en.europa-eu-audience

OpenCongress version 3

Sources:

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2344-Announcing-OpenCongress-v3-0-Now-the-Easiest-Way-to-Organize-and-Contact-Congress-/

 

The Open Knowledge Foundation Wiki

A good resource: http://wiki.okfn.org/Main_Page

 

• Handbook – draft material for OKF Handbook
• How Tos – guides on how to do things at OKFN
• Community Roles – details of roles within the OKFN community - both assigned and voluntary
• Rules – Basic rules for processes at the OKF 

 

Older and offline

An extract from The Great Emancipator

Having reported on the recent document from Race Online 2012 entitled “Getting On” and noted in the response to a comment the fact that Fujitsu have done a report on the same subject area, I thought a review of the full hardcopy document from Fujitsu might be worthwhile. The Fujitsu report is entitled “Online government services and the offline older generation” and as well as a PDF download is available as a glossy 54-page A4 book.

Read the full text on the source at http://greatemancipator.com/2011/07/24/older-and-offline/

Making Mobile Gov: Design Phase

Source: http://blog.citizen.apps.gov/howtomobile/2011/07/20/making-mobile-gov-design-phase-2/

Extract

We are focusing on five areas.

1. Policies: Tell us about policy gaps or ideas to support building mobile programs.
2. Practices: What would jump-start your efforts? Templates? Standards? Examples? Can you share your templates, standards, business cases?
3. Partnerships: With whom and how can we work together?
4. Products: What are your ideas for apps, mobile sites, text programs, mash ups?
5. Promotions: What are some great ways to spread the word?
6. Do you have another category? You can add that, too.

 

 

Misplaced Trust? Exploring the Structure of the E-Government-Citizen Trust Relationship

Read more on

http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/04/25/jopart.muq006

Extract

The findings suggest that although e-government may help improve citizens’ confidence in the future performance of the agency experienced, it does not yet lead to greater satisfaction with an agency interaction nor does it correlate with greater generalized trust in the federal government overall. Explanations for these findings, including an assessment of the potential of e-government to help rebuild trust in government in the future, are offered.

A Principled Look at Open Data

Source: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2010/08/11/a-principled-look-at-open-data/

One year ago, but always valid

From Moses to James Madison to David Letterman, important ideas come in lists of ten, as do these principles for opening up government information.^[1] The list isn’t new: my colleague John Wonderlich wrote about “themes for legislative information publication” in February 2007, and eight open government data principles emerged from a conference organized by internet oracle Carl Malamud and technology publisher Tim O’Reilly in December 2007.^[2] However, we have refreshed the principles, expanded upon them, and added details.

 

British Library: Web Archiving Programme

See http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/digi/webarch/index.html

If you are in London tomorrow 18th at 12:00 noon 

NDIIPP Briefing: Web Archiving at the British Library
Date: Monday July 18, 2011
Time: 12:00 noon
Place: West Dining Room, 6th Floor, James Madison Building, Library of Congress
Helen Hockx-Yu, the Head of Web Archiving at the British Library , will cover the key processes of web archiving and provide an overview of the British Library's web archiving activities. She will also discuss how the current selective archiving practices change to meet the requirements of archiving the UK web at scale, enabled by forthcoming non-print Legal Deposit legislation.

Combined NDIIPP & NDSA Digital preservation partners meeting:
Make It Work: Improvisations on the stewardship of digital information
When: July 19-21, 2011
Where: Washington, DC 

 

UK : Information and Communications Technology in government - Public Accounts Committee

Sources :

http://greatemancipator.com/2011/07/15/measure-the-outcomes/

and http://greatemancipator.com/2010/12/30/avoiding-past-mistakes/

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubacc/1050/105003.htm

We are waiting for a similar report at the EU Parliament level

 

PEW: Six interesting facts about social networking

Source: http://www.bodyspacesociety.eu/2011/06/19/six-interesting-facts-about-social-networking/

A few interesting facts about Social Networking Services (mainly Facebook) taken from the recent report issued on June 16 2011 by PEW Internet and American Life. The report, whose title is Social networking sites and our lives is authored by Keith Hampton, Lauren Sessions Goulet, Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell. Food for thought.

 

VoteWatch.eu launches report “Voting in the 2009-2014 European Parliament: Who Holds the Power?”

Brussels, 13 July, 2011– VoteWatch.eu , the leading organisation monitoring the work of the European Parliament, today launched its fourth 6-monthly report on voting in the 2009-2014 European Parliament.
 
The report analyses the votes cast by MEPs and political groups in all recorded votes that took place from the first plenary session of the new parliament in July 2009 to the last plenary session in December 2010.  The report focuses on three main patterns: (1) How often each of the political groups have been on the winning side in votes; (2) Which national party delegations shape the European Political Groups.  We look at average voting patterns as well as patterns by policy area.  The full report can be downloaded from the www.votewatch.eu website.
 
Main findings of the research:
 
“As in EP6 (and all previous EPs), coalitions in votes form mainly
along ideology/party lines, rather than along national lines. However, domestic political, regional and economic interests and personal preferences can also influence how MEPs vote. The ALDE group is still on the winning side in votes in the Parliament more than any other political group – however, the EPP is catching up thanks to increasing internal voting discipline”, said Simon Hix, Chairman of VoteWatch.eu and Professor at London School of Economics.
 
More findings:
 
 

• The largest national party delegations in the EPP are generally positioned in the political centre of their group, but MEPs from the French UMP and Italian PdL are slightly to the left of their colleagues. The German CDU holds the balance of power in the group, while the Hungarian Fidesz is the party that votes against the group line most often.

 

• The ideological positions of the national party delegations in the S&D group range from the French PS on the left to the British Labour Party on the right. The German SPD holds the balance of power, while UK MEPs are most likely to vote against the group line.

 

• In the ALDE group, the French MD and Italian IdV are furthest to the left, while the German FDP is the furthest to the right. The balance of power within ALDE seems to be held by two rather centrally-positioned smaller parties, the Romanian PNL and Belgian VLD. The French MD is the party that is most likely to vote against the group line.

 

• Over the last six months, increasing left-right competition has become noticeable on civil liberties, justice and home affairs, economic and monetary affairs, industry, research and energy and international trade issues.

 

• One MEP – Adina Valean (ALDE, Romania) – has been on the winning side more than any other - 90.2% of the time. The reason for this is that ALDE are the pivotal political group in the European Parliament in terms of voting behaviour, and Ms Valean is the pivotal MEP in this group.However, the situation varies greatly from one policy area to another, due to different coalition formation patterns.

 
 
 
VoteWatch.eu issues reports on political behaviour in the European Parliament every 6 months, and the work of individual MEPs and their political and national groups can be monitored continuously via the www.votewatch.eu website.