The Participation Company
Possibly not of global relevance (yet), but since it is my home town I thought I’d give it a quick shout-out: Earlier today, Offenes Köln (Open Cologne) was officially announced. It’s a grassroots project by Marian Steinbach in Cologne, Germany that aims to make information, documents and data related to local government available (and accessible) to [...]
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In light of the recent call for input regarding public participation best practices, it’s always interesting to compare how that question is being answered abroad. Here’s a 2010 document by Planning Aid England, which is part of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), the UK’s “leading planning body for spatial, sustainable, integrative and inclusive planning”: Good [...]
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Via Alex Moll on Twitter, I just came across OpenGov.gr, the website for the Greek Open Government Initiative. From the English language version: Opengov.gr has been designed to serve the principles of transparency, deliberation, collaboration and accountability and includes three initiatives: Οpen calls for the recruitment of public administration officials. Top level and mid-level openings [...]
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Next week, e-participation folks will gather in Krems, Austria for this year’s Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government (CeDEM11). The conference is hosted by Danube University Krems’s Center for E-Government and “brings together e-democracy, e-participation, e-voting and open government specialists working in academia, politics, government and businesses”. A number of sessions look quite interesting, for example: [...]
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Meine-Demokratie.de (German for my democracy) is a new directory of participation opportunities in Germany that launched a few days ago. The much-anticipated project describes itself as a central information hub for opportunities for political participation and allows users to find information about nearby projects and ways to participate. From the about page (translation mine): meine-demokratie.de [...]
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The European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP), a Bremen, Germany-based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote better decision-making through public participation, just shared a new paper titled Making citizens’ voices heard — and listened to. Thoughts on public participation in Europe (PDF). I found this definition of public participation useful (page 3/4): Public participation, thus, [...]
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Update 12/21: It appears that OpenEtherpad’s .com domain has expired. Please use the .org domain instead to RSVP for this event: http://openetherpad.org/opengovcgn When it comes to e-participation, Europe really has it going on. It seems hardly a week goes by that doesn’t see some kind of workshop or conference or other activity in that area. [...]
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Late last week, a new consultation was announced in Europe: Digital Agenda: Commission launches consultation on net neutrality A consultation on key questions arising from the issue of net neutrality has been launched by the European Commission today. It covers such issues as whether internet providers should be allowed to adopt certain traffic management practices, prioritising [...]
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Gütersloh, Germany-based Bertelsmann Stiftung, one of Germany’s largest foundations, just launched vitalizing-democracy.org, the theme site for their 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize. From the welcome post: Welcome to our platform! On 23 June 2010, the Bertelsmann Stiftung launched this website in order to search for prize-worthy projects for the Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011. With the forthcoming prize in [...]
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In Europe, the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference — titled Teaming up for the eUnion — is happening in Malmö, Sweden today and tomorrow. At a press conference this morning, the long-awaited Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment (212 KB) was presented to the public. The declaration, which is regarded as “our joint policy priorities until 2015,” addresses a number [...]
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