en.europa-eu-audience

A RSS feed for your search results

Google will soon offer a RSS feed of its search results (Source http://actu.abondance.com)
http://www.goossip.com/2008/10/google-will-soon-offer-rss-flow-of-its.html
Search engines like A9, Yahoo! and Live already offer it

Google Confirms RSS For Web Search Results
http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-rss-for-web-search-results-14987.php  

A long awaiting feature which could be very useful for EUR-Lex (access to EU law)

Distribution of publications, studies, reports and API

How to explain what an API to a publishing boss?
Published Sept. 28 2008 by Christian Fauré http://www.christian-faure.net/2008/09/28/comment-expliquer-ce-quest-une-api-a-un-patron-dedition/  
The question of technical operation of an API is not the problem that should concern firstly the publishing boss who knows nothing there.

" What must represent the term API to him is, it seems to me, is that the publishing policy could spread and embodied in a granularity of issues much more precise and concise than before . "

Google translation of a french post (published  the same day on the same  blog)

What about the policy for http://bookshop.europa.eu  and the other EU websites ?

eMetrics primer

Version française

… Being able to measure what actions people take and what information they use is, in my opinion, one of the key differentiators between the online channel and other communications mediums.

I find that the insights into customer and staff behaviour gained through eMetrics provides a solid basis for improvements to websites and intranets. It's also hard evidence that can be used to bring others onboard.

However using the wrong eMetrics can lead to all kinds of problems. I feel it's vital to understand what you are measuring, and why you should be using it.

Below is a brief primer using slides from a presentation I gave at a conference in 2007.

Slideshare: View Upload your own By Craig Thomler 10/06/2008 (Source: eGov AU)
 

The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics

Version française

Source: http://www.politicsonline.com/content/main/specialreports/2008/top10_2008/vote.asp

PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum are proud to announce the list for nominations of the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. For the ninth year in a row, PoliticsOnline subscribers and visitors from around the world are invited to help select the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.

This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, international nominees.

The winners, those top 10 nominees who receive the most votes, will be invited as honored guests to the world eDemocracy Forum October 16-17, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France), where they'll take part in an awards ceremony and other special programs throughout the two-day forum.

Past Winners by Year: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003

Directory of legal gazettes in Europe, 2008

Version française

Manuscript completed in June 2008

• ·         European Union,
• ·         EU candidate and
• ·         potential candidate countries,
• ·         EFTA countries 

http://circa.europa.eu/irc/opoce/ojf/info/data/prod/html/directory2008.pdf

(with hyperlinks to Gazettes )

Updated in June 2008, the directory gives contact and other information on the European Forum of Official Gazettes as well as on the national legal gazettes in all European Union member states, potential and actual candidate countries, as well as European Free Trade Association member states. In addition to the paper directory, all this information is kept up-to-date online.

 

PDF and Free of charge paper version also available at http://bookshop.europa.eu/

 
Directory of legal gazettes in Europe — 2008
Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications
of the European Communities
2008 — 66 pp. — 13.2 × 21 cm
ISBN 978-92-78-40518-2

Legal Informatics and Management of Legislative Documents

Version française

www.ictparliament.org/resources/WP002_legislativeinformatics.pdf

Abstract
This report aims at providing an overview of the state of the art and of the prospects of the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the legislative domain, in particular concerning the management of legislative documents. After a brief introduction on legal informatics, we focus on legislative informatics and identify the challenges it faces nowadays, in the framework of the Internet and the (semantic) Web. We then describe the evolution of the ICT-based management of legislative documents and identify and evaluate the emergent approaches, focusing on those based on open standards. The report is completed by two appendixes: the first reviews initiatives pertaining to the standard-based management of legal sources, the second reviews initiatives pertaining to semantic resources for legislation.

See also:

Legislative XML Summer School 2008: "Drafting and managing standard-compliant legislative documents" at http://www.one-lex.eu/Activities/summerschool/legislativexml.html

Main topics

·         Markup languages and web technologies

·         Principles of legislative markup at European and extra European level

·         Applications and tools for managing legislative documents

·         Legislative norms in the Information Society

·         Legislative ontology and Legislative quality standards

·         Logical identification of legislative texts

·         Semantic structure of normative texts

·         Legislative standards in legislative process

·         Models of legal contents

·         E-legislation

Sponsoring Institution

·         CIRSFID, Faculty of law, University of Bologna, Bologna (www.cirsfid.unibo.it)

·         European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Florence (www.eui.eu)

·         Leibniz Centre for Law, University of Amsterdam (www.leibnizcenter.org)

·         ITTIG-CNR, Florence (www.ittig.cnr.it)

·         Italian Parliament (www.parlamento.it)

·         Global Centre for ICT in Parliament (www.ictparliament.org)

·         ONE-LEX Marie-Curie Chair (www.one-lex.eu)

Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement

Version française

Source: http://www.ictparliament.org/index.php?option=com_booklibrary&task=view&id=145&catid=48&Itemid=1102
Authors : Kathy Goldschmidt and Leslie Ochr
Publisher: Congressional Management Foundation
Publication date : June 2008

Description : To understand how citizens are communicating with their Members of Congress and what motivates them to do so, CMF partnered with Zogby International to conduct a nationwide survey of citizens to address their methods, reasons, and expectations with regard to their communications with Capitol Hill.

The resulting report, Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement, discusses the results of this research with over 10,000 citizens. It is the companion to the 2005 CMF report detailing congressional staff views of the increasing volumes of constituent mail.

Where to find the report: http://nposoapbox.s3.amazonaws.com/cmfweb/CWC_CitizenEngagement.pdf

Key findings from the report include:

• Almost half of adult Americans contacted Congress in the last five years to support, oppose or learn more about issues of interest to them.
• The majority of people surveyed do not believe Congress is interested in what they have to say, but they want Members' to keep them informed of their views and activities and of the policy issues being debated in Washington.
• Those who had contacted Congress tended to be more politically active in other ways than those who had not.
• The Internet has become the primary source for learning about and communicating with Congress.

A majority of people who contacted Congress had been asked to do so by a third party - primarily through interest groups - and they place a high value on the role of advocacy campaigns in our democracy.

European Parliament 2009 Election Google Gadget

Version française

Source: http://pagoesdigital.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/ep-election-google-gadget/ (October 9, 2008)

“Google is planning on launching an online election service to cover all aspects of the European Parliament elections in June. If it is anything like the Google service for the US elections then it should give viewers the chance to stay up to date on the latest campaign maps, news, videos and blog posts from the election trail…”
 

When will an equivalent to LexFeed on EUR-Lex, PreLex and OEIL be available to draw attention on a new official document for a given topic?

Version française

Source: Marlene's corner, post dated 30/09/2008
http://marlenescorner.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/09/22/le-marche-du-mardi-n-19.html 

See also http://europa-eu-audience.typepad.com/en/2008/10/information-and-communication-on-european-issues-communicating-europe-in-partnership.html and the Commission’s intent to promote subsidiarity for European information

Lexfeed (http://www.lexfeed.eu ) is a service that tracks legislative news in a half-dozen countries, by RSS feeds , or by e-mail. I do not feel we can combine several sources, but I have not yet explored that field far enough. Unfortunately, only the “COM documents” are available and not on a thematic base)

EUR-Lex (access to EU law) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/fr/index.htm  
In the FAQ of EUR-Lex (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/fr/tools/faq.htm ) it was announced a LexAlert originally scheduled for late 2007.
Prelex (followed legislative procedures) http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/apcnet.cfm?CL=fr  
OEIL (Legislative Observatory of European Parliament) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/  
OEIL offers a most valuable targeted notification service which can be focused on a dedicated theme by email but not yet by RSS
See pictures below

“Information and communication on European issues: communicating Europe in partnership”

Version française

Source : Observatoire Législatif  12/10/2008

Reference ACI/2007/2222  

Title Information and communication on European issues: communicating Europe in partnership

Dossier of the committee AFCO/6/54655

Subject(s) 3.30 information and communications in general
8.40.10 interinstitutional relations, democratic deficit, subsidiarity, comitology

Stage reached EP decision pending, 1st reading or one reading only