Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
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4. October 2010 – 17:59 by Dan Jellinek
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Future Democracy ’10 is to be held this year on 02 December at the new venue of Grand Connaught Rooms, central London.
As the UK’s leading e-democracy event, hosted by PEP-NET founder member Headstar, we welcome politicians, local administrations, solutions providers, academics, analysts, journalists, think-tanks and consultation experts to swap ideas and advice on engaging citizens using new technologies.
This year’s fantastic speaker and workshop programme covers mobile apps for democracy; digital inclusion; ‘crowdsourcing’ public policy; and much more.
We are also pleased to once more offer all PEP-NET members a £15 discount on usual attendance fees. Normal fees are £195 + VAT for public sector, educational and voluntary; and £295 + VAT for private sector. For more information and to secure your discount, please register without delay and use code ‘PEPNET10’ in the ‘Promotional codes’ box on registration page at:
http://www.headstar-events.com/fdem10
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28. September 2010 – 17:24 by Rolf Luehrs
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Lively discussion at the PEP-NET Summit
At last week’s PEP-NET Summit we set out to move European eParticipation one step forward.
The diversity of the audience and the broad range of projects that were shown in the presentation corners emphasised again that eParticipation is multifaceted, and that we should move beyond discussing whether or not digital technology can improve participation to thinking of eParticipation as a toolkit with a variety of tools for different purposes. Just as it is no longer enough for digital disciples to set up a free blog and Twitter account in the hope that eParticipation will take care of itself, neither is it right to claim that eParticipation has nothing to offer.
Whether ePetitions, eVoting, discussion forums, online consultation portals, online participatory budgeting or one of the many other eParticipation interventions, each intervention has its own particular purpose. The differentiated approach that I talked about in my speech means thinking carefully about which of these tools best serves your objectives.
This means being open to technological change and the benefits it can bring in terms of efficiency, wider engagement of citizens, and better policy-making; but also being aware of the limitations and how these can be overcome. With the emphasis very much on discussion and networking between the sectors, the PEP-NET Summit was a catalyst in this process.
The summit opened with a welcome address from Bernd Reinert, Staatsrat at the City of Hamburg, who spoke about Hamburg’s experience of successful eParticipation projects. He also gave a compelling account of the history of the Warehouse Quarter in which the Summit was held: the area was once a storage space for spices, carpets, coffee and all manner of imports that would then be distributed to retailers. (I think that is symbolic of this PEP-NET Summit, which took big ideas and high-level policy and unpacked them into smaller, “bite-size” pieces for practical application by end users.) Read the rest of this entry »
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28. September 2010 – 16:57 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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The PEP-NET Special Issue of eJournal of eDemocracy (JeDEM), which Francesco Molinari and Rolf Lührs guest edited, is now available at www.jedem.org. It addresses the topic “sustainable eParticipation”, asking what ‘sustainable’ means in this context and turning to experts in the field for advice on ensuring European eParticipation projects overcome problems with low participation rates and impact.
The Special Issue contains a total of nine papers, three of which are invited papers from prominent eParticipation actors. The remaining six are scientific research papers and case studies.
The authors are successful in shedding new light on eParticipation, with a wealth of hints and tips on how to make eParticipation sustainable. Here is a list of concrete prerequisites for sustainable eParticipation gathered from the various papers as part of the editorial:
- A favourable policy and legislative framework (Chrissafis and Rohen, Hinsberg);
- Official recognition from the public decision-makers (Badouard);
- Efficient (Velikanov) and transparent (Johnston) procedures for the aggregation and visualisation of user preferences;
- Trust building on the whole process (Rodrigues Filho);
- A suitable ICT infrastructure (Hinsberg, Hermida) posing weak constraints on users’ behaviour (Badouard) and making the most out of the inputs (Li);
- A community of active (Hinsberg) and skilled (Maier-Rabler and Huber) citizens;
- A participatory culture among the population (Li, Maier-Rabler and Huber).
Of course it is not possible to distil the whole journal into a single blog post – you will simply have to read the journal to benefit from the wealth of knowledge and experience that it reflects by visting http://www.jedem.org/.
The journal was ready in time for last week’s PEP-NET Summit, at which the issue of sustainability was also raised. Like the Summit, the JeDEM Special Issue benefited from PEP-NET’s unique network of eParticipation actors across Europe and will help to ensure that there is ongoing reflection on how eParticipation can make a positive, long-term contribution to our democratic culture. JeDEM is published twice per year since first being published in 2009. The Centre for E-Government at the Danube University in Krems, Austria, manages the publication process which involves a team of 35 editors.
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23. September 2010 – 11:08 by neu&kuehn
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Dear PEP-net community!
neu&kühn is a new PEP-net associate member and we want to take the chance to introduce ourselves. We’re happy to find such a large network of e-participation supporter like us here. 
What we do
neu&kühn is a companion and developer of online projects with public participation.
With an active interest in e-participation, we provide advice for politics, administrations and institutions in the German-speaking area, especially in Austria, where we strive to clear-up a lot of the common fears and misconceptions that are associated with the topic of citizen participation.
Read the rest of this entry »
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14. September 2010 – 10:57 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen
Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, of the National IT and Telecom Agency in Denmark, will be delivering a keynote speech at the PEP-NET Summit on 23rd September 2010, standing in for Noella Edelmann who unfortunately had to withdraw for personal reasons.
Mr Meyerhoff Nielsen is currently working on strategic development of the national citizen portal, www.borger.dk, revolving around the implementation of an updated MyPage functionality together with five municipalities, performance management and key indicators, reuse of public sector information (Gov 2.0), potential cooperation with the Danish Bankers’ Association, and use of and Web 2.0 and social media on the portal. The MyPage functionality allows every Danish citizen to see what information is held about them and access public information and services electronically. The updated functionality will, in addition to a host of other functions, allow increased personalisation – e.g. by adding municipality, household, spouse and children specific information and access – but also two-way, digitally signed, electronic communication with public sector organisations.
His current and previous employment has taken him across disciplinary and national boundaries, including: the Danish Technological Institute, Policy and Business Analysis (a founding member of PEP-NET); Centre for Development of Enterprise; the European Commission, Directorate General for Development; the European Institute of Public Administration; and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Mr Meyerhoff Nielsen has picked up a great deal of knowledge along the way, boasting wide-ranging expertise from international development and foreign direct investment to comparative eGovernment, via knowledge transfer to SMEs in developing countries.
As an expert in eParticipation and many other governance-related areas, Mr Meyerhoff Nielsen has authored and co-authored various publications, regularly presents at conferences and workshops, and is a guest lecturer at the European Institute of Public Administration, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Maastricht School of Management. He has been a jury member of the national eGovernment Awards in Sweden since 2008 and the Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in eGovernment in 2010.
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27. August 2010 – 12:26 by POLITECH
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Argument visualisation might not be seen as a suitable tool for eParticipation at first sign. However, when properly deployed, it can serve as a useful tool for eParticipation projects, where citizens can engage in stimulating brainstorming, exchange of information and knowledge, as well as in active involvement on the issues in interest.
An example of such deployment of an argument visualisation tool in an eParticipation project can be found in the WAVE Project. WAVE aims to improve the inclusiveness and transparency of EU decision making at the national and European level by using highly integrated, state-of-the-art argument visualisation techniques to make the impact of complex EU environmental legislation on climate change more accessible and easy to understand for citizens, special interest groups and decision makers alike.
WAVE has deployed Debategraph as an innovative argument visualisation platform, in a multi-lingual, cross border context. The project has launched 3 pilot websites in the UK, France and Lithuania where the tool is being tested and where the citizens engage in stimulating discussions on the environmental issues relevant to their countries and local communities. Each pilot has its own portal and argument visualisation mans in the national language, making it possible for every citizen to actively engage in the discussions.
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25. August 2010 – 14:27 by POLITECH
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MOMENTUM launched in January 2008 and was designed to last for 30 months (until the end of July 2010). The Project aimed to monitor the existing and on coming eParticipation projects co-funded by European Commission, to consolidate their results and to provide feedback to them and to the respective EC bodies and other designated stakeholders, advancing the high-level political and institutional engagement.
MOMENTUM was acting as a support action to the ongoing eParticipation Projects funded in 3 rounds. Until the end of MOMENTUM’s activities, 2 rounds of projects have completed their actions. The last round of projects funded under the 2008 call will finish their activities at the end of 2010.
Despite MOMENTUM reaching its conclusion, the website will be kept online for anyone wishing to use the resources available there.
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23. August 2010 – 16:25 by POLITECH
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WAVE will participate at the 2nd International eParticipation Conference that will be held between 31 August and 2 September 2010 in Lausanne, Switzerland (http://www.demo-net.org/epart).
Specifically, the first day of the conference WAVE organises a workshop titled “On the Use of Argument Visualisation Tools to support Policy Formulation”. Apart from presentations and discussion, hands-on exercise on the WAVE platform will also be offered during the workshop for elaborating on EU policies relevant to climate change.
Moreover, the second day of the conference a scientific article on WAVE’s technical details will be presented. The article’s title is “Integrating Argument Visualisation Tools in Social Platforms to Facilitate Online Political Debates: The WAVE Platform” and is authored by the following members of WAVE consortium: Deirdre Lee, Yojana Priya, David Price, Efthimios Tambouris, Vassilios Peristeras and Konstantinos Tarabanis.
Visit WAVE Project’s website www.wave-project.eu
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20. August 2010 – 17:01 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE
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The European Citizens’ Initiative is plagued with implementation challenges, particularly in terms of the digital domain. Thankfully there’s already a bunch of people and projects who are making sense of these - not least the EC funded EuroPetition project.
Hence, in an attempt to bring all this knowledge (and information) into one place, a new group and website has been assembled:-
YourECI website
The Digital ECI is an important aspect of the ECI and this is an opportunity for practitioners in the field of eParticipation to demonstrate that they can add value based on current best practice.
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20. August 2010 – 12:16 by Olga Lacigova - 21c
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The Kingdom of Bahrain has recently moved from 42 to 13 on United Nation’s 2010 Global eGovernment Survey and is keen to build on this achievement through their upcoming five year strategy. To design the most effective approach, the Bahraini key eGovernment Authority representatives have asked 21c Consultancy to host a Study Tour to meet with leading UK figures involved with implementing eGovernment.
For the 17th and 18th of June 2010 21c has arranged personal meetings with high dignitaries within the UK ICT central and local departments starting on the 17th with a presentation by the Deputy CIO at the UK Cabinet Office on the UK eGovernment Strategy followed by a visit to the Local Government Information Unit where the Head of Children and Social Services, presented their approach to Web 2.0 and Service Delivery. The delegation had also a chance to visit the Department of Health and learn about the NHS Choices programme and meet Bob Gann the department’s Head of Strategy & Engagement.
The second day was devoted to local government strategy and the delegation travelled to Kent County Council to visit the leading centres for innovation in digital service delivery. The delegation was introduced to a wide array of award-wining digital initiatives, including Kent TV and ‘Pic n’ Mix’ Innovation.
The entire delegation found the information and knowledge presented enriching for the development of the Bahraini eGA 2011-14 strategy.
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