The website of the Czech EU Presidency in the final of international eDemocracy Awards

18. August 2009 – 08:45 by Olga Lacigova - 21c

The Czech Republic EU presidency from January to June 2009 was according to the Czech Foreign Minister Kohout good, but not the best. “The Czech presidency rather focused on deeds that on procedures and processes,” said Kohout. However, one of the good things that the Czech Republic achieved during its presidency premiere was to create a website that was selected as one of the finalist for the annual eDemocracy Award. The website, EU2009.cz, was selected for using the internet to contribute to reinforcing democracy and for involving citizens in public debate. The website had more than 2 million visitors which is more than previous presidency websites. The winner will be announced on 23rd of October in Paris.

Sources:

-Veronika Cvejnová, editor-in-chief of the Czech EU Presidency website

-Prague Daily Monitor

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MP Expenses Scandal in the UK

18. August 2009 – 08:44 by Interns at 21c

Since April 2009, the government attempts to reform the MPs Expenses witch illustrates a problem inherent in democracy: the salaries of officials. Indeed the expenses of MPs finally became public after 3 years of blocking the House of Commons.

After such of information discloses, the court ruled that MPs demanded too much money to meet their personal needs (entertainment, passion, housing…).

No wonder members want to avoid the claims of their expenditures, with are on average £ 118.000 per year, and the government imposes cuts on the wages in the public sector. For example MPs claim their subscription to Sky TV and Television licensing services, consulting fees and services fess, insurance and sale on their property.

How are MPs supposed to reassure the thousands of working poor who have lost their personal property, such as their home because they could not meet the higher repayments of credits? In fact, we can see that these low-paid workers are seeking second jobs in order to pay their bills, but they take particular risks with regard to their health.

So that the public expressed, we can see that there are many blog such as MySpace, Facebook and Google. However there are not particular many forums.

To illustrate this, we took the example of a forum* witch raises the question of MPs Expenses. On this forum, users can express their views freely on the fact that they are for or against this system. For instance, people write their stories to illustrate their argument with the situation.In contrast, others believe that spending money and requests from to payers is unfair, since the salaries of MPs are already very high.

We took also an example on Facebook, where we can see that groups are freely formed, without influences on this subject. Here we have the case of a petition on the MPs Expenses so people, young and old, can speak freely and say whether they support or not the system.

During the last weeks, the government has been upset because of the spending scandal. This change can be illustrated by the post article on BBC**, and we can see that the Prime Minister and David Cameron have clashed over government spending. Code of conduct will be imposes on all members new rules on have to better regulate government spending and avoid committing injustices. Great Britain can not continue on the path, this level of spending and taxation but must react very quickly.

by French Interns at 21c

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EU Elections 2009

18. August 2009 – 08:43 by Interns at 21c

The 2009 European elections were held from the 4th to 7th June, in the 27 Member States of the European Union. These elections are designed to elect the new Parliament by which over 500 million Europeans are represented. During these European elections, political campaigns were hardly recognized in traditional Medias such as print and television but have beaten the record on Internet. In recent years, the European Parliament started a process of raising political awareness amongst young people and has been encouraging them to vote by using Web 2.0 media. However, the initiative is in its origins and may take several years before we see the change.

In Britain, the defeat of the Labour Party was expected. But its magnitude was surprising. In fact, the British National Party (BNP), from British extreme right, will for the first time enter the Parliament after winning two seats in the European elections. The success of the BNP is a new blow for Gordon Brown, increasingly challenged within his own party. The Labour Party, weakened by the MP expenses scandal, was relegated to third place with only 15.3% of the vote, behind the anti-UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) with 17.4%, and the Conservative Party, which wins the elections (28.6%).

This tendency for the extreme right is reflected in the resurgence of distrust in politics that has been prompted by the scandal of excessive repayment of personal expenses of many MPs and some ministers.  The enemies of British Nationalism continue to parrot the claim that the BNP is a “racist party.” This claim is most often repeated because the BNP unashamedly addresses itself to the issues and concerns of the indigenous British population, and because it seeks to ensure that British people remain the majority population in this country.

Opponents point to the fact that the BNP has an all-white membership policy, and that they address issues concerning only white people while the UK is a multiethnic place. The European elections are not without consequences on the future of the United-Kingdom. Indeed, the future relations between Europe and the Great-Britain can be serious damaged. Therefore, we think that the EU parliament should continue with their online campaigning to increase turnout.

by French Interns at 21c

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Don’t Vote in the German Federal election 2009

13. August 2009 – 08:42 by pol-di.net e.V / politik-digital.de

For the upcoming German Federal election 2009, politik-digital.de, in a joint project with pro-bono TV production, published a video clip which shows various celebrities telling not to vote. You can watch the clip here (sorry, I couldn’t embed the clip):

Geh nicht hin!

For those of you who are non-German speakers, find an english article about the project on DW-World.de. This article comes along with a radio interview including a statement by politik-digital.de executive director Stefan Gehrke.

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EDem09 - Early-Bird-Rate for PEP-Net Members

13. August 2009 – 08:41 by ZEG

The annual Conference on eDemocracy will take place at the Vienna University of Economics and Business on September 7 and 8.

The upcoming conference gives experts and the interested public the opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions about the influence of the web 2.0 on our democracies. There are a number of eDemocracy applications, ranging from transparency and information sites, discussion panels, deliberation and consultation platforms to decision-making and voting systems, thus encompassing the entire democratic process.

Costs:

EUR 95,- for authors
EUR 115,- early-bird-rate for PEP-Net members
EUR 135,- for participants who register after July 17, 2009

Instructions:

In order to profit from your PEP-Net membership, please note your PEP-Net member status when registering. If you have any questions, please contact julia.landgraf@wu.ac.at .

We are looking forward to seeing you soon in Vienna …

Further Information:

• Austrian Computer Society
• Danube-University Krems

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Creative Users avoid Censorship

10. August 2009 – 08:39 by ZEG

Censorship in China is not new. The Chinese government has mandated to install specific filtering software, Green Dam, on every computer sold in the country. Companies that want to sell computers in China shall pre-install Green Dam which is supposed to protect children from inappropriate internet content. Of course, the software can also be used for different purposes, giving the Chinese government the possibility to monitor personal computers; in addition to the already operating so-called Great Firewall of China. Green Dam does not merely control the computer’s data, it might also cause fatal errors as the software code does not fit to quality standards and offers rather poor parental control options. “Given the resulting poor quality of the product, the large negative security and stability effects on the Chinese computing infrastructure and the intense backlash against the product mandate, the mandate may result in less government control.” (OpenNet) It is probably for these reasons, that the mandate has temporarily been delayed to an unknown date. Even though, companies based in democratic countries already ship personal computers with the required software to China.

Regardless of the surveillance of the internet, Chinese internet users also found ways to avoid censorship. Chinese authorities do not tolerate officially inappropriate religious and political statements and want its citizens to behave according to national political correctness. Therefore, the language used in internet forums is monitored by Chinese agencies as vulgar expressions are not accepted. Creative users replace offensive language by similarly sounding expressions and mock official regulations. As a result, songs about the Grass Mud Horse (Chinese: cao ni ma) became amazingly popular on Chinese YouTube channels. The animal that has its natural habitat in the Gobi Desert (ge bi) is similarly pronounced as the very vulgar Chinese expression cao ni ma ge bi.

Sources:

• OpenNet Initiative. “China’s Green Dam: The Implications of Government Control Encroaching on the Home PC“.
• Erich Lischka, Spiegel.de. “Kreative Chinesen verhöhnen die Zensoren.”
• Foto: Grass-Mud-Horse from Flickr.com

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Google want you

7. August 2009 – 08:38 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE

Google have taken a more aggressive stance in targeting the public sector with the launch of Google LocalGov here in the UK. While the offering is not particularly different from what anybody else can get, it certainly deserves some attention in terms of relevance. The pitch goes something like:

• Direct users to your site (enable people to find you better, position your authority as the no.1 destination)
• Manage your costs by making your website work harder (drive more traffic through the online channel to reduce print/call centre costs)
• “Monetise” (raise revenue from what you’re doing)
• Justify what you’ve done. Now more than ever data beats opinion (test, measure, optimize)

For example, Nottingham City Council has been using context sensitive ads on their site for about a year now and it returns a healthy return of around €13,500 per year in click-through revenue. In that time there have only ever been three complaints from the public and one of these related to the ‘type’ of advertisement displayed – easily rectified by the council. Arguably context sensitive advertisements on public sector pages can actually help citizens find services. So why don’t all councils do this? They also use Google Maps and Google Mini.

On the return path, the London Borough of Hillingdon (among others) pays for ‘Adwords’ on the Google search engine. They were able to target an audience within a 15 mile radius (estimated targeting accuracy 80 – 85%) to their annual Christmas market, achieving half a million impressions and a 1% click through rate. The cost per click (CPC) is a bit of a secret but reading between the lines my estimate is about 10p.

101 Rap

Click here to see the Goole top 10 tips for making websites work. Public authorities should also get wise to how Google indexes them. Done correctly and you get much better results:-

Then there’s Google Enterprise – which effectively replaces IT departments. Google estimate the cost of their cloud computing solution as £33 per user per year – and that the it costs the average IT department £200 per user per year just for email. Bear in mind Google gives you 25GB per user storage space!

OpenSocial, FriendConnet, Google Health, Google Optimiser, Google Analytics, Google Voice, Android, iGoogle…..do we need third party eParticipation software any more? There is certainly no excuse for avoiding OpenID or using insight to refine web design and ‘convert’ lurkers to participants.

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Conference Proceedings of EVOTE08 now online

6. August 2009 – 08:36 by E-Voting.CC

Our Conference Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Electronic Voting, which was held from 7th to 9th of August 2008 in Castle Hofen, are now online. Exactly one year after the opening session we are glad to publish them on the web. You can download the PDF here.

This year’s proceedings contain the seventeen papers selected for the presentation at the conference out of more than forty submissions. To assure scientific quality, the selection was based on a strict and anonymous review process. The papers cover the following subjects: e-voting experiences, social, legal, political, democratic and security issues of e-voting, as well as solutions on how to (re)design election workflows, and finally how to implement and observe electronic voting systems.

You can order the proceedings in print for EUR 19,70 (+shipping & handling) by sending an e-mail to office@e-voting.cc.

For citation and download purposes please use:
Krimmer, R., Grimm, R. (Eds.): Electronic Voting 2008, GI Lecture Notes in Informatics, P-131, Bonn, 2008.

Daniel Botz, E-Voting.CC

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3rd International Conference on e-Democracy

6. August 2009 – 08:36 by CTI

The 3rd International Conference on e-Democracy is taking place in Athens, Greece, on 23-25 September 2009.

This year’s conference, under the title “Next Generation Society: Technological and Legal issues”, will explore the following questions: Is our society ready to adopt the technological advances in ubiquitous networking, next generation Internet, and pervasive computing? To what extent will it manage to evolve promptly and efficiently to a Next Generation Society, adopting the forthcoming ICT challenges? In this respect, several topics will be addressed, covering both technological and legal-sociological aspects.

For more information visit https://www.e-democracy2009.gr.

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UK local authority goes Google

31. July 2009 – 08:34 by Dan Jellinek

One UK local authority did something very interesting with its website recently: it went Google.

Westminster City Councilin central London serves one of the UK’s busiest and richest areas, packed with tourists, businesses, government departments and residents (from MPs to the Queen), and has long been an innovator with technology. It has been a pioneer of mobile technology in public services, for example, with aspirations to become a ‘wireless city’.

Now it has implemented a radical redesign of its website which has seen its home page focus on a single feature: a whacking great search box.

Such a move has been spoken of in the local government web community for some time: public service websites in a democracy have to be as usable as possible, usable by all and accessible by all, and Google has long been held up as the pinnacle of usability.

The Google website, by and large, does one thing, and one thing only: and does it very well. This is what makes it so powerful, and easy to use. Local government websites, on the other hand, have tended, particularly on their home pages, to try to do 1,000 things, and so it is usually almost impossible to find what you want quickly and easily. The search box has often been the best way in – so why not make the whole site focus on the search facility? This should mean that whatever citizens want to do, they can do it quickly without having to think about how to locate it. Just type it in the box.

This has been Westminster’s thought process. Its redesigned site uses actual Google technology – Google supplies the search technology, and mapping technology – combining it with an open source content management system called Symphony CMS to create a site which is intended to be as simple as possible to use.

There is a bit more to it than the search, in fact – a system of tabs allows users to choose whether they want to search on the maps, or search for something to apply for, or various other sub-sections. There is also a graphical map interface sitting below the search box on the home page, and various other more traditional navigational features too, though one has to know these are there and scroll down.

There are a few other quibbles too, as our recent story in E-Government Bulletin has reported.

Overall though, is this the future of public service websites? Is this the first of a new wave of usable sites that will cut bureaucracy, and strike a blow for usability, participation and democracy? What do people think?

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