At the workshop we worked in smaller groups concerning on the target groups “teams”, “community (internal)”, “network (internal)” and “external network/community”. Although we were broad mixture of people from different companies (most of them), scientists/universities (less) and administrations (very few), we found out that we work on the same challenges.

Here they are:

• How can we motivate people to participate?
• How can we get the experience from the outside to the inside the system/the companies?
• How to deal with negative feedback?
• How to handle with the speed the new media is penetrating our working fields?
• How to handle problems within the frame of global deployment (e.g. different cultures and languages)?
• Which kind of tools and methods are proved for the future? Which are the “good tools”?
• How can we find out what the market/our customers wish to get from us? What influences them most?

The recommendations we identified (very similar in every of the three groups) were:

• Focus on the culture, it is not about the tool.
• Become a learning organisation, be able to deal with feedback
• Get better in community understanding: what drives the people/customers, when will they participate?
• Strong leadership and role models will be helpful
• Tools and methods have to be user friendly
• Security is a big factor

The conclusions were:

• It is not a question of when, but of how to organise collaboration and participation.
• The main question is the culture inside the company/organisation. Rules which are helpful to organise the traditional IT cannot be transferred in a direct way to social software. What we need is a frame, but there must be still enough room to fill it.
• Show the benefit/the value of social software integration to people on the level of decision making because they are not used to this kind of tools.
• If you try to manage collaboration and participation in a traditional way you will not be successful.

So far for the first! I keep you informed although it is hard to stay in the congress centre while it´s so sunny and warm outside, the Mediterranean is dark blue and the city is really such a nice place… but you don´t have to pity me: the programme is also very attractive.

Today, even though the year’s still relatively young, the invitations and advance notifications for the major administrative conferences in Germany in 2009 are already fluttering one by one into my inbox. Is eParticipation in all its facets on the agenda more often or in other ways than it was last year? I’ve had a look at the four biggest German eGovernment congresses with that question in mind. After all, that’s where you’re likely to find a throng of representatives – important ones, too – of all of the German administrations, whether at national, federal state or small local authority level.

Let’s start with CeBIT 2009, which took place in early March in Hannover and which 43% of respondents in a survey of representatives of public administrations said was the IT exhibition they visited most. It was certainly interesting to see with my own eyes how, against the backdrop of the financial crisis, the Public Sector Park was experiencing an upturn that the public administration sector itself would never have thought possible, considering how it’s struggled for years to present its services from – to put it diplomatically – a less than favourable corner of the whole CeBIT site.
This year, visitors walked through many of the so-called “business halls”, where there was lots of empty space and exhibitors with plenty of time on their hands, to reach Hall 9, where it was really buzzing. So there was a good audience for a presentation of the eParticipation activities of the German public sector. But you looked in vain for anything from the federal states. The Federal Ministry of the Interior had at least allocated two of the slots in its lecture programme to the subject, each with three talks covering various areas.

I gave a talk there on Hamburg’s experiences in the field (eParticipation in Hamburg from 2002 – 2009: from a pilot project to the norm), while Matthias Trenel from Zebralog e.V. spoke about federal and other administrative discourses. PEP-NET coordinator Rolf Lührs chaired a discussion between leading politicians on the topic of “Politics 2.0” as part of the “Webciety” series.

On 5 – 6 May 2009, the “Neue Verwaltung” congress organised by the dbb-Akademie was due to place again in Leipzig. As last year, it was offering practical workshops on the topic of “Web 2.0 in public administration” and at least dedicating one of nearly 40 lecture slots to the topic of eParticipation. Entitled “eDemocracy, eParticipation and Web 2.0 – online public participation”, it promised to offer representatives of public administrations a chance to find out about new ways (to them) of applying IT. That sounds really promising and gladdens the innovative civil servant’s heart.

On 26 – 27 May 2009, the 12th “Effizente Staat” (“efficient state”) conference will be taking place in Berlin under the banner of “Change Requires Exchange”. According to the organisers, the magazine “Behörden Spiegel”, the event “has become an integral part of the transformation discussion”. If that’s the case, German administrations aren’t transforming themselves in the direction of more eParticipation, since the topic isn’t to be found anywhere.

The fourth major administration conference traditionally takes place in Berlin in the autumn: “Moderne Staat” (“modern state) whose partners include the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the KGSt (Kommunale Gemeinschaftsstelle für Verwaltungsmanagement – a federation of German municipalities and district and local authorities of all sizes concerning local management). According to the advance programme, the main focus in the eGovernment area will be on the topics of “the EU Services Directive” and the “Germany-wide common telephone number for public enquires“.

My personal verdict is that the topic of eParticipation is making up a bit of ground in the public administration community, but its significance lags way behind that of topics such as the “EU Services Directive”, IT infrastructure, IT security, IT cooperation or shared services. These are all doubtless important topics when it comes to being well equipped for the future.
Does the dominance of the classical IT topics perhaps have to do with the fact that “the internal IT departments in local authorities (…) frequently tend to fulfil the role of a simple operator, exerting little influence on how departments actually use IT”? This is what emerged from a survey conducted by the market research and consultancy company IDC in the autumn of 2008 among those responsible for IT in metropolitan authorities and rural administrative districts. They add: “In future, however, IT will become even more important for the successful structuring of administrative processes and a greater responsiveness to the needs of the public”. It is to be hoped that the message will not fall on deaf ears and that it will be given enough space.

I have been involved in the Hamburg administration for the past seven years with the issues of eGovernment and eParticipation and since October 2005 have been in charge of the department responsible for the strategic long-term establishment of these topics in the Hamburg administration as a whole. So it was with happy anticipation that I made my way – slightly late – to the upstairs room in the spanking new futuristic building on the outskirts of Leipzig to improve my blogging skills.

The first surprise was that there were only five members of public administrations sitting in front of their PCs and busily practising constructing blogs and using administrative tools to put them into practical use. Two participants were from the same organisation, and one had to leave early because his boss called him away. That left just four administrations at this conference that had expressed any interest in using this no longer terribly new method of interaction.

The lecturer took a lot of trouble to explain to us the opportunities and risk of blogs and showed us successful examples (e.g. the blog by a young mayor of a smallish local authority). At the end of the workshop it felt good to know a little more about the subject, but I had great doubts that the world of Web 2.0 would ever make it into the realm of public administration or, if it does, when. Will the outside world be technological leagues further by the time we have learned to write blog articles?

The theme of eParticipation arose at other points in the conference, too. In one session, I reported on Hamburg’s experiences with online debates and the Federal Government’s study on the status quo of eParticipation in Germany was presented. At least that session attracted about 25 listeners whose questions showed their interest. In other presentations, scientists and advisors attempted to make it clear to the representatives of public administrations that opportunities for dialogue with members of the public represent important success factors in future eGovernment. But in my experience of such conferences, the questions afterwards almost always focus exclusively on IT aspects: new software, standards, security, etc. In short: overcoming day-to-day problems is clearly to the fore. The resources for overcoming the future are usually lacking.

I am always happy to discover “Web 2.0”, “eDemocracy” or “participation” on the agenda of a German eGovernment conference, even if they are usually to be found on the fringes and seem like exotic curiosities among the “hard” topics. Given the challenges of applying IT to making public administrations fit for the future, I know how hard it is to find time for “soft” topics like public participation on the Internet. IT and organisation experts and lawyers can get really steamed up about technical, organisational and legal problems with implementing eGovernment projects – and with good reason, incidentally.

The subject of eParticipation must be firmly anchored in the political sphere, because in essence it is about creating a modern, more efficient and more sustainable kind of politics and using the Internet much more in future as a channel. Hamburg has the advantages of having IT and eGovernment under one roof and good lines of communication with the policy makers. I hope that PEP-NET will, among other things, enable me to share my experience with other administrations in Europe and gain some momentum for Hamburg. Perhaps other administrations, or those who work with them, can tell me what they think here and now? I would be glad if you did. Whatever the case, I will certainly stick with the subject.