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YOUR involvement in the future PEP-NET12. June 2010 – 12:00 by Hans Hagedorn |
PEP-NET will become a new organisation in autumn. The funding period will end and therefore all members — associate and founding — have to decide about their involvement in the future network. There is a concrete proposal from the network coordinator, which was discussed on the last PEP-NET meeting in Krems (see e-mail from John on the 31st of May).
There was both approval and there were also alternative proposals. Thus Francesco Molinari decided to conduct a survey among all members to get a clearer picture of the different interests.
Here are the results of the survey (PDF, 2.5 MB)
There are 3 key conclusions that we leave open for comments and future action:
- Demand: The good response rate (see chapter “Technical Information”) is an indicator that there is a broad interest in the continuation of PEP‐NET. Additionally there is a core of about 10 committed members who are willing to contribute by a considerable amount of money (see analysis of Question #4). This gives a clear signal that there is strong demand for a new PEP‐NET after the end of the EU funded project.
- Supply: Realised networking opportunities during the last years remained below the very high initial expectations (see analysis of Question #4). Therefore, the next discussion should focus particularly on this issue and should try to find answers to the following question: How can we improve networking opportunities for the different member groups?
- Proposals: The survey was the first step to collect concrete proposals from the
members for the design of the new organisation. Thus, we have to analyse the answers to question #8 in more detail. A volunteer could (a) cluster the proposals and comments received into groups and (b) find speaking headlines for each group.
On June the 25th a Temporary Steering Committee will meet in Berlin and will sort the existing proposals. There will be TuTech’s strategy paper as well as hopefully many short or long contributions. They might fit together or might propose alternative directions.
The Temporary Steering Committee will decide about the next steps. They might organise a broad online-debate amoung all members with specific questions arising in the papers, e.g. about the governance structure or the obligatory contributions of members in terms of money or duties. You can take part in the meeting’s video session on Friday, 25th of June at 16:00-17:00 CET. Please e-mail to Daniel (droleff ÄT politik-digital.de) to get the details.
From your perspective: What are your conclusions from the study? What are your proposals for the services of the new organisation, its legal framework and its business model? Please write us any thoughts, short or long! And be aware: If you do not contribute to this crucial discussion, your organisation might suffer, because the memberships might become too expensive or the network might become too lame, or whatever…
You can submit your proposal by e-mail proposal.filter@hanshagedorn.de or leave a comment on this article. Please send your contributions before the 24th of June.
On behalf of the temporary steering committee
Hans Hagedorn
Tags: inenglish
2 Responses to “YOUR involvement in the future PEP-NET”
By Asociacion Ciudades Kyosei / Pedro Prieto-Martin on Jun 14, 2010
Hi Hans,
first of all, let me share with you my impression that you all are doing a very serious work with this transition. I hope all your efforts bear their fruits, and the new PeP-NET becomes a reality, and brings even more vivacity to our growing (e)Participation community.
It’s a pity that our organization, as the small and young NGO it is, is too much worried about its own “model”, looking for ways to make its own work sustainable, and thus we cannot invest much time contributing to PeP-NET’s transitional process.
We would like to see that PeP-NET remains open for the “interesting practitioners” and “small NGOs”, regardless of their financial capacity. You should devise some kind of “grants” schema, that makes sure that money is not an impediment for those cases that really deserve it.
For the future, we hope we’ll be able to contribute to PeP-NET efforts as much as possible. Currently our association is reinforcing its links with institutions throughout Latin America (specially, the “Inter-American e-Government Training Network” and the “Network of e-Government Leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean (RED GEALC)”. If everything goes well, in the near future we will help PeP-NET to get more visibility in this region of the world, which must be acknowledged as being the one where more transformational participatory experimentation has been carried out in the last decades. I’m sure we all will benefit from their perspectives and experience.
Many thanks, and carry on with the good job you’re doing.
By Hans Hagedorn on Jun 14, 2010
Thanks, Pedro for your remarks! The Links to Latin America sound very promising. And I have noted your point about being open to smaller, but still very relevant organisations.