en.europa-eu-audience

“A Strategy for Copyright in the Digital Age”: a very useful official british report

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Ministerial Foreword

“…We are, however, at a crossroads in our relationship with our new digital world. Digital technology means access to information on a vast scale. It has changed the way people publish and consume works. It allows anyone and everyone to make and distribute quick, cheap and totally accurate copies. Consumers have reached out to grab the potential of this new technology. The copyright debate, once in the hands of the professionals of the creative industries, is now a debate for everyone. Businesses and governments have seen the challenges but have been slow to respond…”

References:

The report:  “© The Way Ahead : A Strategy for Copyright In The Digital Age”

Intellectual Property Office

Source: http://scinfolex.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/angleterre-un-rapport-montre-la-voie-du-copyright-2-0/

US House of Representatives : Pelosi Addresses e-Parliament Conference

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Source: http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/11/04/pelosi-addresses-e-parliament-conference/ , by John Wonderlich , Tags: eparl, Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi

Speaker Pelosi yesterday spoke on a panel to kick off the World eParliament Conference 2009, in the US House of Representatives.

Her prepared remarks are available here, and include the following:

“In the history of American democracy, there was a time when a message could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or a ship could sail. Today, a message from the American people to their representatives in Congress travels as fast as a citizen can twitter, blog, or post to Facebook…

Led by the innovation and enthusiasm of young people, Americans and Members of Congress are holding a running conversation – in real time. There is no greater tool to increase transparency than the internet. Now, Americans can watch committee hearings, check votes, read bills, and review financial disclosures–all online. Next month, they will be able to see exactly how Members of Congress are spending their office funds, and at the start of next year, they will be able to watch and search our House floor proceedings in real time …

A paperless Parliament ?

German Parliament Makes Bulk E-reader Purchase

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Read the entire text on the source: Epapercentral

There is also a similar project for European Parliament

What about the Community Agencies ? A report of the French Senat

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A very useful information report 

The whole report (72 pages) http://www.senat.fr/noticerap/2009/r09-017-notice.html  

The TOC : http://www.senat.fr/rap/r09-017/r09-017_mono.html

Resources: 

All the agencies : http://europa.eu/agencies/index_en.htm

Community agencies: http://europa.eu/agencies/community_agencies/index_en.htm

Something must be done at the Europa level to improve the impact of these agencies  

Maps and Bills

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BillMaps is a mashup between Google Maps and the two political tracking websites, OpenCongress and GovTrack.

The site uses the Google Maps API to show which senators are sponsoring congressional bills.

Thesaurus : ISO DIS 25964

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A new ISO norm for either monolingual or multilingual thesauri

That’s an important aspect for search.

http://www.iso.org/iso/fr/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=53657

See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesaurus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Knowledge_Organisation_System

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(computer_science)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_vocabulary

The social media users are not so young!

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Often it's assumed that teenagers are the main users of social networking tools from Facebook to Twitter.

However the research conducted over the last few years indicates that the real situation is a little different.

Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government.

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A very interesting paper by Lawrence Lessig, which will perhaps provoke controversy

LL is professor of law and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (Penguin). He is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation and on the board of Maplight.org

See also “Institutional Corruption - Opening Lecture”: http://blip.tv/file/2711623

Danish Government launches Public Sector Information Data use competition

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Public Sector Information (“PSI”) data re-use competition : What is it all about?

It’s about that we want to demonstrate through real examples of how public data can be used for much more and much more numerous than they are today. We believe that Danish companies, organizations, students, entrepreneurs and ordinary creative people can create useful digital services and information-rich mash-ups, which we in the public sector do not have the imagination to imagine. Therefore, the science minister Helge Sander printed Ideas Competition government data in games where the best ideas for solutions rewarded with financial support for realization of ideas.

• Evaluation Criteria
• Competition Rules
• Participant Guide
• The FAQ: Questions and Answers

Why not such a competition for EU websites ?

Sources:

http://opendata-network.org/2009/10/danish-government-launches-psi-data-use-competition/

http://www.epsiplus.net/news/competition_opens_100_000_danish_kroner

Why Government 2.0 Has Little To Do With Government

Over the last few months, in client conversations or blog discussions, it has become apparent to me that some of us look at the impact of web 2.0 on government – also nicknamed “Government 2.0” – from the wrong perspective.

Read the entire post on http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/10/06/why-government-2-0-has-little-to-do-with-government/ (October 6th, 2009)