en.europa-eu-audience

OECD e-Gov Studies, Belgium peer review available

Version française

Sources: http://www.epractice.eu/document/5236

The report ‘OECD e-Government Studies - Belgium’ has been made available online on the website of Belgium’s Federal Department for ICT (FEDICT) at http://www.fedict.belgium.be

This report is one in a series of country reviews undertaken by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to analyse the successes and challenges of eGovernment in a national context, and to make proposals for action that can help countries improve their eGovernment efforts. 

By placing eGovernment in the context of national public management reform and good governance initiatives, this review is aimed at helping countries identify how eGovernment can best support overall government objectives and performance. 

The report, which was financed by the Belgian governments, was completed in January 2008. It was drafted with the participation of peer reviewers from the governments of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Quebec (Canada). These eGovernment practitioners played a valuable role by participating in interviews and contributing to the drafting of the report. 

Further information:

·         OECD e-Government Studies – Belgium – Full report ( 252 pages )

·         the e-Gov resource center in Australia, Victoria at http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/

 

European Court of Justice Statistics for 2008

Version française

Source: http://eulaw.typepad.com/eulawblog/2009/02/court-statistics-for-2008.html

The Courts have made public some statistics for 2008 and made a press release. As always, there some good news and some bad news.

For the Court of Justice, there is a decline in the number of preliminary references made but a general increase in the number of cases brought before it (592 cases in 2008 as compared with 580 in 2007).

The Court of Justice has got cracking with cases too:

"As regards the duration of proceedings in 2008, there was a considerable improvement. Thus, for preliminary rulings, the duration of proceedings was on average 16.8 months, that is 3 months less than in 2006. A comparative analysis shows that the average duration of preliminary ruling proceedings has reached its lowest level for 20 years. As regards direct actions and appeals, the average duration was 16.9 months and 18.4 months respectively (18.2 and 17.8 months respectively in 2007)."

The Court of Justice dealt with three urgent preliminary rulings, while the urgent procedure was requested in three other cases but not granted.

The number of new cases brought before the Court of First Instance has increased also: 629 cases were brought in 2008, compared with 522 in 2007 and 432 in 2006.

The Court of First Instance has also pressed on with a lot of cases:

"The Court of First Instance dealt with 605 cases during 2008, which represents a 52% increase compared with 2007, whilst the number of hearings held in 2008 doubled: 341 compared with 172 in 2007. The average duration of proceedings decreased: 24.5 months compared with 27.7 in 2007."

For the 2007 statistics, see our post here.

eParticipation, European eParticipation Day 2009

Version française

Source : http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/eparticipation/2009/index_en.htm

The development and wide use of powerful new ICT applications are transforming the political landscape. These new tools allow citizens to access more information and interact, debate and participate in public life in way not seen before. They are beginning to give ordinary people a greater voice.

The European eParticipation Day will provide the opportunity for a high level debate on current state of play and future directions. It will address the political challenges and the solutions that ICT can provide. The US election campaigns and the forthcoming European elections will be among the discussion points. The use of ICT to help legislators and decision-makers in their work and in particular to better communicate with their constituency and understand their views will be discussed. The event will also look at the benefits of ICT for citizens by giving them more of a say in decision-making as well as how ICT is helping to reconnect Europeans, in particular young Europeans, with politics.

In parallel, there will be an exhibition of the eParticipation projects that have been funded under programmes run by DG Information Society and Media.

This event is being organised by the European Commission.
Location of the event: Charlemagne Building, 170 Rue de la Loi (Wetstraat), Brussels
Date of the event: 4 March 2009

Interpretation will be available in English, French and German

Draft programme at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/eparticipation/2009/conference/index_en.htm

Multilingual resources, parallel texts and translation

Version française

Translation and drafting aids in the European Union languages

http://ec.europa.eu/translation/index_en.htm

Terminology at the following addresses

Bio-Society Glossary Codecision Glossary Data Protection Glossary EMIRE: European Employment and Industrial Relations Glossary Enlargement (Glossary) Environmental Glossary European Judicial Network in Civil and Commercial Matters Glossary European Maritime Safety Glossary European Convention Glossary External Trade Glossary Glossaries (thematic) Glossary : Definitions of 200 European Union concepts - SCADPlus Information Society Glossary Justice and Home Affairs: glossary Multilingual thesaurus covering the fields in which the EU is active - EUROVOC Network and Information Security Glossary PHARE/Enlargement Glossary Public Procurement Common Vocabulary Regional Development Glossary Social Protection & Social Inclusion (Glossary)

 

Paralell texts

The Official Journal is published in all the official languages. It’s is also the case of the Case law of the Court of Justice and many other legal documents (see EUR-Lex ) .

That means it could be possible to align the structures of these texts and to produce a huge translation memory ( of carefully translated texts).

Read also

at http://europa-eu-audience.typepad.com/en/7_multilingualism/ the other posts about Multilingualism of this blog

Generations Online in 2009

Version française

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published a new report titled Generations Online in 2009 which breaks down online activities by generation. After defining the scope of the generations, the study goes on to summarize that Teens and Generation Y are the most likely to utilize the Web for entertainment purposes while older generations use the Internet primarily for conducting information searches, email, and online shopping. However there are some universal activities that span the generation gaps such as downloading videos, online banking, travel reservations, and job searching. The report has an excellent chart which breaks down each activity type by generation.

Source: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/generations-online-in-2009/

PEW reports at http://www.pewinternet.org/reports.asp

PEW reports on Internet technology at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/c/3/topics.asp

 

Source: PEW

Six ways to use ticTOCs, the free journal tables of contents service

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Source: http://tictocsnews.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/six-ways-to-use-tictocs-the-free-journal-tables-of-contents-service/ , 12-02-2009

Such a TicTOCs service could be also useful to « push » the Table of Contents of each issue of the Official Journal  on EUR-Lex ( http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm ) and also the TOC of the various publications on EU Bookshop. Unfortunately a RSS notifying service is not yet offered in these two important websites.

See also “Crosswalking EUR-Lex: a proposal for a metadata mapping to improve access to EU documents” at

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/tools/OA7807319ENC.pdf

USA: Government Transparency Initiatives Rebooted. What about EU?

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"Providing better access to government information has been the aim of many initiatives over the years with some considerable measure of success..."Further information on Government Transparency Initiatives Rebooted » Details updated: 16 February 2009, by Wayne Hanson.

PS: When new rebooted initiatives will be available at EU level ? Since 2001 and the public registers a few months later,  nothing was improved. Have a look at  The Institutions’ Registers

Ref: REGULATION (EC) No 1049/2001 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents

See also the previous posts published on this blog at

http://europa-eu-audience.typepad.com/en/1_registersregistres/

Ergonomy of public websites and other official references (in France)

Version française( source )

There is a sharp increase in the Internet relationship between users and administration, both in terms of volume of contents but also for the supply of online services. In this context, it is essential to maintain the coherence of the landscape of public websites. This consistency requires, inter alia, the adoption of common principles in the design of sites. There is continuity of navigation on the public sites and the users' confidence in them: accessibility, interoperability, security and ergonomy.

See

Reference documents in France at  http://www.references.modernisation.gouv.fr/  or the diffrent related pages

Accessibilité http://www.references.modernisation.gouv.fr/rgaa-accessibilite

Interopérabilité : http://www.references.modernisation.gouv.fr/volet-technique

Sécurité: http://www.references.modernisation.gouv.fr/rgs-securite

Ergonomie: http://www.references.modernisation.gouv.fr/charte-ergonomique

Ergonomie, autoévaluation : http://www.references.modernisation.gouv.fr/guide-dauto-evaluation

Statewatch: EU openness, transparency and democracy

Version française

Source: http://grahnlaw.blogspot.com/2008/10/statewatch-eu-openness-transparency-and.html (27-10-2008 )

 

Even before true democratic reform of the European Union, and more or less regardless of the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Council could improve openness, transparency and democracy by providing impetus for a number of limited, but important reforms.

Professor Steve Peers has written a number of proposals for Statewatch, setting out possible improvements, which primarily require political will. The concrete proposals are given in two draft documents:

Declaration of the European Council on enhancing the openness, transparency and democracy of the activities of the European Union (Annex I)

Inter-Institutional Agreement On enhancing public access to documents and citizens’ participation in decision-making as regards the co-decision procedure (Annex II)

Together with the introductory explanations, they form the ‘Statewatch analysis: Proposals for greater openness, transparency and democracy in the EU’, by Professor Steve Peers, University of Essex (October 2008).

This important document is available at:

http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/proposals-for-greater-openness-peers-08.pdf

Before a democratic European Union is established, a number of improvements are possible, if the political will is there. Even the Lisbon Treaty might become less odious for some EU citizens, if these reform steps were taken.

Politicians 2.0 ?

Version française (source)

You must read ( in french) this analysis based on the US and french cases, Jusqu’où peut aller la Politique 2.0 ?

At http://www.oezratty.net/wordpress/2009/jusquo-peut-aller-la-politique-20/

 

"Politics will become truly participative or " 2.0 " when the posture in the world of real political will change. 
Not only when politicians or their teams adopt the Internet tools of Web 2.0 to increase power to disseminate, to broadcast their messages! "