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PEP-NET at the EDem10 Conference10. May 2010 – 13:43 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH) |
Andy Williamson at EDem10
The EDem10 Conference, organised by PEP-NET member The Danube University, took place last week in the picturesque town of Krems, Austria. I enjoyed meeting people from across Europe who are figuring out just how the web can change the relationship between citizens, politicians and administrations for the better. I was also pleased to see that Europe is having a healthy debate on eParticipation and has plenty of experience and expertise to offer. The PEP-NET dinner on the evening before the conference was a perfect opportunity to meet everybody.
Many of the PEP-NET members I met were delivering speeches and workshops and sitting on panels — including the keynote speech on the first day (Andy Williamson, Director of Digital Democracy at the Hansard Society) and a dedicated PEP-NET workshop by Dan Jellinek and Hans Hagedorn. Dan has already blogged about the PEP-NET workshop on this blog.
To overgeneralise, my impression was that there are principles that apply in any country, but that Europe and even each individual country has specific issues around eParticipation.I spoke to Peter Parycek, Director of the Centre for E-Government at the Danube University, who agreed:
(Apologies that the video is in landscape — I’m still getting used to my new phone!)
In that conversation, Peter told me that bringing together people from across Europe really enriches the discussion due to their different cultures and experiences; but that all countries should promote citizen involvement in government of the future.
I also spoke to Andy Williamson about open data and whether that is important for participation in government. Andy said it is. So that appears to be a principle that can be applied regardless of national context.
Fraser Henderson spoke about the problems that eParticipation projects have in marketing themselves: referring to Andy Williamson’s deliberatively provocative speech arguing that eParticipation hasn’t fulfilled its potential, Fraser said that part of this was due to the lack of visibility.
Finally, I spoke to Simon Delakorda from the Institute for eParticipation in Slovenia. I asked him whether he agreed with Andy Williamson’s point that governments too often see citizens as consumers. Simon agreed, saying that viewing citizens as consumers means that they are expected to be passive service users and not to be involved in deciding how services are designed and delivered. Simon went further and said that it is often in the interest of the elite to see citizens in this way because they do not want this kind of involvement.
Francesco Molinari of PEP-NET member 21c Consultancy presented the results of some research he had been involved in into the difference between eParticipation in the US and Europe. European eParticipation initiatives tend to be successful if they are about specific rather than general issues. In the EU they tend to be initiated by government rather than by citizens. So again, we see that there are different approaches to eParticipation that are unified by overall principles.
If you couldn’t go to the conference, there is plenty of material to help you catch up on the conference blog. Bengt Feil posted a short video interview with Ismael Pena-Lopez on PEP-NET.
Tags: inenglish
