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18. March 2010 – 17:03 by Civil College
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We have seen various examples , how national parliaments are using the data available in parliament records to display on websites.
It is unlikely to have a function to easily find and compare voting records of political groups and individual representatives. The data is from the 2004-2010 years, and obtained from the official site.
This mashup site: www.itsyourparliament.eu provides this function with a really accessible user interface and a possibility to comment.
This social responsible mashup have built and mantained by Buhl & Rasmussen without any financial support from the EU or other is a typical case, that we citizens like, admire and even encourage to follow - when somebody has the spirit, talent and skills to point out and re-engineer information holes based on public data sources.
This example highlights the importance of open standards and open data, which technically makes possible to build a services like this. Just like in the offline world, where accessibility to relevant information is a cornerstone for real participation, here, accessing data in appropriate format (open standard) is equivalent.
Empowerment subnews.
In Hungary, a success story of right defender NGO, HCLU (TASZ) is highlighting the issue of e-participation in civil campaigns.
After a journalist investigation on the planned new Hungarian Motor Race court’s financial background - to involve state aid and loan /see the story here http://www.xpatloop.com/news/63685 -sorry, but the editor has some bugs now/, - a couple of NGO’s, dealing with transparency have started to run a small scale email campaign, to get different data, related to the planned investment.
A few hundreds of emails has resulted a big scandal in the Hungarian political arena, and saved 35billion Euros for Hungary.
Writing an email, signing a petition does worth the time investment of a few minutes. Although, there might be only 1 from 1000 cases to produce such a big saving, but we have to be aware and spend some time to scan trough our facebook group messages and emails.
A few minutes every day can make us better e-and-non-e citizens!
Posted in News, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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1. July 2009 – 09:04 by International Teledemocracy Centre
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Online petitioning is one of the oldest forms of e-participation around - in Scotland’s case it has been part of the political system for 10 years now. Partly to mark the 10 years of operation, the Scottish Parliament on 16 June 2009 published the report of a year-long inquiry by the Public Petitions Committee into the public petitions process, including its e-Petitioner system. This inquiry looked at how to improve awareness of the existence of the public petitions process, particularly amongst hard to reach groups; participation in the process itself; and the scrutiny role fulfilled by the Committee. For practitioners, it gives an insight into how a maturing e-participation technology is incorporated into the political process.
There are a number of interesting observations and recommendations: one highlight for me is the emphasis on physically holding meetings around the country, involving community workers, and also using former petitioners as ambassadors for the process.
e-Petitions are treated as just another route to get your voice heard:
“86. …it must be recognised that technology is only an enabler of participation and therefore it is not axiomatic that increased engagement will occur as a consequence of new technology. ICTs should be used as a means of enhancing traditional methods of engagement.”
(ITC was involved in the development of the e-Petitioner system in 1999, and I am now involved in the EuroPetition project that carries many of the ideas forward).
The petitions committee has identified the need for a “coherent strategy” for the introduction of video, blogging and other Web2.0 technologies by the Scottish Parliament’s petitions committee, and set up a new blogspot blog and produced a new petitions DVD. I believe this shows a real willingness to learn by the politicians.
Finally, I’d recommend taking 8 minutes to watch the excellent video (Windows Media format) on this blog entry. It explains how the petitioning process works from petitioners’ and politicians’ viewpoints and has some nice stories about how this form of petitioning increases engagement with politics.
- Peter Cruickshank
Posted in Tools, good practice | No Comments »
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28. January 2009 – 17:18 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
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Writing letters to elected representatives has always been one of the more effective ways for citizens to state their concern for a political question or to make their opinion clear to “their” member of parliament. This seems perfectly reasonable: If hundreds or even thousands members of the constituency write to a member of parliament how can he or she ignore the statements – both as a responsible representative and a politician who would like to get re-elected?
In the United States this practice is often used by citizens to reach out to both the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. In more recent years the “letter” on paper was often exchanged by an email. But there is one particular problem with email in this setting: There is no post stamp on it and therefore it can not be determined on first glance if the email is really from a member of the parliamentarian’s constituency – This does limit the effect of email in comparison to letters (one could argue that there is also a psychological impact related to the fact that a member of parliament gets a “real letter” signed by a “real citizen”). Does this mean that the proliferation of the internet and the social networks developing in it does not affect this practice of political participation? No, but the influence is indirect.
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