en.europa-eu-audience

The Council’s register and the legislative triangle

Version française

The Council’s register to access documents has been available for 5 years now since the adoption of Regulation (EC)1049/2001. It is time to upgrade it. That is the purpose of a new procedure already mentioned in previous posts.

The Council’s register is usable but could be improved to offer a more proactive and selective way to disseminate texts. It is mandatory to link this tool with the other registers of EU Parliament and Commission (the so-called “legislative triangle”) in order to allow a better monitoring of the legislative process at the EU level. The EU insisted on the inter-operability of the pan-European e.governments services on the 19 September  2007 in Lisbon , Portugal.(see the declaration of the Ministers in charge). 

Why not be also “interoperable” within the EU institutions?

 

Every day, the Council exports the finalized texts from its internal document management system (which manages also translation tasks) to its external public register. During that process, it could be possible to generate RSS feeds (XML structured files). The content of these RSS feeds would be built with the existing fields, listed below and with a link to the full text.

Everybody could subscribe to these channels according to their specific needs based on an advanced search inside the register, to select the relevant criteria.

For a monitoring of a legislative procedure, the relevant criteria would be language and Inter-institutional document number.

Because the other institutions of the “legislative triangle” are using the same criteria for their own monitoring, it will be possible in a near future to aggregate the feeds issued by the “Triangle” so as to have the whole procedure checked by the three main actors and also by the national parliaments. That is the whole point in having Interoperability.

 

In a further step, it will be necessary to harmonize the classification matters to allow a thematic monitoring with a multilingual thesaurus or classification plan. It’s obvious that the “matters” dealt with by the Council may seem very odd for external people.

European Court of Justice: code of conduct

“Notices from European Unions Institutions and Bodies.

Court of Justice

Code of Conduct (2007/C 223/01)

This Code of Conduct shall apply to Members and former Members of the Court of Justice, the Court of First Instance and the Civil Service Tribunal.

This Code of Conduct shall enter into force on 1 October 2007.”

Noted by Stephane Cottin, on 22 sep. 2007

Version française

A tutorial on the impact of web 2.0 on eGovernment

A tutorial on the impact of web 2.0 on eGovernment

Version française

On 22 September 2007, by Stephane Cottin,

“The JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) has held a tutorial on the impact of web 2.0 on eGovernment at the "European eGovernement Conference" that takes place in Lisbon on the 19-21 September. The conference, organised by the Portuguese presidency and The Commission’s DG Information Society, addresses different themes relating to ICT and public services. “

Sources:
eApplications for the Information Society (IPTS)
Download the tutorial 20/09/2007

Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Government Research

Version française
International Conference on Digital Government Research (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2007/05 )
You have to register (free of charge) to get the texts of the proceedings:

Examples of the available studies:

“ Advancing return on investment analysis for government information technology”

“Channel choice determinants; an exploration of the factors that determine the choice of a service channel in citizen initiated contacts”

“Members of congress websites: diffusion at the tip of the iceberg”

“The impact of e-government on child support enforcement policy outcomes”

“Moving toward e-government: effective strategies for increasing access and use of the internet among non-internet users in the U.S. and U.K. “

“Advancing return on investment analysis for government information technology”

Better regulation in the EU - MEPs adopt four reports

Version française

Reported by the Centre d’Analyse Stratégique 11-09-2007

“MEPs adopted four reports on better regulation in the EU. The key points of the package include emphasising plain and simple language, the importance of adequate and independent impact assessments, based on wide-ranging consultation of stakeholders and that "soft law" all too often constitutes an ambiguous and ineffective instrument which is liable to have a detrimental effect on Community legislation.”

References:

The report of Katalain Levai

The report of Bert Doorn

The report of Giuseppe Gargani

The report of Manuel Medina Ortega

“Better Regulation”, better dissemination

Version française

The European Policy Center published in june 2006 a working paper on the implementation of EU legislation at national or regional levels:  « Making Europe work : improving the transposition, implementation and enforcement of EU legislation ». To download it

See also http://www.isn.ethz.ch/which which gives a short description :

“This working paper contributes to the ongoing EU debate on improved political regulation. The authors describe how the analysis of EU legislation suggests that there are many reasons for regulatory non-compliance across Europe. The paper explains how such non-compliance includes administrative weaknesses in member states, poor-quality drafting of legislation, differing bureaucratic and institutional contexts and traditions, political resistance, and weak enforcement mechanisms.”

The bibliothèque des rapports publics online service (library of public reports) of the « Documentation française » (the french TSO) issued recently a report prepared by the french Economic and Social Committee : « De l'élaboration de la législation communautaire à sa mise en oeuvre en droit national : contribution du Conseil économique et social à la réflexion sur "mieux légiférer" »

Author : Dumont Catherine, France. Conseil économique et social, Paris; Journaux officiels; 2007; 202 pages (Journal officiel de la République française, avis et rapports du Conseil économique et social, n° 17)

This report analyses the EU regulation process from the first consultancies to the final decisions and the implementation within the national law. It presents some recommendations.

To download the report: [PDF] 1108 Ko, 202 pages /   Summary/Sommaire /

 

One remark:

The monitoring by the Commission of the implementation by Member States is very weak and difficult to find ( see “Application of Community law”) . Nothing about this important question in EUR-Lex. There is no incentive for Member States to act.  Politically too risky ?

One proposal:

The EU has to create a central source for public access to all studies, reports ( see the example of the bibliothèque des rapports publics in France as it is the also the case UK in a slightly different way. 

Such a service could make available:

• to citizens and businesses, possibilities of a full text search and/or multilingual thematic search, free or at specific price download facilities of files, ordering of paper versions, digitizing publications which only exist on paper or microform archive), translation on request, printing on demand if paper is out of stock, thematic warning services based on new inputs or on the result of a personalized search ...
• to authors of the Institutions and agencies, possibilities of upload studies, publications ... with pre-indexation, summaries in other languages ...

Of course, the EU Institutions and agencies will also be able to insert their written material in their own websites with RSS feeds. 

 

An audit of the UK governmental websites

Version française (23/07/2007)

The National Audit Office ( British equivalent of the Court of Auditors at EU level ) published on July the 13th 2007, with the help of the London School of Economics Public Policy Group and the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford, a very useful report about on the use of UK govenment websites

Out of the approximetly 991 websites at present, some 551 will be closed or merged into the two following poles:

www.directgov.gov.uk for citizens
www.businesslink.gov.uk for businesses.

The annual cost for the maintenance of UK gov websites is estimated at 208 millions pounds Sterling .

It could be useful to get the same elements of analysis for EU websites. 

Some recommendations of the NAO document:

• To inform their investment decisions, all departments should commit to carry out regular channel research, to create and publish a formal channel strategy and to set out an implementation plan that is regularly updated.
• Criteria should be devised for helping departments and agencies to judge the correct level of investment in websites and transactional services.
• Require departments to report annually on costings for information and services online according to a common methodology.
• Given the scale and complexity of Directgov, a framework should be put in place to ensure regular, independent reviews and challenge functions to identify risks and assess how effectively these are being managed.
• Collect and analyse usage data and ensure that such data feeds directly into the design of government websites.
• Maximise the visibility of government websites to search engines and carry out usability testing to make sure users can find the information they need within sites once they find them.
• In order to make information quicker and easier to find, the Cabinet Office, in conjunction with departments, should develop a strategy to identify and promote best practice within and across government search facilities.
• Ensure websites meet accessibility and usability criteria: no government website should go online if it does not meet required accessibility standards.Annual Reports should outline what actions have been taken to make web services and online information as usable as possible for all customers.Departments should attempt to assess the range of ‘reading ages’ of their users and design their web materials accordingly.
• Departments should develop their strategies for dealing with intermediaries, including formalizing channels for online interaction with intermediaries, more funding of intermediaries to support citizens wishing to learn how to use online services, and publicizing the availability of the provision.

Audience Dictatorship ?

Version française (29/07/2007)

Audience dictatorship on the websites of the EU ? Certainly not !

Without being obsessed with public opinion polls (public opiniomania), it would be useful to have public fiagures on the public's use of the EU websites. The « audiences et stratégies des acteurs en ligne face aux acteurs traditionnels du marché de diffusion des contenues » report underlines that as well as did the audit of the UK governmental websites issued by the National Audit Office.

The Institutions have at their disposal visit statistics on the visits as collected by the servers (“site centric stats”). In analysing these statistics we see a similarity with the circulation assessments of the written press. These data however are not available to the public, contrary to what is usually done in the written press (see below).

A “user centric” survey would make the presentation and the drafting style of websites more precise. Only a few EU websites do it.

What a pity for their audience.

 

Search Privacy Practices: a work in progress

Version française

The EU-logos Athena website drew attention to the report: Search Privacy Practices: A work in Progress, from the Center for Democracy and Technology Report

“In a trend that could substantially benefit Internet users, the largest Internet search companies are beginning to aggressively compete with one another to offer stronger privacy protections, according to a report published today by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)”

See the report: http://www.cdt.org/privacy/20070808searchprivacy.pdf  (aug 2007)

“Who’s afraid of Google”

Version française

The Holy Trinity : GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) . Three search engines: “Google’s share of web searches was about 64% in America in July, but more than 80% in Europe". Actually Google is a quasi  compulsory access point for everybody on Internet.

GYM constitutes also three advertising vectors. Google whops 73% of advertising online search budgets.

The Economist presents a balanced paper about Google in its Sept 1th 2007 issue: “Who’s afraid of Google” and also “Inside Googleplex”. 

Taking into account these facts, the following suggestions could be made for the .europa.eu websites:

• To improve their audience with a fine tuning of EU websites in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP)
• To allow a better searchability for the “deep web” ( which is not indexed by GYM)
• To increase their audience with a policy of thematic RSS feeds (for the search engines but also the aggregators)
• To try out the availability of important publications in Google Book Search
  
• To advertise with AdWords
• To try out a customized search within the domain .europa.eu ( and some other european websites which are not labelled in this domain)

More details on these suggestions will be given at a later stage

It should be noted that the Commission has already launched a policy through EUtube. (YouTube belongs to Google)