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17. December 2008 – 11:55 by 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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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 good practice, Trends, TuTech, Visions | 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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