en.europa-eu-audience

Is the ECB’s communication policy a model ?

Version française

Odd ? No, at least as far as the publications of the European Central Bank (ECB) are concerned.

It is indeed possible to subscribe to the RSS feeds and to receive directly all the titles of the publications and studies ( see below). This kind of service don’t exist anywhere else within the EU websites

Nevertheless some improvements are possible:

• a notifying service by email (at present many people are not aware of the RSS feeds potential,
• an abstract in other languages (like on the OECD website),
• a more focused thematic choice of the publications
• a merger with publications and studies focused on the same matters but published by other European Institutions

Quality of drafting EU legislation: an agreement nine years ago

Version française

“The quality of the drafting of Community legislation is crucial for a proper implementation by the competent national authorities and a better understanding by the public and the economic operators.

This publication reports the agreement between the three institutions involved in the procedure for adopting Community legislation, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, laying down their guidelines on the quality of the legislative texts”

This agreement which was tabled nine years ago (1998) but just published in the EU publications website. Hopefully some progress in this domain? It's time to report the results.

HoH

The register of the European Parliament documents is voiceless

Version française

There is a very useful thematic warning service by email offered by the register of EP documents.

It is the only public registers of the European Institutions with such a feature. Unfortunately, it has been voiceless for more than half a year. It would be wise to fix rapidly that failure and also to offer RSS feeds and the possibility of a notifying service based on the results of a search.

It’s not rocket-science to do that: see TED (FR), OpenCongress, OpenHouseProject, OpenMass (Massachussets)

Impossible to find a written question with a subject-oriented descriptor

Version française

The parliamentary questions of the Members of the European Parliament (“MEP”) are an essential tool of the “checks and balances” at EU level.

How to find the relevant questions (and of course the answers) without a subject-oriented help among the approximatly 5000 questions asked every year? At present it is impossible. The advanced search of the Europarl website offers many criteria but not such a thematic approach.

Ten years ago, Celex (a registered online service with payment) offered that opportunity (of course at that time not in a very userfriendly way) through the Eurovoc multilingual thesaurus.

Why not introduce again such a feature, of course with uptodate  interface tools?

Digital Long-Term Preservation

Version française
An important issue especially for legal documents, such as the Official Journal, Case-Law reports, etc...
An overview  "for retaining records and ensuring their legibility, interpretability, availability, and provable authenticity over long periods of time"

The biggest advantage of the revolving Presidency of the EU

The biggest advantage of the revolving Presidency of the EU

Version française

Everyone knows that the turning Presidency of the European Council changes every six months and that is up to now a very important feature. It allow us to assess the evolution of the Presidency official websites It must be noted that:

• big emphasis is put on the thematic written alert services by email, RSS feeds, even SMS
• some offers are made to customize the webservice
• accessibility by disabled persons
• iPOD audio contents and video and also archives of audiovisual material
  
• the websites are in many cases sponsored, 
• the languages are the official language of the Member State which is in charge of the Presidency and english and french, 
• none of the Presidency websites has so far used the domain .europa.eu to identify the website

“EU communication and the citizens”: eurobarometer reports

Version française

Two eurobarometer flash reports are available

EU Communication and the citizens : General Public

EU Communication: Decision Makers 

eParticipation : are Europeans twits ?

Version française
Are Europeans twits ? Of course not.
But we have to consider the review of the rules on access to documents of the regulation 1049/2001 ( regarding the Public Access to Documents held by institutions of the European Community), See also the Green paper

Regarding the contributions, some figures are odd ( a snapshot at the 14/08/2007)

20 for the public sector

30 for the NGO

15 for the private sector

18 for the citizens

00 for other organisations

That all, for around 500 millions european folks.

 

This eParticipation is very weak for a consultation which was opened 4 months ago.

Something is wrong.

Lack of presence of the procedure, lack of usability of the questionnaire, gap of interest for such a dedicated regulation, lack of feedback in the press, gap of the online dialogue, of interactivity, no “go local” ?

We have to tackle these questions and perhaps some others.

The eParticipation is not only a technical problem.

UK, NAO: 'Government on the internet: progress in delivering information services online'

Version française

The National Audit Office based on research by a team from the London School of Economics Public Policy Group et de Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford published Friday 13 Juli a report : “Government on the Internet 2007”

“The report to Parliament 'Government on the internet: progress in delivering information services online' looked at the progress made by government in delivering services and information online since the NAO last reported in 2002. Government organisations spend some £208 million on websites each year. Usage of the main government websites has risen over time and some sites are widely and repeatedly used. For example 78 per cent of Jobcentre Plus online service users visited its sites at least once a week. However, the study reports a number of areas where departments and agencies could improve value for money in the provision of online information and services.”

It could be useful to get the same study on the wensites of the domain .europa.eu

OECD and the Web (2.0)

Quick translation of a post published by Jean-Michel Salaun, Sunday 12 Aug 2007 at  07:41 :: Éco :: #296 :: rss ( version française )

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development ( OECD ) has always shown irts interest in Internet matters. Recently OECD published some studies or proceedings which proves its interest for the so-called Web 2.0:

• Working Party on the Information Economy, PARTICIPATIVE WEB: USER-CREATED CONTENT, OCDE 12-04-2007. 74p. Pdf
• NSF/OECD Workshop “Social and Economic Factors Shaping the Future of the Internet”, 31 January 2007. Pdf
• Conclusions of the OECD – Italy, Conference on The Future Digital Economy: Digital Content Creation, Distribution and Access, January 2006. Pdf