Archive for July, 2008

Utility computing – websites like power outlets

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

The vast amount of different websites and services on the web seems to be impossible to categorize. Can we even call something like Google docs a website or is a more a less a piece of software running in a browser (which is an even broader term)? But there is ...

“The administration gets blogging”

Monday, July 7th, 2008

That was the title of a workshop at a major Germany-wide conference in Leipzig with almost 1000 participants from public administrations. Topics during the two-day conference centred on the theme of eGovernment. Among the subjects discussed were trends and strategies of eGovernment in the future, acceptance (or otherwise) by users, ...

Living Labs and eParticipation: a marriage of interest?

Friday, July 4th, 2008

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 ...

Is dissemination/outreach the key to e-participation?

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

In the past few weeks I have been writing a briefing for UK Parliamentarians on e-participation, on behalf of PITCOM, the Parliamentary IT Committee. PITCOM is a joint IT industry/Parliament grouping which is politically neutral, and set up by MPs (members of Parliament) and Peers (our word for the politicians ...

The telecom package and the need for participation

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

The so called telecom package is a collection of amendments to existing European laws which will drastically change the organization of telecommunication in Europe and especially of the internet. The package will be the framework for the national laws concerning telecommunication. The purposed law has produced a lot of harsh ...

Sweden’s New Surveillance Law

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Sweden has recently been in the international news for issues related to government surveillance versus privacy. Last week, a controversial law was passed enabling the FRA (translated into English as the National Defense Radio Establishment) to collect any and all traffic crossing the Swedish borders. Earlier, only suspicion of crime would ...

2gether08: A festival of ideas, popular technologies and progress

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

By today the 2gether 2008 started its two day festival in London, UK. Digital innovations are changing our world, the way we perceive it and our notions of what is possible …. But are we doing enough or being imaginative enough to harness the potential of internet, mobile and games technologies to: promote ...

First wave of eParticipation Study deliverables available online

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

As you may already be aware the European Commission (DG Information Society and Media) funded eParticipation Study - titled “Study and supply of services on the development of eParticipation in the EU” - is currently underway and in this connection the first wave of deliverable has now been prepared and ...

BioTalk – An eParticipation Process for Hamburg’s Adolescents about Chances and Risks of Genetically Modified Food

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

How to motivate hundreds of pupils to discuss the topic genetically modified food and to work out hundreds of argumentation cards voluntarily three weeks on the Internet while having fun? The project BioTalk had undertaken this difficult approach which sounds slightly unrealistic. In the course of the project the project group ...