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24. November 2009 – 16:59 by POLITECH
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Have you ever wondered what the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP) do to diminish the democratic deficit in the EU and to involve the citizens into decision-making processes of the European Union? You can now see for yourself and participate in one of the most important events of 2009.
The projects co-funded by the EC under the eParticipation Preparatory Action are organising an eParticipation Conference, which will be held in Brussels on Tuesday, 15th of December 2009 at the European Parliament (Rue Wiertz 60, 1047 Brussels, Belgium, Room A.3E2) .
The development and wide use of powerful new ICT applications is transforming the way citizens and civil society interact, debate and participate in public life. These new tools have enormous potential to enhance decision-making processes by involving large numbers of EU citizens.
As the eParticipation Preparatory Action, an initiative of the European Parliament launched in 2006, reaches its conclusion, this eParticipation Conference is being organized to demonstrate progress and results in the use of Information and Communication Technologies to enhance citizens’ participation in democratic decision-making. In parallel, there will be an exhibition of project results produced in the context of the Preparatory Action. This is a unique one-time opportunity to see all the projects in one place and to engage into a conversation with projects’ leaders and representatives.
Register to the conference before 10 December 2009 at: http://eparticipation.eventbrite.com (registration password: momentum)
Note: The Conference is free, but only registered delegates will be allowed entry for security reasons. All the participants should have some type of identification documents (for EU nationals - passports or national ID; for people from outside of the EU - valid passport documents are necessary).
For further information, please visit: www.ep-momentum.eu or contact: momentum@atc.gr
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27. April 2009 – 17:24 by pol-di.net e.V / politik-digital.de
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For those who haven’t decided yet on their favourite party for the elections in the European Union, 4-7 June 2009, a new interactive web feature, the EU-profiler, helps to make up your mind. The tool promises support in discovering the political landscape for the upcoming elections in Europe. However, its functionality and clickability are not free of hitches.
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Posted in News, Tools | 1 Comment »
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3. April 2009 – 17:48 by christophdowe-politik-digital.de
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A new web-survey – labeled with the telling name „tellBarroso.eu“ - invites all EU-citizens to post their opinion about the EU policy areas. The survey suggests that the messages go all the way up to José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. It seems odd though that the institution behind the survey is a party-affiliated think tank.
The distance to Brussels has never been shorter: The website tellbarroso.eu suggests the direct interaction between you, the EU-cititzen, and the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. Barroso invites you to post your opinion about the policy areas of the European Union and how it can “improve your“ life. And he promises, that tellBarroso.eu is a „simple, non-partisan web poll“.
It is indeed simple. In a first step, you have to tick some social indicators, most likely for statistical reasons. In a second step, the user is invited to name a policy area and post his/her opinion about it. The third step constitutes a nice clickable feature, which is a sort of opinion-dartboard. By drag-and-drop the user arranges a random selection of statements around the bullseye. The distance to the centre of the board thereby indicates the importance of the particular statement.
However, the non-partisan bit of the poll is quite questionable. The institution behind this service is the Centre of European Studies, a think tank affiliated with the European People’s Party EPP, which constitutes the largest faction in the European Parliament. It is not so much a disturbing fact that Barroso, an EPP member himself, offers his image and his name for an interactive process which generates EU-citizens’ opinion about the EU and its work. Yet it becomes an issue if such poll is marked as non-partisan whereas the party-links appear that obvious.
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4. March 2009 – 11:15 by E-Voting.CC
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This is a reply to the post: “Recommendation on E-democracy - adopted by the COE”.
It shall clarify the critiques on the CAHDE working-group, posted here earlier, which – in our opinion – missed out some details about the project.
The Council of Europe (CoE) established in 2002 the Ad-Hoc Committee on Electronic Democracy (CAHDE) aiming at creating a legal document suggesting standards of E-Democracy, formulating principles for introduction and providing generic definitions and analyses of tools and policies to facilitate the introduction of E-Democracy. The goals were challenging and manifold: they span from the general reaffirmation of essentials of democracy and the extension of democracy by using ICTs to facilitate information and deliberation of political issues and until the increase of transparency and accountability of democratic institutions and processes. The Committee of Ministers adopted the recommendation on February 18th, 2009.
A critical discussion of results and outcomes is important and necessary. Especially if we are aiming at giving advice on upcoming developments and technologies, that are not mainstream in the near future. Let us clarify some important points in advance and sketch the framework for discussion.
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Posted in News, Projects, Tools | No Comments »
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24. February 2009 – 13:43 by Danish Technological Institute
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Moving a step closer to making the final recommendations for EU level actions the European eParticipation Study’s has just published its second wave of deliverables. The documents are available on www.european-eparticipation.eu (Publication/Public Deliverables section).
The second wave of project deliverables consists of the following eight documents:
• Major factors shaping the development of eParticipation (D1.1b)
• Key actors in the EU in the field of eParticipation (D1.2b)
• Main benefits of the eParticipation developments in the EU (D1.3b)
• Mapping the state of play in eParticipation in the EU (D1.4b)
• Second post-workshop report (D3.2b)
• Framework for eParticipation good practice (D4.1b)
• eParticipation good practice cases (D4.2b)
• eParticipation recommendations second and third version (D5.1c)
The third and final wave is anticipated in May/June 2009 and will take into account comments by the European Commission, the project’s peer review group as well as further work conducted by the consortium partners in the intervening period.
Practicing what it is preaching, the European eParticipation Study, together with PEP-NET, will make use of the eParticipation issues unearth during the project in a joint online consultation 2-13 March 2009 (further information to follow).
Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, Danish Technological Institute
Posted in News, Projects, good practice | 1 Comment »
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17. December 2008 – 11:55 by Zebralog / Hans Hagedorn
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It was planned as a “political MySpace”: MyParl.eu should have been a networking site for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and Members of the national parliaments (MPs), a virtual space to connect and share information and opinion. The project, financed with about 4 mio. Euro was first announced in May, a launch-party was scheduled for October. And until the beginning of October, everything seemed to go fine. So, a few days ago, I was very surprised when I tried to take a look at the site and was welcomed by a mere sign reading “We regret to inform you that the MyParl project has been stopped, following a recommendation of the European Parliament.” That sounded like a serious change of mind. What has happened?
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Posted in Projects | 4 Comments »
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4. July 2008 – 09:34 by Francesco Molinari
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On 1st July 2008 the European Commission, DG INFSO, Unit F4, hosted a workshop by invitation entitled “Living Labs for User-driven Open Innovation”. Aim of the workshop was to present and discuss the state of the art of European Living Labs under the operational, networking, and policy perspectives.
The establishment of a European Network of Living Labs is a policy initiative launched by the EU Finnish Presidency in November 2006 as a first step towards a new European Innovation System, entailing a major paradigm shift for the whole innovation process. “Typical” Living Labs are Public Private Partnerships where firms, public authorities and people work together in creating, prototyping, validating and testing new services, businesses, markets and technologies in real-life contexts, such as cities, city regions, rural areas and collaborative virtual networks between public and private players. The real-life and everyday contexts both stimulate and challenge research and development, as do public authorities and citizens not only participate in, but also contribute to an open innovation process.
One of the afternoon sessions of the EC workshop was entitled “The use of Living Labs in e-democracy: Citizen-driven Governance”. The keynote speech and the following discussion focused on the possible implementation of the Living Labs methodological approach in the (broadly defined) contexts of eParticipation, eGovernment and eDemocracy. From the debate it clearly emerged that several experiences are now ongoing in Europe that try to incorporate the “added value” of open innovation into the various pathways of interaction between citizens and decision makers. In particular, the benefits were highlighted from a careful preparation of the participatory trials, by means of the Living Labs methodology, to avoid the most common pitfalls of current eDemocracy experiences, such as: lack of active involvement from citizens and/or stakeholders, mistrust from the people, skepticism from the politicians, and ultimately a low reusability of upcoming results within the public decision making process.
To increase the opportunities for cross fertilisation, a few suggestions were made by the audience, including a possible role for the PEP-NET community itself: as a practitioners network in the area of eParticipation, with some of its members holding a first hand experience in both Living Labs and eDemocracy, there can be certainly room for clustering and a reciprocal contamination with the most relevant, “citizen-driven” trials of the European Network of Living Labs.
Posted in Trends, TuTech, Visions, good practice | 1 Comment »
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20. June 2008 – 09:15 by Rolf Luehrs
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According to euobserver.com the EU is about to launch a social networking site in October this year. Myparl.eu aims to connect the MPs of the national parliaments among each other and with the Members of the European Parliament as well.
The first official talks on the project, which is sponsored by the European Commission and will receive EU funds, took place in Brussels on Thursday (28 May) involving MEPs and the 27 national co-ordinators for each member state.
Daniela Vincenti Mitchener, editor of the site, told EUobserver the project is about “creating a transnational community of ideas” and that it will alert MPs to MPs in other countries “who are thinking alike.”
The project could potentially involve up to 20,000 people, including politicians from regional governments and parliaments.
It is planned that the site will be managed in the three main working languages of the EU - French, German and English - but that people can also post comments in their own language.
Myparl.eu will put forward three main themes for debate - the future of Europe, climate change and intercultural dialogue.
via
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