News Digest: April 6th– April 23rd 2010

23. April 2010 – 09:00 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

I assembled a few articles form the last weeks I found particularly interesting and noteworthy.

But first of all: The second PEP-NET online discourse has been running since April 12th on www.internet-discourse.eu. This discussion about the barriers and potentials of eParticipation in the Central and Eastern European region has been very successful and featured (among other things) three very interesting live-discussions with eParticipation experts from Croatia, Estonia and Slovenia. You can still take part in the third phase of the discussion. More information can be found here.

Now on to articles:

Google made an interesting step in publishing which government requested data or the removal of data from them in the second half of 2009. They also provide the number of requests and specific information on what kind of removal was requested (Youtube videos, blog posts etc.). A short article on this topic can be found on PEP-NET.
Google.com/governmentrequests

Tristan Parker wrote an interesting post on the influence of financial constraints on digital government efforts. He argues that these constraints will drive government (he is talking about the UK) towards more digital government projects and efforts not for their democratic but for their financial benefits. I think this is an interesting point of view and would argue that even though economic pressure might be the impulse the result might also be an improvement of democratic processes. An in-depth analysis can be found on the pages of the Hansard Society.
Headstar.com

MySociety has managed to set up a very large survey with “information on where every candidate in every seat stood on what most people would think were the biggest issues, not just nationally but locally too” through its TheyWorkForYou project. This might be one of the most comprehensive gatherings on data on the candidates positions we ever had in an election. The results will be published on April 30th.
Mysociety.org

Lauren Ivory posted a good (and very comprehensive) presentation by Steven van Belleghem on the online networks around the world. No absolutely new information but good to have it all on one place.
Futuregovnetwork.com

The Centre for Public Scrutiny has published a report on “what internet communication technologies might mean for public accountability”. The full report can be found here.
Cfps.org.uk

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