious.com/tag/eparticipation
vs.
http://delicious.com/tag/e-participation
It says that there are 733 bookmarks with the tag e-participation whereas there are 465 bookmarks with the tag eparticipation.
What is the meaning of it?
Contrarily to the Pepnet community, the community of Delicious.com is using more the tag e-participation than eparticipation.
It is therefore important to also include this popular tag when looking for relevant information.
Another aspect is to look at the newest websites that are listed. Since delicious.com saves the dates of the saving of each website, the first sites that are on the list are the most recent ones. It is a good idea as it was suggested in the previous post, to use RSS for updates.
Another feature is to use the popular tag so that you can see what the most popular sites are. It may not mean that they are the best sites but in our opinion it is an important parameter taking into account the high level of Delicious users.
In order to speed up the search process, it is a good idea to check the notes that people have written about the site they have saved. This way, you may reduce the number of sites that you go to and select the sites with the most relevant notes.
When looking for sites in a specific language, it is good to follow the right people. For instance, if you are speaking German, then we can see that tbonnemann has been saving recently a number of German websites about e-Participation. He is actually a very heavy user of Delicious since we can see that he or she has saved 8405 sites so far.
Along the eParticipation tag, we can check on his/her page the other tags that are being used.
Is there a way to find out the identity of this person and make a contact?
Well, not directly.
In our case, when googling tbonnemann, we quickly find his blog (in English), his name : Tim Bonnemann and an interesting post on eDemocracyCamp ‘09 .
Comments are welcome.
Philippe Scheimann
POLITECH INSTITUTE
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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19. May 2009 – 17:28 by POLITECH
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Following to my post “How to better use Second Life as a Public Entity”, let see now what can be the return of investment…
- First, by its presence: the image of the Institution will benefit from the media covering and the influx of public in-world. Its lack of Second Life could be more noticeable, as the new internet tools are spreading, and SL being definitely part of them.
For example, after being selected last October, among the 21 fastest growing communities in the world in ICT, Issy-les-Moulineaux has taken the second step in the “Top 7 Intelligent Community of 2009,” revealed last January 21 by ICF, USA. Issy is the only French city in the running for the distinction of “Intelligent City of the year” which will be awarded May 15th in New York City. http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=Top7_2009
Being present in Second Life with a very nice Sim (region) might have added an ICT value.
In Issy-les-Moulineaux Sim, you can contact the Council hall, download publications, assist to City Council, watch IssyTV, and visit the City hall exhibition. I tried the “Contact “button…and as I didn’t have any special questions I just warned the virtual municipality agent that they were a tree right at the arrival point and that we couldn’t see the explanation panels… It worked! Today, the tree is behind the panel!
http://issy.com/index.php/fr/cyber_cite/actualites/la_mairie_d_issy_sur_second_life
- Promotion of activities through Second life/Real life events, invitations to events, to ePetitions, links to ePractices sites, debates, games…
- More direct interaction with Worldwide Citizens. The interaction between visitors and Institutions must be central in this environment.
For example, Weekly Discussion MuniGov2.0 meeting in-world and Web 2.0 Government Discussion Group:
http://sites.google.com/site/munigov20/
http://www.govtech.com/gt/427330
- And maybe marketing of products, some of which could be designed specifically for this vector…
More and more web or SL agencies are turning to this business, so services will emerge gradually, offering development services for RL companies, Administrations and educational Institutions entering SL. They build Sims and content, as well as arrange virtual meetings, conventions, conferences, training or educational classes.
Some latest arrival for France: The Tourism National Comity of the Midi-Pyrénées region and the brand new National Health Agency of the Hauts de Seine region decided to settle in Second Life.
The virtual worlds are part of modern means of communication even for Institutions or Administrations of this scale. Europe should be present!
“Public Institutions should use the virtual worlds (not just SL) the same way they use Facebook or Twitter, like a community that has to be updated and entertained. You can’t only count on the buzz effect.” Says Fred Cameron, who used to write actively in the SLObserver blog, which became http://www.universvirtuels.com/
Watch the Machinima (video) that Linden Lab CEO Philip Linden (creator of SL) presented to Congress, showing how Second Life is being used by government, nonprofits, education and the arts. http://www.silverandgoldie.com/linden_congress.htm
Claire Mercier
POLITECH INSTITUTE
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
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19. May 2009 – 17:00 by POLITECH
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The Call for applicants for the European eDemocracy Awards closes on 31 May 2009.The European eDemocracy Awards is an annual award honouring the most valuable European eDemocracy initiative amongst 50 selected websites in the EU 27.
The Award features a wide range of eDemocracy tools and content strengthening eParticipation, transparency, representative participatory democracy and citizen participation in the democratic decision-making processes at the European, national or local levels of governance.
European stakeholders of eDemocracy and eParticipation amongst the EU 27 are welcome to apply.
Those wishing to submit their initiatives or projects can do so by sending an email to
viktorian@politech-institute.eu by 31 May 2009.
The winner of the Awards will be invited to the World eDemocracy Forum 2009 which will take place in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
Further information:
Viktoria Nioradze,
Politech Institute
Posted in News, TuTech | No Comments »
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19. May 2009 – 16:53 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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The Directorate General for Information Society and Media will join forces with the study on “Bringing Together and Accelerating eGovernment Research in the EU” will organise a Workshop entitled eDemocracy and eParticipation: A research-oriented perspective on June 12th in Brussels.
At this workshop different experts will do presentations and discussion on a variety of topics like:
- Direct democracy examples such as eVoting, electioneering and polling
- eParticipation experiment design
- Assessment of impact and comparative research
- Tools and practices for eConsultation, ePetition, conflict resolution and mediation, eDeliberation and others
- ICT for argumentation support, collaboration and content management
- National policy issues and initiatives
- Risks associated with eDemocracy
More Information and the process for registration can be found here:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/studies/trendswatch/docs/social_economic_aspects/20090310-02-call.pdf
Posted in News, TuTech | No Comments »
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18. May 2009 – 16:38 by pol-di.net e.V / politik-digital.de
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The „Bürgerforum Europa“, a web-based community launched on the initiative of the Bertelsmann Stiftung in cooperation with the Heinz Nixdorf Stiftung, assembles German citizens who care about Europe’s future. By publishing their resolution, the so-called „BürgerProgramm“, the community members direct their claims now to Brussels.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in News, TuTech, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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18. May 2009 – 16:17 by E-Voting.CC
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Today at 08:00 am the first legally binding electronic election in Austrian history went online! The Austrian Federal Student Union is being elected starting today morning and running until Friday via a remote electronic channel. Next week from Tuesday the 26th until Thursday the 28th of May an ordinary, paper based voting channel will be opened to ensure.
The paper and the electronic votes will be counted on the 28th and hence the result should be available around Thursday evening.
The voting system was programmed by the Spanish E-Voting specialist Scytl and is hosted at the Austrian Federal Computation Center. The Austrian Ministry of Science and Research is the initiator, Robert Krimmer from E-Voting.CC is consulting the implementation process.
The going online of the voting system this morning went as planned. A minor problem although occurred with the Intranet connection at the BRZ but this was quickly solved and did in no way affect the voting system itself.
We are glad and also a bit proud, that this project is now successfully in the “delivery phase”, we hope everything will keep running smoothly!
Daniel Botz, E-Voting.CC
Posted in News, Tools, Trends, TuTech, Uncategorized, Visions, good practice | No Comments »
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18. May 2009 – 11:05 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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It is generally accepted that availability of public and parliament data in standardized formats like XML helps to increase transparency. Websites like Recovery.gov, which gives detailed information about the use of public funds to strengthen the economy in the USA, have been praised for being great examples of this kind of transparency increase, but are set up and managed by government organisations. But data availability does not mean but itself that this data is accessible to ordinary citizens in every case. Even though organisations and programmers may be able to make use and sense of data presented in a very rigid and standardized way and make it accessible to the public, ordinary citizens might be overwhelmed and unable to put the data to real use. Last weekend a new platform has been launched which may be the definite answer to this problem.
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Posted in Trends | No Comments »
