PEP-NET newsletter Issue 1, 08 October 2009-10-08 30. April 2009 – 13:38 by Bengt Feil

Dear readers,

It has already been planned for quite a while and now here it is: the very first issue of our monthly PEP-NET Newsletter!
- What’s new at PEP-NET?

- PEP-NET in numbers

- Upcoming Conferences and Events

- Selected postings on our blog
What’s new at PEP-NET?
As some of you have already heard we have successfully passed our midterm review by the European Commission. As a project partly funded by the European Commission we had to show that we achieved what has been promised in our contract. After having read our deliverables and listened to our presentation the reviewers stated that the project has made “Excellent progress and fully achieved its objectives and goals for the period and has even exceeded expectations”. Cheers!
This result is of course just motivating us to perform even better. As a first step we have now addressed is multilingualism on our blog. All our members are from now on encouraged to write also or only in their mother tongue. Read more about our hopes and expectations behind that move here.

PEP-NET in numbers
PEP-NET has currently 43 member organisations, 6 of which are Public Administrations, 12 belong to the third sector (NGO’s, Citizen Organisations), 18 are scientists or researchers and 25 are solution providers. (Apparently some belong to more than one group).
Our Facebook Page has now 233 fans and is growing quickly. We also looked at our fan base for some information. Almost 60% are working for different kinds of companies, 20% of the fans are scientists or students, 8% are journalists, 6% belong to public administrations, 4% are politicians and 2% are NGO’s representatives.
On Twitter 357 people are following us, on FriendFeed just 29. All in all we are more than happy with all the people from the different domains and countries who showed interest in our network. But we still want to grow PEP-NET.
If anybody wants to help us, why don’t you just tell the world about PEP-NET? Or if you have a Facebook account we were really happy for you to suggest your friends to become a fan: just go the page and click on “suggest to friends” on the left side menu.

Upcoming Conferences and Events
1. Berlin in October, e-democracy summit 15th -16th October 2009, Berlin, Germany https://berlininoctober.e-demokratie.org/

2. World edemocracy Forum 22nd – 23rd October 2009, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris, France https://www.edemocracy-forum.com/

3. Venezia Camp 2009, 24th October, Venice, Italy
https://www.veneziacamp.it/eventi/barcamp/

Selected articles on the PEP-NET blog
Digital Democracy for All?
Julia Glidden discusses the decision of Tom Steinberg (MySociety.org) to advise the conservative party in the UK. The article and the related comments point out both, the potential of Tom’s involvement as well as the possible problems for MySociety.org.
Read the whole article

A huge demonstration in defence of freedom of information in Italy. The Internet’s role in the mobilization.
The acfgroup of the University of Bergamo talks about the role of the internet and social media in the organisation of real world protest which have an impact on the political decision making process. About 300.000 citizen went to the streets of Rome to defend freedom of information and the event was mainly organised using the web.
Read the whole article

How democratic countries try to control the Internet
Internet censorship and surveillance is not just a problem of dictatorships around the world but is also happening in democractic countries. This is the central argument made by Simone Gerdesmeier and Hans Hagedorn of Zebralog in their featured article. They provide an overview of the cases of online censorship in the US and European countries and provide and insight into the political disucssions and protests related to these cases.
Read the whole article

Online vote for Public Prize: European eGovernment Awards practice what we preach…
The Danish Technological Institute asks all visitors of the PEP-NET blog and readers of this newsletter to vote in the online vote for the European eGovernment Awards. Five of the persons voting for the projects will gain free admission to the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Malmo in Novemeber 2009.
Read the whole article

All the best from:

Rolf Luehrs, PEP-NET Coordinator	Bengt Feil

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First wave of eParticipation Study deliverables available online 1. July 2008 – 15:37 by Danish Technological Institute

As you may already be aware the European Commission (DG Information Society and Media) funded eParticipation Study - titled “Study and supply of services on the development of eParticipation in the EU” - is currently underway and in this connection the first wave of deliverable has now been prepared and submitted to the EC and a group of external peer reviewer (see www.european-eparticipation.eu for further details).  

Deliverables include:

• Major factors shaping the development of eParticipation (D1.1a)
• Key actors in the EU in the field of eParticipation (D1.2a)
• Main benefits of the eParticipation developments in the EU (D1.3a)
• Mapping the state of play in eParticipation in the EU (D1.4a)
• First post-workshop report (D3.1b)
• Framework for eParticipation good practice (D4.1a)
• First newsletter (D6.3a)

 In addition the following deliverables will be available end of July:

• eParticipation good practice cases (D4.2a)
• eParticipation recommendations (D5.1a)

This first wave of deliverables will be updated for the next deliverables wave expected in October/November 2008. The second version of each deliverable will take into account comments by the European Commission and the project’s peer review group as well as further work conducted by the Consortium Partners in the intervening period.

You may view all deliverables in the publications/public deliverables section on www.european-eparticipation.eu or directly on https://195.251.218.37/eP//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=2

Please note that we are continuously looking for people with involvement or experience in eParticipation at the European level who will be able to guide use to relevant eParticipation initiatives, projects, events, etc. We are especially interested in examples at the European level, that may be considered as good practice, or from which lessons can be learned.

If you have not already done so, you may wish to register for the eParticipation and eDemocracy Network on https://www.epractice.eu/community/eParticipation.

Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, Business and Policy Analysis, Danish Technological Institute

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