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4. December 2008 – 12:39 by Dan Jellinek
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I was in Vienna on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for the EU digital inclusion conference.
It was a hugely valuable event, with a large number of people from all over Europe attending to share expertise and knowledge of some really interesting projects.
One of the highlights was the announcement of the winners of the digital inclusion awards, about which Rolf has already posted: us Brits were proud that two UK local authorities were among the seven winners, but in truth all the shortlisted projects on display were of a high standard.
The conference looked at digital inclusion in a very broad sense. It covers efforts to ensure that socially excluded or disadvantaged groups have access to new technologies such as the internet and mobile phones, looking at multiple factors including poverty; health; disability; education; geography; political exclusion; technophobia; language; usability; and many other factors. But it also covers the importance of ensuring that everyone continues to have access to equal services even when they are digitally excluded, so for example sometimes it might still be better to use a paper newspaper to consult, if more people will be reached. There are global and international developmental issues, too, not just projects within single countries.
One key point I realised is that digital inclusion is actually the starting point for e-participation and e-democracy. Unless as many people as possible have access to all e-participation projects, whether directly, through intermediaries, or through non-digital channels which can then be fed into the same process, then they are not democratic. Accessibility, usability, and all areas of digital inclusion should be part of every e-participation project and should play a central role in PEP-NET’s thinking.
In the next few issues of E-Access Bulletin (www.headstar.com/eab), our free email newsletter on access to technology by people with disabilities, we will be writing up many of the Vienna sessions.
And one further tip: the UK academic Paul Foley, professor of e-commerce at De Montfort University, showed me a new website in Vienna funded by the UK government which is a superb repository of best practice in the field of digital inclusion: ‘solutions4inclusion’.
Launched alongside the UK government’s recent action plan on digital inclusion, it did not receive much coverage, but is definitely worth a look. It covers not just UK but international projects in all areas of digital inclusion. You may like to add your own work to it as well.
Posted in members, News, Projects, Tools, TuTech | 1 Comment »
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20. October 2008 – 11:12 by Orebro University
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Örebro University in cooperation with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) is working on a project to develop a decision support system (DSS) which includes aspects of eDemocracy. The project will test and refine a model for transparent decision making and eParticipation (which we have tried earlier in another city) including; a decision model (criteria and prioritizations), a decision process, a web-structure for all documents from government and stakeholders, a system for continuously reporting and discussing progress internally and to/with the public. A case study in Örebro city is currently ongoing. The topic is the cleaning up of a local river to improve the quality of the water as to make it suitable for bathing. As environmental aspects will be taken into consideration the issue is complex and not easily decided upon, which makes it a suitable case study for the project. So far problem modeling has been done and local politicians are currently discussing different criteria to take into consideration in the decision making, while civil servants are gathering facts from consultants reports as a basis for the decision making process. The details of the public participation is yet to be decided upon by the politicians. Ther are numerous reports from the eariler test (in the City of Nacka, Sweden) available.
Posted in Projects, Tools | No Comments »
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29. May 2008 – 07:48 by christophdowe-politik-digital.de
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Part of the Pep-Net project is to make good examples of projects more visible. e-participation.net is part of the new european network Pep-Net and collects data about participatory online projects. Is your best practice example included already? Do you know of more examples? To report new examples just fill in the box at the right column – we only need the URL! The data will be delivered to an editor at politik-digital.de where a short description of the website will be written. If you want, you can also send us more information.
The website, built by politik-digital.de and the British Council Germany about one year ago, already consists of a database of about 200 projects. Now its time to include some more examples from other countries! Before launch, the partners had published a short study (PDF) in 2006, comparing the state of the art of e-Democracy in Germany and the United Kingdom (“Facilitating active Citizenship. E-Participation in the United Kingdom and Germany”).
Posted in News, Partners | 4 Comments »
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27. May 2008 – 22:05 by POLITECH
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EUROPEAN eDEMOCRACY AWARD 2008
The European eDemocracy Award is an annual award honouring the most valuable European eDemocracy initiative amongst 50 selected websites in EU 27 featuring 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.
50 eDemocracy initiatives and websites across the EU 27 are selected for the European eDemocracy Award 2008 and analyzed according to 2 combined innovative indices:
The IP-LABEL INDEX is a ratio out of 20 measuring these initiatives in terms of availability and performance over a month period.
The POLITECH INDEX is a ratio out of 40 measuring these initiatives in terms of innovation, usability, content and diversity of technology and tools strengthening participatory representative democracy in Europe and reflecting 4 key dimensions:
1) The Political Dimension – measures the use of ICT to empower, activate and mobilize political and civil society actors to meet public affairs objectives, while being on top of the political agenda;
2) The Democratic Dimension – measures the use of ICT to strengthen citizen participation in the democratic and decision-making processes and enhances representative democracy.
This a key dimension as emphasized by Dr. Lawrence Pratchett’s C.L.E.A.R. Model in which people participate when they can and have the necessary resources to make their argument and when they feel part of something, they like to participate as it is part of their sense of identity, when they are enabled to do so and directly asked for their opinion and when they experience a responsive system;
3) The Civic Dimension – measures the use of ICT to inform, train and educate constituents, citizens and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in News, TuTech | 1 Comment »
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1. May 2008 – 06:00 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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May 1st has been set as the official launch date of the Pan European eParticipation Network. With that date having arrived we looking forward to working with our initial partners and everybody joining us on our way.
In the next years we will try to advance the participatory efforts in Europe and to build a open and strong network including members from all stakeholders active in the field.
As PEP-NET is all about exchange of knowledge and the will to further develop eParticipation in Europe we ask everyone to join our conversation both online and offline.
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Posted in News | 6 Comments »
