Archive for November, 2009
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22. November 2009 – 15:44 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE
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How do we measure the value of search in eParticipation?
Some slides from Google UK here on this topic, presented at the annual Consultation Institute Technologies for participation event in November 2009. Ok, so they are very UK centric but interesting considering 43% of traffic to government sites come from search engines.
We’re beginning to quantify technology savings in a much more tangible way than ever before, timely considering the global recession. Take the recent example of the Los Angeles City Council who are replacing their existing e-mail system (which it has used for the past seven years).
A new five-year contract has been signed with Google mail at a cost of $17.5 million. The city’s current e-mail system has been prone to crashes, which has hurt employees’ productivity. In addition, the city lacked disaster recovery for its e-mail system — a shortcoming that Gmail will address.
The city estimates that moving its 30,000 employees to Gmail will save $5.5 million over five years, reduce the number of servers needed for e-mail from 90 to a few dozen, and cut nine positions from the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency.
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16. November 2009 – 12:20 by pol-di.net e.V / politik-digital.de
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The Lisbon Treaty is expected to enter into force on December 1st, 2009. Consequently the European Citizens’ Initiative will become reality. The European Commission is now asking its citizens for support: How should the idea be put into practice?
Read the rest of this entry »
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16. November 2009 – 10:41 by Eric Legale
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Caitlin Morrissey, PoliticsOnline.com editor, explains in this video how the web’s oldest political Internet company selects during the last ten years the “10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics”. This year, the International e-Democracy Award was given by Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline, to Peter Greenberger, head of the Google division in charge of political advertising. The online tools that Google offers (YouTube, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Ads) were heavily used over the course of the recent American presidential campaign. Democratic candidate Barack Obama spent 7.5 million dollars integrating these tools into his campaign strategy. Peter Greenberger informs and educates policy makers and administration officials regarding the use of these tools in order to make the political process more accessible to ordinary citizens.
According PoliticsOnline, Peter Greenberger and his team have played a key role in enhancing transparency and democracy in the United States, which significantly change the worldview of politics among citizens.
A presentation to see in video: [To watch the video]
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14. November 2009 – 16:31 by POLITECH
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In 1963, JFK came to divided Berlin and made a lasting speech which will become a symbol of Freedom: “Ich bin ein Berliner“.
These days, the voice of diplomacy and democracy came from our leaders and governments.
Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “wind of change” that spread out from Eastern Europe and the Soviet World, Internet and New Technologies are empowering citizens’ voices and each of us to be a JFK making the call for freedom, equality and fraternity louder.
Today, the Internet is revolutionizing the way we do politics and diplomacy. President Obama, compared often to a 21st Century JFK, is not saying anymore “Yes, I can“, but “Yes, We Can“!
The “WE” has replaced the “I” in the age of Internet and politics.
What has been a “physical Wall” separating people yesterday has transformed to millions of “digital Walls” on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or blogs unifying people and transforming citizens and leaders in e-Diplomats.
Today, Twitter is celebrating the “Fall of the Berlin Wall” by setting up a “BerlinTwitterWall“, where each of us can leave our thoughts or wishes for the future.
Today, Iranian students or freedom fighters from all around the world can leave a message or a video on the digital walls of the Internet making what was once described as “The Wall of Shame” in our physical world obsolete.
Today, President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, opened a blog for more transparency and openness of what was 20 years ago the “Iron Curtain” of the Kremlin.
Today, on the Kremlin’s digital wall you can read:
“In the twenty-first century, our country once again needs to undergo comprehensive modernisation. This will be our first ever experience of modernisation based on democratic values and institutions. Instead of a primitive raw materials economy we will create a smart economy producing unique knowledge, new goods and technology of use to people.” (President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, blog).
Today, eDiplomacy and eParticipation is empowering us into Berliners of the world, where walls are no more synonyms of “divisions” and “shame“, but nods of “freedom of expressions“, “collective causes“, “dialogues“, “transparency“, “modernisation“, “exchange” and “collective knowledge sharing“.
In 1942, a famous French poet, Paul Eluard (1895-1952) wrote:
“On all pages read. On all white pages. Stone sand paper or ashes. I write your name: LIBERTY”. (Paul Eluard (1895-1952)).
Today, we are writing on the digital wall of Pep-Net (European eParticipation Network) about the 21st Century’s JFKs and Paul Eluards of the world empowered by the Internet and transforming the way we do politics and diplomacy.
Today, we can be all famous or anonymous JFKs and Paul Eluards and say:
“Wir sind alle Berliner!” (We are Berliners).
Daniel VAN LERBERGHE, POLITECH INSTITUTE (European Center of Political Technologies).
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13. November 2009 – 10:01 by Civil College
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I think, most of us can feel the hot air breezing us during thes days. I have just hit the engaging film from ConnectedRepublic supporting EUPS20, the declaration, which if you did not sign, it is high time, just now. I think all of us wishes it’s sucess, but have you tweeted about it today? Or called your facebook friends attention to it?
Above all scepticism of social media enthusiasm, there is really many things going on. Have you heard about, that OpenID biggest government boost is happening – according to Dana Blankenhorn, by the U.S. government endorsment of OpenID.
However, Malmö is a great city, with a lot of openness. The Garaget, a historical place for civil movements and an innovative social solution of the City, is offering the really warm role of being the host of this event: First Popular European Egovernment Conference, which is taking place in Malmö, paralell to the 5th Ministerial Conference on Egovernment – more in a Pecha Kucha / Unconference style, offering open spaces for discussion and agenda setting.
These events forerunner is the eGovernment Research and Innovation Conference , happening just right before these events.
Watching US NOW is good warmup. Do check it out, if you have not seen it.
It is obvious now I hope for everybody reading this blog, that the really intersting things are happening on two fronts. Most of us understands, that the open(source) community workers by hacking codes and fixing bugs are good citizens. Or more than good – they also share freely what they have back to the community. And those, who are going there and opening a space for discussion on the topic, they are partners for creating better governance. For now, the Swedish Minister, Mats Odell has confirmed his presence, according to the website of the Ministerial Conference thruogh Magnus Kolsjo‘s tweet.
I wish, that the social and scientifical openness will meet with good cultre. Just as the Minister for Local Governments and Financial Market says on his site:
“I want to ditch the unwritten law that keeps us from standing out from the crowd and make way for the Ingvar Kamprads of tomorrow and other dynamic people – for a society that will harness your creativity and your potential, so as to benefit you and other people.”
Check out the conference twitter page here: http://twitter.dijksman.com/
and look for the hashtags #malmo09 and #egov2009
Posted in Events, inclusion, News, Projects, Trends, Visions | No Comments »
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13. November 2009 – 10:00 by Rolf Luehrs
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Our weekly edition has this time become a 2-weekly news digest – we were probably to busy last week..:-)
Only four days left to endors the
Open declaration on public services 2.0
Every two years, EU Ministers gather to agree on a Ministerial Declaration on e-government, which is the main European strategic document. This is usually accompanied by an Industry declaration.
David Osimo (Tech4i2 ltd) and Paul Johnston (Cisco) started an initiative to add an open declaration, collaboratively built and endorsed by EU citizens who share the view that the web is transforming our society and our governments.
They and many supporters believe that e-government policies in Europe could learn from the open, meritocratic, transparent and user-driven culture of the web. The declaration which has been developed collaboratively during the past months is now waiting to be endorsed by as much people as possible. It will be presented officially at the EU ministerial conference on e-government, in Malmo November 18-20, 2009.
Please read the declaration and if you agree with it, endorse it as soon as possible.
ParticipateDB
Intelletics, an US based startup claiming to “make e-participation better”, started to build up a directory of online tools for participation called participateDB.
The site aims to build a comprehensive guide to the many online tools for public participation and related forms of citizen engagement — large and small, commercial and open source, mature and experimental — as well as the context in which they are being applied.
ParticipateDB is currently in closed alpha. Once the site is fully functional, ParticipateDB will allow anyone to register and add or edit content. Site content will be freely available and licensed for easy reuse and sharing. A beta version is set to launch in the Fall of 2009.
New Gov2.0 book
State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards
“In many ways, eGovernment has come of age. The use of IT and digital media is today part of everything government does, so the ‘e’ is becoming obsolete. ‘eGovernment is just Government,’ as the saying goes, but it is important to realise that the ‘e’ has changed government forever, and will keep doing so, and hence we now talk about Government 2.0, “ editor John Gøtze explains.
The book includes contributions of Don Tapscott, Lawrence Lessing, Tim O’Reilly, David Weinberger and many others.
State of the eUnion will be published both in print (sold via Amazon, B&N, etc) and online (free). The content is licensed under a Creative Commons license, and the complete book will be available for free online at 21gov.net. Follow @gov20book on Twitter for updates.
Upcoming events
Further to the EU ministerial conference on e-government, two of the most exiting conferences about eParticipation, Internet and Politics are awaiting us in November:
The Personal Democracy Forum Europe, taking place November 20-21 in Barcelona, and the Future-Democracy ’09, 25th November in London. Look forward to seeing you there….
Rolf
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12. November 2009 – 16:22 by Danish Technological Institute
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Much focus has been on Web 2.0 technology as an enabler for wider dissemination, awareness raising and not least participation and transparency. It is therefore interesting to see that Web 2.0 technologies are being used in various ways for a range of purposes in this year’s 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference, 18-20 November, in Malmö (Sweden) and 4th European eGovernment Awards.
Webcast of conference sessions
The plenary sessions and three of the parallel sessions at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference will be webcast live and on demand this year from the conference website www.egov2009.se. In addition the ceremony for the 4th European eGovernment Awards will most likely also be the subject of a webcast.
The programme is available on www.egov2009.se/programme
Twitter flies over Malmö 18-20 November
In addition to RSS feed, Twitter feed is available onthe Ministerial eGovernment Conference website www.egov2009.se. Participants are actively encourage to Twitter about the Informal Ministerial Meeting on eGovernment and the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference to use the hashtag #egov2009.
Online vote for European eGovernment Awards Public Prize
Following success of the first online vote in relation to the European eGovernment Awards 2007 in Lisbon (Portugal) the European Commission and the European eGovernment Awards Consortium decided early onto continue practicing what they preach. The objective has been to: increase the visibility and status of public sector ICT projects in Europe; encourage good practice exchange, and; to encourage active involvement and participating in the European eGovernment Awards by the epractice.eu and wider stakeholder communities.
The online voting for the European eGovernment Awards Public Prize was therefore launched late this summer and closed on 11 November at 18:00 CET. Members of the epractice.eu community have been able to vote for their favorite cases from among the 52 European eGovernment Awards 2009 finalists. The online vote is in addition to other ICT initiative by the awards consortium and the European Commission for a fully electronic submission process via www.epractice.eu and the remote evaluation of the received submissions by the jury in the first phase of the evaluation.
The voting is now closed but the 52 finalist cases remain published at ePractice.eu and are open to receive members’ comments. The winner of the Public Prize will be announced at the awards ceremony on 19 November at 18:30 – and likely to the subject of a webcast.
Virtual exhibition
For the first time the European eGovernment Awards finalist are accessible online through a virtual exhibition. The virtual exhibition can be visited on www.expopolis.com (NB: for practical reasons you have to register). Naturally an electronic version of the conference exhibition catalogue will be available on www.epractice.eu/awardsmediakit as of 19 November when the Ministerial eGovernment Conference and Exhibition opens.
Other news
Ministerial tour of European eGovernment Awards Finalist stands
A ministerial tour of the European eGovernment Awards Finalists stands will take place on 18 November 2009 at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference and Exhibition.
Finalist country fact sheets
To enhance the promotion of the European eGovernment Awards Finalists 2009 17 country factsheets from those European countries from which finalists have been selected for the European eGovernment Awards 2009. The factsheets are published in English but will be made available in the relevant national languages in the beginning of November. The fact sheets are available with other dissemination material on www.epractice.eu/en/awardsmediakit
News and background
www.epractice.eu/awards
www.egov2009.se
Danish Technological Institute/Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen – European eGovernment Awards Consortium Partner
Posted in Events, good practice, News, Projects, Tools, Twitter | 1 Comment »
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10. November 2009 – 16:31 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE
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A new online service has been launched to let tax payers compare the prices of council services across a region in the U.K.
“Allerdalecompare.com” is an internet site which compares Allerdale Borough Council’s fees and charges with those of other district authorities in the county.
The website carries figures for council tax and charges for services and in the majority of these Allerdale Borough Council comes out (unsurprisingly) well against its neighbours.
By offering the comparison between the county’s six district authorities, allerdalecompare.com also highlights the wide variety of services provided to the public by their local councils; including cemeteries, pest control, bulky waste removal and stray dog collection.
Therefore residents can see for themselves where they get a lot of council services and pay less for them than other residents in the rest of Cumbria.
Perhaps this could be done on a European scale to compare European government spending?
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
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10. November 2009 – 15:57 by ASAEL
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España mantiene su posición en el ranking europeo que mide el desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información, a pesar de los efectos de la situación económica, y logra avanzar en la convergencia tecnológica con la media de la Unión Europea. Ésta es una de las principales conclusiones que arroja el Informe anual sobre el desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información eEspaña 2009, elaborado por la Fundación Orange, y presentado el 6 de julio en un acto presidido por Esperanza Aguirre y Vicente Álvarez Areces, presidentes de los gobiernos autonómicos de Madrid y Asturias, respectivamente. Luis Alberto Salazar-Simpson, presidente de la Fundación Orange, y Manuel Gimeno, director general de la Fundación Orange, fueron los encargados de presentar el informe.
- En el Índice eEspaña 2009, nuestro país se sitúa en el puesto decimosexto, manteniéndose las distancias con los países líderes
- Madrid lidera el Índice de Convergencia de la Sociedad de la Información en las CC AA
- Asturias es la CC AA que encabeza el estudio sobre la disponibilidad de servicios on-line de las administraciones de las CC AA
- Pese al impulso presupuestario del Plan Avanza, los objetivos de la Agenda de Lisboa parecen difíciles de conseguir, tanto para España como para una buena parte de los países de la UE
- España está entre los líderes de banda ancha móvil, con 15,6 millones de usuarios potenciales, y fija, con el 97% de las de las empresas de 10 o más empleados que se conectan a Internet
- Las redes sociales se han convertido en un fenómeno de tal magnitud que el 73,7% de los internautas españoles mayores de 15 años son usuarios de este tipo de servicios, sólo por detrás del Reino Unido (casi el 80%)
- Desde marzo de 2006 se han emitido unos 10 millones de DNI electrónicos, situando a España a la cabeza de Europa, con cerca del 25% de la población documentada electrónicamente
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9. November 2009 – 11:35 by Francesco Molinari
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Experts from all over the world will gather in Montaione, Florence, to discuss about public sector innovation
1st edition: 12th – 14th November 2009
Montaione, near Florence, is the Tuscan Municipality that first experimented the French “débat public” on a project of territorial renovation located in the medieval town of Castelfalfi, thus paving the way to the 2007 Regional law on participatory democracy, first example in Italy, following another one passed in 2004 that introduced primary elections to choose the candidates to President and Councillors. Now the Regional Ministry for Institutional Reform and Citizens Participation, together with the Town Municipality and other public and private entities, are launching the first edition of the “Montaione Days”, an international meeting and seminar addressing researchers, practitioners and public managers alike, to discuss about participatory democracy in the world and learn from the best examples of public sector innovation.
From 12th to 14th November, a thick agenda of round tables and workshops will gather several domain experts and witnesses from Italy and abroad. Topics will be for instance, the Town Meetings experience in the US and participatory budgeting in the French secondary schools of the Poitou-Charentes Region. A key issue will be how citizens engagement can support local planning and programming, including – like the Castelfalfi case already demonstrates – participatory urban planning. During the event, the best international project of participatory democracy will be awarded – it’s an Argentinian Government’s initiative, tackling with the problem of “favelas” (slum dwellings) – and a second prize will also be given to the best participatory process in Tuscany, which is to be selected by a jury of citizens.
As it can be seen, the “Montaione Days” look far beyond this first edition, aiming to become a yearly event, targeted at the dissemination of international best practices in public sector innovation and the establishment of stable processes of citizens involvement in collective decision-making, being a sustainable complement to the electoral cycle.
To download the programme click here.
To get the application form click here.
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