KEYNOTE

ANN MACINTOSH (UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS):  ARGUMENT VISUALISATION ‐ THE KEY TO UNLOCKING ONLINE DELIBERATION?

„The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.“ (Oscar Wilde)

Macintosh presentation focused on argument visualisation with reference to it’s possible value for policy making. Before combining these two research topics, she summarised the history and current state of research in the field of online deliberation by browsing to the main arguments of the following book titles which argue the need for deliberation:

• Hay 2007: Why we hate politics
• Stoker 2006: Why politics matter: Making demoracy work
• Fishkin 1991: Democracy and deliberation
• Dryzek 200: Deliberative democracy and beyon

Others then claimed a potential of the internet for enhancing deliberation, like Dahlgren 2005: The internet public sphere. Whilst this is not a new research area (see Dutton 1992: Political Science research on teledemocracy), with the more sophisticated technology of today we are moving from the traditional text-based to a new form of deliberation. And with people using the web 2.0 a much bigger audience is attracted. Macintosh argued that the linear form of information in debate fails to capture real life argument patterns and does not enable people to think of arguments. The capacity of technology has not been like we expected it in the 90ies. It’s potential to enhance democracy has not been realised yet. Why is that? The overall reason might be to many expectations: One one hand, we are expecting too much from governments and politicians (they need to give up power), on the other hand too much of the citizens (e.g. with reference to the digital divide). Not least we’re also expecting too much of technology.

Online deliberation presents large problem spaces. Coming up with an own opinion and to formulate an informal contribution is difficult, especially when taking into account the complexity of policy development. From the socio-technical perspective, the problems are the following:

• making sense of unstructured text
• knowing what critical questions to ask
• ensuring inclusive deliberation.

This is where argument mapping comes into play – seen as a tool to make sense of unstructured text and visualising language. Argument visualisation provides an alternative way of representing text in online deliberation forms. TheODET 2010 workshop was dealing with online deliberation tools emerging from the labs. If you are interested in argument mapping it is worth browsing the posts tagged „argument mapping“ on http://digitalcitizenship.co.uk where you’ll find a video covering some of the tools presented at the conference.

SESSION 1

YANNIS CHARALABIDIS: TOWARDS A SYSTEMATIC EXPLOITATION OF WEB 2.0 AND SIMULATION MODELLING TOOLS IN PUBLIC POLICY PROCESSES

The idea of the PADGETS concept is not to pull users into sites but to go where they already are, bringing together two well established domains; the mashup architectural approach of web 2.0 for creating web applications (gadgets) and the methodology of system dynamics in analyzing complex system behaviour. The objective is to develop and deploy a toolset that will allow policy makers to graphically create web applications that will be deployed in the environment of underlying knowledge in Web 2.0 media. To overcome the problem of politicans giving low feedback one could combine the tool with election times.

PIETRO SPERONI DI FENIZIO: DON’T VOTE, EVOLVE!

This was basically a mathematical approach to the following question related to eVoting processes: Given an open question, how can we find an answer that has the most wide support? Whilst open questions are more related to consulatation (example for an open question: „What’s the meaning of life?“), closed questions are typical eVoting questions (e.g. „Does god exist?“). The presented concept aims at providing a final document representing the will of people through an unification of answers in order to find an agreement. In a system where users come up with answers to a question and vote for the answers this is done by a genetic algorithm of answers: one is only allowed to fairly throw away an answer from a mathematical point of view. Different answers compete, and to overcome the problem of the tyranny of the majority only answeres dominated by others are taken away. Applying the Pareto Frontconcept, the most dominant answer will always stay there and each person will find at least one of the answers he/she has voted for in the Pareto Front.

TODD GRAHAM: THE USE OF EXPRESSIVES IN ONLINE POLITICAL TALK: IMPEDING OR FACILITATING THE NORMATIVE GOALS OF DELIBERATION?

Graham examined everyday informal political talk by examining speech talks and the role of expressive talks in online political talk of the Guardian. Expressives are notions like humour, emotional comments and acknowledgement. By applying content analysis and textual analysis he found that 43 % of the postings contained humour. 29 % expressions were emotions (e.g. anger) and 28 % acknowledgements. Especially rational humour plays a substantial role amongst the codes for extended debate. Graham propsees to go beyond the analysis of sheer text and not to neglect expressives when looking at the normative conditions of deliberation.

In the afternoon, I listened to the track focusing on the evaluation of eParticipation projects.VoicE and VoiceS were projects aiming for giving people a voice in EU legislation.

SABRINA SCHERER: A REGIONAL MODEL FOR E‐PARTICIPATION IN THE EU: EVALUATION AND LESSONS LEARNED FROM VOICE AND VOICES

The thematic scope of the project VoicE was on consumer protection. VoicE is a regional eParticipation model as an means to attract citizens for EU policies and to motivate them to participate. Evaluation followed the Model of Mcintosh and Whyte (2008). About 200 useres a day visited the website. However, there was low active participation and few reactions from politicians – the involvement of politicians could not be successfully implemented. Retrospectively one can also say that information how to influence the policy making process was not transparent enough for the useres. The regional approach was good in principle, but it is hard to realise a real impact on Brussels. Moreover, the target group was very homogeneous. VoiceS continues the project. Recommendations for VoiceS include that the topic of discussion and substantial media coverage are crucial. It is important to have a well-defined participation process. A more interactive platform aiming at a smaller target group is liketly to be more successful. A new feature of the successor project includes a game where citizens can take on the role of either a EU commissioner, a parliamentarian, a lobbyist or a minister. Participation sections are integrated in a news section as most of the visitors come to the platform via search engines when looking for information on the topic consumer protection.

Thank you for the organisers of EGOV 2010 and ePart 2010 for your efforts – keep up the good work!

• Information on next year’s EGOV and ePart 2010 conferences
• CEDEM 2011 conference on eDemocracy, eParticipation, eVoting and Open Government

EGOV 2010 OPENING

The EGOV 2010 was taking place outside the DEXA framework for the first time this year, starting with some facts and figures about this year’s papers and the invitation to the next conference in Delfth (15 min. from Amsterdam) 2011. Keynote K. Holkeri from Finland focused on open and inclusive policy making.

KATJU HOLKERI FOCUS ON CITIZENS ‐ OPEN AND INCLUSIVE POLICY‐MAKING

„It makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear“ (B. Obama to chinese students)

Fins tend to think that they’re very good in inclusion. However, one has to distinguish between traditional consultation (government as an owner, consultation when work is done) and participation and inclusion with a variety of tools. The instrumental reasons for going from participation 1.0 to 2.0 are a better outcome, lest costs, higher compliance, a respondense to greater diversity and innovative solutions. According to Holkeri, innovation is one of the key issue of governments as they struggle with innovative options. Consequently, what Holkeri expects most from research is research on innovation.

Whilst in Finland there is a good basis of democracy, one could also see a tendency towards a so called „tired democracy“: openness is good, but trust in the government is still declining. The OECD therefore published a list of principles for open and inclusive policy making. Holkeri also addressed the risks of this concept, e.g. delay in policy making, hijacking by special interest groups, conflicts with the roles of politicians, administrative burden or consulation fatigue. Now why does not everyone participate anyways? According to a Finnish survey, the first reason is a low interest in politics, followed by low trust in governemnts and a lack of time. Other reasons are that people see no personal gain or believe that interestests are protected by others. Very few are content with current politics and even noone is unsatisfied with existing tools. Now what we should focus on is a common commitment and strategy as opposed to only several tools.

A finnish project with 800 young visitors a month is habbo hotel.

CITIZEN PERSPECTIVE

The track on the citizen’s perspective somehow lacked the real citizen focus but covered a broad range of studies from the improvement of e-mail-communication using language technology to the development of a framework for enriched online discussion forums for policy making. The IMAIL project aims to increase the quality and efficiency of office work by automatically answering emails from citizens for officers with answer templates. Interestingly enough, about 42 % of incoming emails to an European education provider could be answered with 9 different standard answers (Scheffer 2004). A Swedish social insurance agency receives around 40.000 emails per month with 640 handling officers. More information on the other text analysis project, IMPACT (Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis) can be found here. This is more or less only for participants who are willing wo participate in complex systems.

SHARON DAWES (NY): STRATEGIES FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT: TOWARD A NEW RESEARCH AGENDA

Dawes gave an overview about Open Government and escpecially the Open Data strategy, pointing out what’s old and new and focusing on both praise and criticism of the concept. There is a long tradition of open access and open information, but what is new is the commitment to openness without the citizens having to request information. (pro-active data release). Points of criticism are: uneven usability and no support, stewardship practises, questionable relevance of content, inadequate metadata or lack of feedback mechanisms. Research findings showed that the fitness for use determines the value of data for any given use or user. Moreover, understanding data also requires to understand how data is produced. A case study of parcel data (selected organisations were interviewed) examined costs, issues, interest, uses and flow of the data. It showed that the stakeholders identified are quite different. Dawes’ recommendations for governments were to build data dissemination policies into regular business and to ensure meta data standards as well as a support for users and officials. Research should focus on the following topics: Which information creates which value?; the exploration of public value proposition from multiple perspectives; the development of tools and mashups.

The track also included an analysis of the structure of the eGov-community by a citation network and social networks analysis.

CHRISTOPH SCHALLER: ADVANCED COCKPITS FOR MUNICIPALITIES: FOCUSING ON THE RELEVANCE AND CHALLENGES OF IMPORTING DATA

The goal of this project assessed in pilot municipalities was to develop a web-based management cockpit for strategic and info-based leadership drawing on the fact that management is becoming increasingly difficult in small and middle municipalities. From the IT point of view one can adapt business intelligence models for municipalities. The data types used for this project were basically citizens register data and financial data. One of the lessons learned from the project is that it is absolutely necessary to import detailed data and to pay special attention to data quality and data protection regulations. Further activities include user training and ensuring the long-term activity of the cockpit. Project details to be found on gemeindecockpit.ch.

DZHUMALIEVA, STEFKA: VALUE ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR ICT PROJECTS AT THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The VAST tool is designed to examine the value and therefore the success of ICT projects in terms of efficiency (monetary value) and public value. Public organisations are increasingly managed with constant or diminishing resources and decisions for new investments have to be taken cautiously. Building on existing value assessment methodologies, VAST is a custom-made value assessment tool tailored to the context of the European Commission. Its use helps to identify the value of an ICT project going beyond the traditional financial paradigm and allows cross-comparison between similar projects.

speicherstadt by Jens Pletsch

As we head full-speed towards autumn, this weekend will see the first eParticipation conference of the season: the EPart2010 conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is into its second year and aims to lay the foundations for interdisciplinary eParticipation.

We have a lot to look forward to in terms of conferences: also in its second year is the Personal Democracy Forum Europe taking place in Barcelona from 4^th to 5^th October, which comes shortly after our very own PEP-NET Summit on 23^rd September.

Speaking from our experience of organising the first ever PEP-NET Summit, there is certainly demand for eParticipation conferences from delegates and speakers . Perhaps people have had enough of lazing around on Europe’s beaches and are looking forward to coming together to plan the next steps for eParticipation and think about where to invest their newly-acquired energy and enthusiasm.

If you have had enough of the beach and like the idea of discussing eParticipation amongst Hamburg’s canals in the historic Speicherstadt, then make sure you register soon on the PEP-NET Summit page because places are very quickly filling up. We promised that things would “get loud” at our Summit; judging by the number of people signing up, we weren’t wrong. So put away your bucket and spade, get your trousers on and come and make some noise. Register now to avoid disappointment.

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.

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.

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

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.

For the 17^th and 18^th of June 2010 21c has arranged personal meetings with high dignitaries within the UK ICT central and local departments starting on the 17^th 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.

The calm of Hamburg’s historic Speicherstadt is not usually disturbed by anything more than the chatter of tourists exploring the picturesque surroundings in the sun, or a sprinkling of rain sending ripples across the canals. (Here is a nice video as appetizer).

But on 23rd September 2010, we’re hoping to make waves that spread well beyond the canals of Hamburg to the furthest corners of Europe!

Along with the keynote speeches from the movers and shakers of European eParticipation, we will be hosting 14 half-hour presentations in our presentation corners. That’s a total of seven hours’ presentations of groundbreaking eParticipation projects in an informal atmosphere, where you will be able to move from one presentation to another and discuss with other participants.

As many as four presentations will be running in parallel, allowing you to move from one to the other according to what you find most interesting. It will get loud in there, but that will only add to the lively hustle and bustle and make sure that this is so much more than just another flashy conference.

We’ve got presenters from all across Europe: Germany, Scotland, England, Estonia, Slovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The topics discussed will range from open government to grass-roots citizen participation in local politics via participatory budgeting. Our presenters themselves are a diverse bunch, in terms of nationality, areas of expertise, and organisations they work for: we’ve got academics like Peter Cruickshank from International Teledemocracy Centre at Edinburgh Napier University, Civil Servants like Hille Hinsberg from the Estonian Cabinet Office, and Dominic Campbell, founder and Director of UK consultancy and social innovation incubator FutureGov. Then there’s Chuck Hirt, of the Central and Eastern European Citizens Network, André Basten and Hanss Christian Lange from the City of Hamburg … and I could go on. Full details will be published soon together with the final agenda at the summit page - so stay tuned!

The PEP-NET Summit is all about participation, and we have really tried hard to keep that in focus: a glance at the agenda will confirm that there will be plenty of time for discussion, whether in the presentation corners, during the question and answer sessions at the end of each keynote session, or at the end of the day when there is an hour dedicated to summarising and discussing what was said. If that isn’t enough networking for you, make sure you come along to the dinner in the evening. Finally, on the following morning we are offering a tour of Hamburg with an eParticipation focus.  Look forward to seeing you in Hamburg!

OurSpace plans to create a unique online collaboration space designed to actively engage young European citizens in the moulding of their future society. The platform will incorporate all the latest social media tools and applications and will be designed with help of the end-users themselves to ensure high attractiveness and usability of the platform.

The project success will not depend only on the technical delivery of the platform but mainly on the high participation rate of the end-users and OurSpace consortium has on board partners such as UK Youth Parliament, Café Babel Magazine or Google Ireland with links to millions of young people from Europe so we all hope that OurSpace will be a success story!