Workshop at the European Parliament, Brussels, 26 May 2011, 9-13 hrs, Room JAN 4Q1.

The workshop is meant to reflect on the potentials and realistic prospects of Internet-based applications to contribute to the democratic practices of the evolving political system of the European Union and the formation of a European public sphere. There are examples of cases where positive effects of the Internet concerning the political process are visible, including e-consultations, e-petitions and other initiatives to encourage citizens’ participation. However, it becomes clear that not all of the potentials of the new technology have been realised so far and that apart from technical aspects, there are different legal, political and social issues which need to be addressed in the future.

Programme:

9.00 Registration
9.30 Welcome address by STOA
Introductionand presentation of STOA project by Dr. Georg Aichholzer, ITA, Vienna

9.45  Session 1: A European e-public: Chances and restrictions of an Internet-mediated public opinion in Europe

Prof. Stijn Smismans, Cardiff University, Cardiff Law School.
Dr. Sandra González-Bailón, University of Oxford,Oxford Internet Institute and Nuffield College.

10.30 Inquiryby Members of Parliament and discussion

11.00 Coffee Break

11.30 Session 2: E-participation in Europe: Internet-based political participation as a pacemaker for a European public

Jeremy Millard, Danish Technological Institute, Denmark.
Dr. Andy Williamson, Hansard Society, Digital Democracy Programme,London.

12.15 Inquiryby Members of Parliament and discussion

13.00 Endof workshop after closing remarksby Dr. Georg Aichholzer, ITA, Vienna.

The workshop is free of charge, but you need to register in order to be able to enter the European Parliament.
To register please send an e-mail to Kerstin.Goos@isi.fraunhofer.de until 23 May 2011 indicating your name, date of birth, nationality, city of residence and ID or passport number.
Further information:  Prof. Dr. Ralf Lindner, tel. +49 721 6809 292; Dr. Theodoros Karapiperis, tel. +32 2 28 43812

The workshop is organised by Fraunhofer ISI.

For more information on the project see:

STOA-Project E-public, e-participation, e-voting in Europe: Chances and limits of an Internet-enabled European democracy

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT INFORMATION OFFICE FOR SLOVENIA, EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT INFORMATION OFFICE FOR SWEDEN and PRO ET CONTRA, INSTITUTE FOR CULTURE IN DIALOGUE

invite you to join the global virtual community in an
ONLINE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CITIZENS FORUM to discuss

“IS INTERNET BECOMING THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?”

with Members of the European Parliament Tanja Fajon (S&D/SD), participating from Kiberpipa, Slovenia and Christian Engström (Greens-EFA/Pirate Party) participating from Sweden.

Moderator: Simon Delakorda (Institute for Electronic Participation)

In order to participate simply go to the Online Citizens Forum Web Page https://www.evropske-razprave.si/video-stream-Ljubljana-12-11-10.

The web page will support online participation through a video stream of the discussion taking place in Kiberpipa, Ljubljana (https://www.kiberpipa.org) while your direct participation will be supported through a special chat room in which the moderator will be taking questions prior to and during the discussion.

The on-line event is going to start on Friday, November 12th 2010 at 17.30 (CET). Everyone that wishes to join us in the near virtual world is welcome to visit Kiberpipa Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana or in Kibla, Ulica kneza Koclja 9, Maribor.

Content:
(more at https://www.evropske-volitve.si/images/stories/datoteke/pamflet_Internet-Citizens-forum-2010.pdf)

* Free flow of information and services in the European Union and the protection of copyright and patent laws.

* The role of the European Union in ensuring the protection of all internet users.

* The future of information technologies and new forms of political participation with respect to the functioning and the role of the European Parliament in political life.

The event is organized by European Parliament Information Office for Slovenia, European Parliament Information Office for Sweden, Pro et Contra – Institute for Culture in Dialouge (https://www.zainproti.com) in cooperation with Kiberpipa. Web streaming of the European Parliament Citizens Forum is provided by the Institute for Electronic Participation (INePA) – https://www.inepa.si and Studio 12 – https://www.studio12.si.

The European Parliament Citizens Forum started in 2005 with the aim to bring together on the one hand European citizens, NGO representatives and on the other Members of the European Parliament, representatives of national and local authorities to discuss current European affairs.

Today, June 15, the reduced early registration fee ends! (300€ including social events)
From June 16 the price will be 360€.

In order to get the discounted fee, register online today!
The 4. International Conference on Electronic Voting will be held from July 21 to 24 of 2010 in Bregenz, Austria. Please have a look at our internationally casted conference programme here.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the conference in July – so register now!

Daniel Botz – EVOTE2010 Conference Manager

Generally ECI is understood as an instrument for decision-making or voting, as we know it from direct democratic instruments like referenda. Thus, the main use of ICT for the ECI is seen in the authentication and collection of votes (e-voting).

But in fact ECI is not essentially a means for decision-making. Its legal consequences are limited to submission of proposals to the Commission, which in turn is not even obligated to pass this proposal to the parliament. Thus, ECI does only allow citizens to participate in political agenda setting and rather has to be understood as a process of collective opinion formation. Accordingly, current discussions on authentication and representativeness miss to address the crucial questions at stake, because ECI is not comparable to an election or referendum.

However, this does not mean that ECI is not worth anything. As an instrument for participatory agenda setting, ECI does offer citizens an opportunity to deliberate on questions, which they feel concerned about and to proactively bring them on the political agenda. ECI could open a space for trans-cultural, trans-border discourse embracing all the different viewpoints Europeans from various member states may have, and thus, has the potential to establish a European public sphere. It is about creating a process of discursive appropriation of Europe by its citizens, making them co-authors of the European endeavour.

Thus, ECI must be understood much more as a participatory process, requiring an intelligent and consistent combination of offline and online methods for constructive collaboration at local, national and European level.

Furthermore, to prevent ECI from being misunderstood as a mere oppositional instruments, it will be equally important to guarantee a synergic interplay between civil organizations and governmental institutions.

Therefore, further concretion and development of ECI must focus much more on the participative process of collective opinion formation and deliberative agenda setting.

Accordingly, the role of ICT in these processes has to be reconsidered. We will not only need e-voting systems and virtual IDs, but also powerful tools for cross-language dialogue, structured debate, collective co-creation of proposals and position papers as well as tools for effective e-campaigning and proactive self-organization.

Times: TV-debates were crucial
The voters had not even had the chance to make their vote when the Times delivered its verdict: The TV debates ruled the election campaigns. 140 characters on Twitter were not quite enough to be a key factor, states the Times. Hardly any politician had been able to capitalise on the possibilities offered by the internet. Nevertheless, something was different this time around, probably due to the web: Parties and politicians found it much more difficult to set the agenda. Instead they had to deal with the topics the people forced them to talk about, says the Times.

Guardian: Parties missed their chances
In the Guardian the digital strategist of Obama´s successful presidential campaign, Joe Rospars, expresses his believe that the parties have not been able to use the internet properly. They just changed the battlefield, not the tactics. Rospars points out that some independent organizations have shown how to do it. The initiative „hope not hate“ for instance sought to prevent candidates of the British National Party from winning seats in the parliament. They organized most events via the internet. An example: Several hundred volunteers handed out 100.000 protest newspapers in two suburbs of London. In both election districts the nationalists fell considerably short of winning a mandate. According to Rospars the secret of the initiative´s success was their skill to transport clear instructions in their messages – and not to lose itself in woolly words. In Rospars`opinion they showed the strong leadership the parties did not deliver.

TechPresident: Not enough time?
TechPresident´s Nancy Scola, in response to Rospar´s analysis, identiefies the short period of time left for the partys’ electoral campaign as a key factor for unsuccessful e-campaigning. Wheras Obama had nearly two years to optimize his strategy, in Britain there was hardly one month left between the announcement of the election date and the polling day. Additionally, Scola assumes that Obama´s web-campaign perfectly matched his image, a fact that might have played a vital part in the campaign´s success.

Independent: Tweets of the day
The Independent compares internet and television with the classic poster ad. The results of the web-campaigns may have been disappointing, but nevertheless they spiced up the controversies between the contestants. Furthermore, the newspaper collected the best tweets of the election day. A rather radical message was for instance posted by the journalist Alex Wood: „Remember, everytime someone votes for David Cameron, a puppy dies.“

BBC: Web not ineffective at all
The BBC´s Rory Cellan-Jones firmly believes that the internet played an important role ahead of the election day. Especially young voters got involved with politics thanks to the web. The tie between the election commission and facebook helped to raise the number of first-time voters registering to vote, says Cellan-Jones. And the parties used the web for internal communication and organisation: The extensive usage of e-mail made f2f-staff meetings dispensable.

Grants for Greece – Where does our money flow?

Author: Professor Dr. Jörn von Lucke

In times of a global financial and economic crisis, the U.S. State of Texas might be a role model. Susan Combs, Comptroller of the State of Texas, is a pioneer for more transparent budgets. Since 2007, the portal “Cash Drill: Transparency at Work” has enabled all citizens and the press to evaluate the state budget of Texas and to analyze it according to various criteria (Cash Drill: https://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/expendlist/cashdrill.php). Various search tools are available under the “Where the Money Goes” banner. They help to create spending overviews by agency, by category, by vendors and by purchasing items. Additionally, comparisons of previous expenditures are possible with the planned budget of an agency. Such an evaluation is made possible through a data warehouse that contains these information accessible in multiple languages. Citizens also have the opportunity to communicate their experiences, impressions and to give tips for suspected corruption directly.

In recent weeks, Greece was hit dramatically by the financial crisis. Corruption in politics and administration, mismanagement, fraud, tax evasion, and falsification of official statistics have contributed to the downgrading of Greek government bonds to a “junk level.” By the end of 2012, the Hellenic Republic is expected to need more than 120 billion Euros in financial assistance. To ensure the stability of the Euro, Germany will have to play a significant part. A guarantee of the KfW Bankengruppe (“Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau”) appears to all parties as useful and the only option – which is right. As a taxpayer, we may regret this. Nevertheless, we should seize the hour. In times of crisis, the window of opportunity, in which a substantial change from all sides might be accepted and sustainably implemented, is small; this is nearly impossible in prosperous times.

If German tax money is used for guarantees in Greece, the German taxpayer should also be able to know where the money goes. A Greek Cash Drill portal could inform us and especially the Greek people how politics and public administration are currently dealing with the existing resources and tax money. Information on fraud, corruption and nepotism resulting from the common review of this fully transparent budget, could be used by authorities. The Greek press and the Greek population might be hold accountable for exactly this task. Just in the spirit of crowd sourcing, this all depends on the knowledge and participation of the masses. Technically, such a portal, as the example shows in Texas, would be quite quickly implementable in several languages. In terms of open government such a mandatory requirement for a financial aid package would fit in the new public management strategy of the Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou. Now it is up to the negotiators, whether they can claim a genuine and transparent budget for a stable currency, or if they fail.

Admittedly, our eyes should not only wander to Greece. The financial crisis has also reached Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy. Here too, we have to ask the question, how far an open and transparent budget could help to win back trust and confidence in banks, business, politics and administration. Even in Germany, we should no longer close ourselves to this discussion. The federal government, the states government, cities and municipalities are equally called to start the action. Let’s go!

https://www.government2020.de/blog/?p=61