Citizen Participation in the Cloud
Chairs: Ismael Peña-López

Citizen participation in the Cloud: risk of storm
Albert Batlle, Open University of Catalonia.

The situation we are in is a context of crisis of political legitimacy. This means much less political participation in general and, more specifically, protest voting, young people voting less, decreasing levels of affiliation to parties or other civic organizations, etc.

On the other hand, we see the explosion of the Information Society and of the Web 2.0, “participative” by definition. ICTs are adopted by political organizations in the fields of eGovernment — to provide public services for the citizen — and eDemocracy — to enhance and foster participation.

Two different perspectives in the crossroads between political disaffection and the Information Society:

• Cyberoptimism: ICTs will lead to a mobilization effect. More people will participate because participation costs are lower, there is much more information than before, etc.
• Cyberpessimism: ICTs will lead to new elites because of the digital divide. The existing differences between the ones that participated and the ones that didn’t are broadened.
• Realists: we need more empirical studies (and to avoid technological determinism).

We have new technologies for citizen participation but, what tools for what uses? A research for the Barcelona county council.

After a survey within the Barcelona municipalities, we can state:

• There are different participation activities depending on whether the communication is horizontal or vertical.
• There are topics more prone to intensively use ICTs: urban planning, youngsters, education and equality, elder people, sustainability.
• Not organized citizens, resources, transversal coordination are variables that are usually identified as barriers not overcome; while training, innovation, agenda, associations or political agreement are usually identified as goals reached through ICT-enhanced participation.

The study then goes on to analyze tools and applications and how they fit in the participation process:

• Directionality, qualitative: unidirectional, bidirectional, hybrid
• Directionality, quantitative: one-to-one, one-to-many, many to many.
• Competences: basic, advanced, expert.
• Applications: type of tool, cost, hosting, “mashability”.

Participation moments:

• Mobilization: information about the participation process and the goals to be achieved.
• Development: putting into practice the participation project.
• Closing: stating the decision being made.
• Follow up: monitoring and assessment of the decision reached.

A first analysis of 19 international cases, we see that most tools have a one-to-many directionality, are bidirectional, and are mainly used in the mobilization moment. User registration and the data they have to provide is an important issue and must be decided in advance, as happens with deciding the goals and functioning of the process, which includes defining and identifying the role of the online facilitator. Free software is usually the option chosen, and accessibility (in a broad sense) is normally taken into account.

We find two different models. Even if models are not “pure”, we can see opposite approaches: Initiatives aimed at community building, characterized by being open, relational, fostering engagement, using free tools and aiming at a networked participation, with a facilitator that engages in a bidirectional conversation. And policy oriented initiatives, characterized by being more formal (or formalized), focussing at decision-taking and representation, using own platforms and more “traditional” participation means, with a facilitator that guides and information that flows asymmetrically and unidirectionally.

Cloud computing is both an opportunity and a challenge. On the one hand, there are legal hazards that need being solved, but that also disclose some interesting spaces. Indeed, the new a-institutional logic is disruptive but also provides new ways of learning, as the public and private spheres intersect one to each other and get confused (want it or not) one with each other. It is a response to the de-legitimation of political institutions, but it is also a reassurance that citizens do care about public affairs: the crisis is in the institutions, not in participation itself.

Bernard Woolley: “Well, yes, Sir…I mean, it [open government] is the Minister’s policy after all.”
Sir Arnold: “My dear boy, it is a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you can have government.”

(from Yes Minister, 1980)

Evgeny Morozov, Georgetown University’s E. A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Decisions made at the technological level in Western economies/businesses will affect how cyberactivism takes place… all over the world. What Google, Twitter or Facebook decides impacts citizen action everywhere.

There is much effort on building social capital online, uploading content, gathering people in a group, and this effort relies on a potential arbitrary decision by the owner of the online platform, who serves who knows whose will. Groups in social networking sites disappear every day without previous notice and most times without an explicit and clear reason for it.

But regulating these corporations is often seen as a barrier to democratize more quickly less democratic countries. You don’t want to “spoil” a Web 2.0 application if it is seldom used to raise protests against non-democratic regimes, or used on human emergencies, etc.

But outside of Western countries, most applications are owned and run by local companies that have less freedom of choice than in other places of the World. If the Chinese or Russian or Iranian governments ask for user personal data to these companies, they have little chances not to deliver them. This makes datamining by governments very easy and very effective to locate and identify dissidents.

Besides direct extortion to companies, governments can directly monitor and put up several kinds of citizen surveillance, including entering an individual’s computer because the government infiltrated the computer with a trojan or any other kind of spy-software. Of all, the major problem is not even being aware of that manipulation. Same applies to web servers, of course.

On the legal side, governments or several lobbies have the power to manipulate content online, by crowding out conversations. If this is a trivial debate, then the influence of the strong part has no major impact. But if that is a pre-election debate, it can lead to indirect tampering and not-really-legitimate democratic participation.

And doing all that is not very difficult: custom police can (actually do) google people and see what comes up in the search results, scan their Facebook profiles, see who a specific person is related to and, according to that, decide to decline a visa request.

Besides governments, authors that we would not consider very “democratic” (e.g. fascist movements) are doing impressive things online in social networking sites, mashups, etc. So, Web 2.0 and cloud computing tools are double-edged swords and both serve noble and evil purposes and goals, like e.g. mapping where ethnics minorities are mashing up rich public data with map applications either to avoid or to attack them.

There is a dynamic that the Internet brings and that might makes us stop and think whether we like it or not: is a shift towards full openness a good thing? is a shift towards direct democracy a good thing too?

Discussion

Ana Sofía Cardenal: can you provide more information about the survey you talked about? Batlle: the survey was made in 112 cities (more than 10,000h less Barcelona). 81% answered the survey explaining use of ICT in participation initiatives.

Ana Sofía Cardenal: why nationalist movements are more present online than liberal ones? Morozov: the short answer is that hate travels more faster than hope online. But it might be more about phobia rather than nationalism. On the other hand, the Internet has no borders and allows for birds of the same flock to cluster around online spaces rather than having to stick to their artificial national myths.

Ismael Peña-López: data havens yes or no? protection or impunity? Morozov: One the one hand, governments should not support law circumvention tools (like TOR), basically because they are massively used by criminals, or by people whose purpose is not very clear and its justification varies depends on your approach. Regarding Wikileaks, the problem is that once a hot file is out, it is difficult to block, and the more you try to block it, the more it is disseminated (the Streisand effect). Something should be done, yes, but it is not clear what.

Ronald Leenes: It is also true that governments also use tools that activists use for security reasons, so they should at least allow for these tools to develop and even be funded. Morozov: right, but you cannot be pushing for the rule of law and with the other hand allowing the proliferation of tools that are clearly used to break the rule of law. Leenes: this apply to many technologies!

Jordi Vilanova: We’re talking about social networking sites as being run by corporations, but it is likely that in the future we find SNS being ruled by foundations or non-governmental organizations. So, there still is some room for Web 2.0 applications being “safely” used by individuals. A second comment is that we are looking at non-democratic regimes but, in the meanwhile, so-called liberal democracies are trimming citizen rights with the excuse of security and so. So we should be more concerned about these hypocrite countries. Morozov: it is true that foundations can run their own SNS, but the thing is that most times is not about the tool, but about audience and critical mass, and this audience is in private corporations’ platforms, and this will be difficult to change. And regarding transparency, transparency has to come with footnotes to avoid misleads.

See also

• Participación y activismo en la nube, by Karma Peiró.
• Lessig (2009) Against transparency.

From Electronic Administration to Cloud Administration
Chairs: Agustí Cerrillo

Open Government in the Basque Government
Nagore de los Ríos, Director of Open Government and Internet Communication, Basque government.

Open data as transparency in the purest state. Examples:

• Elpreciodelagasolina.com, a website that presents in alternative ways, easy to understand, oil prices in Spanish oil stations.
• lospresus.de about public budgets.

Irekia is the open government project of the Basque Government to provide public data in a very accessible way, easy to reuse. Open Cloud Government is more a philosophy than a technology, it is another way to manage public affairs, to decide taking into account the citizens’ opinion. Irekia is not a services website, it is not an e-Administration website. Irekia is a website to listen to the citizen, to offer immediate information in search for debate and reflection.

Data are linked from the original source.

Transparency, participation, collaboration.

What does Irekia offer the citizen:

• Tools for collaborative work.
• Streaming of events.
• Informations in real time.
• Daily agenda
• Audiovisual and multimedia material.
• Tools to comment and share information.

This kind of initiatives are based on leadership and government commitment. Otherwise, they are neither possible nor sustainable. Besides political support and commitment, open government also requires a radical organizational change and, over all, a change in attitudes. It is in the daily tasks that open government succeeds or fails.

What does Irekia offer the members of the public administration:

• On demand audiovisual material.
• Internal agenda per department.
• Possibility to diffuse events.
• Active Internet monitoring (escucha activa, what is being said about you on the Net).
• Consultancy 2.0.
• Comment moderation.
• Complete, tag and disseminate on the Web information published by the departments.

One of the goals of open government is not to have a lot of traffic, or a lot of sympathisers of the website, but to be a hub and distribute interests to their goals. e.g. what open government pretends is not creating online communities of patients, but that they are able to do it by themselves.

One of the problems, notwithstanding, of “all being open” is that anyone can create their own participation platform (government and citizens) and it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who’s “legitimate” to promote a certain activity; it is also becoming increasingly difficult to find out where to participate, or what for; there’s a big replication of projects that reinvent the wheel on and on, etc.

Open Electronic Administration in Catalonia
Miquel Estapé, Assistant Manager of Catalonia’s Open Administration Consortium.

Open Administration Consortium: built upon the principles of collaboration, ICTs and change. Why collaboration?

• Interoperability: not about technology, but about the citizen and the interaction between public administrations.

• Reutilization: Avoid reinventing the wheel.
• Security. Digital identity, electronic signature, long-lasting validation.

Cloud computing is not a new technology, but a new way to provide services. But, in the public service, this means some struggles:

• 82% of cities and towns are below 5,000 inhabitants which means they have no resources for an IT director. Same happens with organizational management.
• Actually, in general city councils have increasing obligations and decreasing revenues/resources.
• The management of (electronic) services is complex: more services, specific regulation, security, 24×7 availability, scalability, etc.
• Reluctance to change.

The Open Administration Consortium works with district and province councils — as they are the more knowledgeable on the reality of city councils — and Localret, a consortium of municipalities to develop ICT strategies. The Open Administration Consortium provides, thus, different services to the different municipalities according to their needs, nature and resources. Among others, main services include public procurement, online invoicing, inter-administrative procedures, citizen documents, etc.

Reluctances are the usual about privacy, data security, liability of data management, fear of change, fear of cyberwar, etc.

I look forward a municipality that will have no physical space, no web servers, no… but a virtual desktop where all data, applications and services will be hosted. This will be especially useful for the secretary of several tiny towns (small towns usually share a single public officer) that will be able to manage three or four of them from just a virtual desktop and teleworking from home.

See also

• “La administración abierta estará en la nube o no estará”, by Karma Peiró.
• “De la administración electrónica a la administración en la nube”. Congreso IDP2010, by Marc Garriga.
• Cyberwar: War in the fifth domain, at The Economist.

The State of Freedom on the Net
Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Freedom House

Freedom on the Net (FOTN) report analyses how are rights respected on the Internet, especially right of communications, privacy, etc. Questions asked:

• Internet and new media dominating flow of news and information
• What techniques do governments use to control and censor online content
• What are the main threats
• What are the positive trends

The methodology examines the level of internet and ICT freedom through a set of 19 questions and 90 subquestions, organized into three baskets:
* Obstacles to Access—including governmental efforts to block specific applications or technologies; infrastructural and economic barriers to access; and legal and ownership control over internet and mobile phone access providers.
* Limits on Content—including filtering and blocking of websites; other forms of censorship and self-censorship; manipulation of content; the diversity of online news media; and usage of digital media for social and political activism.
* Violations of User Rights—including legal protections and restrictions on online activity; surveillance and other privacy violations; and repercussions for online activity, such as prosecution, imprisonment, physical attacks, and other forms of harassment.

Negative trends

11 of the 15 countries censored content; 7 of the 15 countries blocked web 2.0 applications; there are also restrictions on infrastructures (speed restriction or broadband restriction, total access restriction, etc.)

In low-income countries, there are infrastructure and economic constrains, but, in general, economic issues are barriers that are overcome in low-income countries when a benefit can be made from ICTs.

Censorship is not always related to political or social content. We find significant lack of transparency in censorship procedures, including in some democracies. There is a wide range of techniques for blocking and/or removing content.

A nice example in images:

• Search for ‘tiananmen square’ in Google
• Search for ‘tiananmen square’ in Baidu

Censorship is being outsourced in some countries, the government hiring companies to run censorship or surveillance procedures themselves.

In many cases, it is ‘offline’ regulation, or general regulation the one that has an impact in online activity, like general media legislation against online activities, etc. This is leadind, in some cases, to “libel tourism”, where people have they web servers e.g. in the UK to put legal responsibility for posting or hosting content in a more democratic jurisdiction.

Of course, we find too extra-elgal repercussions, with detentions, intimidation, torture and extra-legal harassment and violence in general against “dissidents”. This also includes DDoS attacks, hacking, etc.

Positive trends

In general, there is more Internet freedom than press freedom, though the gap might be narrowing.

“Sneakernets” to avoid being monitored or scanned when being an activist on the Internet. Bloggers, though sometimes pushed-back because of threats, are increasingly creative in their usage of the Internet to have their voices heard.

Future trends:

• more access to the Internet because of the mobile web and smartphones;
• globalization and spread of Internet will not necessarily lead to greater freedom;
• web 2.0 leading to Authoritarianism 2.0
• foresight and creativity needed from more open countries to establish policies to protect free expression on new tecnologies.

Discussion

Albert Batlle: how is it that the UK scores worse in Freedom on the Net than Freedom of the Press. A: It might be because of “libel tourism”. Maybe because of that, maybe because of other issues, the reality is that it is easier in the UK to close a website than a newspaper, etc. All in all, it all highlights that though related, these are freedoms that can be taken independently.

Jordi Vilanova: what about the US and other western countries? A: Summing up, surveillance and even censorship are much more paramount that what would look like at first sight.

Mònica Vilasau: how do we tell censorship from e.g. fighting against copyright violation? A: It is always difficult to tell. It is nevertheless true that any kind of legal activity against online activity (legitimate or not) has chilling effects in the whole ecosystem.

Ismael Peña-López: the Wikileaks affair seems to have found a solution in a data haven in Iceland. Are data havens the solution to censorship? Will data havens allow people to act illegally under the flag of freedom? A: The problem with data havens, as with other barrier circumvention tools like TOR, is that they can be used both in good and evil ways. Nevertheless, it seems like, as now, there are more good uses than illegal ones, and way more need to enable transparency and to help democracy advocates rather than focus on prosecuting some illegal activities.

See also

• La sombra de la nube: ¿libertades en la Red?, by Karma Peiró

The second session was led by Ivan Serrano and myself, and presenting some preliminary results of a small research project we are both taking part in, along with other members of the GADE research group.

The goal of the session was to make a brief introduction to some web 2.0 tools and applications, and see how they had been put into practice in some localities. Our approach was neither to remain in the theoretical level nor to focus on the tool, but, on the contrary, to see what tools fit better in what participation purposes and goals.

Tools and applications

So, the first distinction I made was to tell tools (a way to do things, e.g. a blog) from applications (the different incarnations of tools, e.g. WordPress, Blogger, Typepad…). This distinction is relevant because we might find better applications for a specific use/tool than the most popular ones. Thus why focussing on the concept, not the service.

As we already explained in A catalogue and a taxonomy of online participation tools, we classified tools according to the following characteristics:

• Directionality, qualitative: unidirectional, bidirectional, hybrid
• Directionality, quantitative: one-to-one, one-to-many, many to many.
• Competences: basic, advanced, expert.
• Platform: phone, Internet, both.

Though I believe the Platform will be deprecated because of the increasing pervasiveness of smartphones, that render it quite irrelevant.

Concerning applications, the main classification types are:

• Kind of tool.
• Cost: free, freemium, payment.
• Hosting: installation, online service, both.
• Mashable: open API or similar.

The latter a last-minute addition and that might well explain part of the success of the most popular tools, as mashability enables ubiquity of the tool, thus making possible to bridge all the tools one is using.

Slides 6 & 7 show a simplified matrix where the above mentioned categories are crossed:

Cases

Ivan went on with the applied cases, among others the following:

• Ask Bristol, including
• Bristolstreets and
• Epetitions.
• Harringay Online.
• SYP (Scottish Youth Parliament).
• Linköping’s A clean city
• Cidade Democrática.
• Fix My Street

He ended up with some preliminary conclusions that came after the analysis of the preceding (and many other) participation initiatives. They seemed to be gathered in two groups and with different aims and characteristics:

• Initiatives aimed at community building, characterized by being open, relational, fostering engagement, using free tools and aiming at a networked participation.
• Policy oriented initiatives, characterized by being more formal (or formalized), focussing at decision-taking and representation, using own platforms and more “traditional” participation means.

Though all what we presented in this session is still in a draft stage, we believe that some interesting insights come from the e-participation experiences on the purposes-tools relationship. All in all, hi-engagement approaches demand more participatory and horizontal tools, and more top-down or traditional ones also demand traditional 1.0 tools. The error being, of course, first choosing the coolest 2.0 tool and then forcing the institution or the process to (against nature) adapt to the tool.

I had the luck to attend the fourth and last session of the Workshop on youth participation in youth policies — participated by local administration officers to explore new ways to engage the youth in public affairs —, this one focused on the role of ICTs in youth participation.

The session had three parts: a first one consisting in a brainstorm of challenges and opportunities, a second one on tools an case analysis, and a third one on proposals, unreported because it looked very much like the first part, but rephrased.

The first part, excellently facilitated by Manel Ruiz i Victor Garcia from INDIC, was based on Edward de Bono‘s Six Thinking Hats, where you perform a brainstorm of ideas under a specific approach (“wearing a hat”) and repeat it for all different approaches (we actually only did it for four “hats”). These approaches or colour hats are:

• White: objective data, raw information. No feelings, no interpretation.
• Yellow: optimism, positive thinking.
• Black: what can go wrong. Caution, critical assessment.
• Red: emotions, feelings, intuitions.
• Green: possibilities, possible alternatives, creativeness.
• Blue: analysis, procedures, control.

These are the ideas, almost raw, unsorted, that came out of this session:

White: objective data.

• How many people have access to ICTs.
• How many public access points and usage level.
• How many people have a computer at home.
• How many hours connected.
• Cost of access to ICT.
• Have a mobile phone? What age do people begin to have a mobile phone?
• Can connect to the Internet through mobile phone?
• Main tools used and by age, gender, origin, income, education, etc.
• Main uses: get information, to communicate amongst themselves…
• Where people connect to the Internet and whether they do it alone or accompanied by others.
• At what time: what hour, what day(s).
• What is the legal framework in the use of these technologies, privacy, security, etc.
• Possibilities (features) of a specific tool.
• Digital competences: what is the level of digital competences of the user, and the level required by each tool.
• Value given to each tool by the user.
• Number and variety of tools, providers, costs of acquisition and/or customization, etc.
• Entry barriers: ease to set up an account, time cost of access, etc.
• ICT usage at schools.
• Political framework: prone to foster ICTs and online participation or not.

Yellow: positive aspects.

• Engage more people.
• Higher outreach.
• Positive regional spillovers, work in different geographic ranges.
• Immediacy on response.
• Break the institutional barrier.
• Continuous participation.
• Anytime participation and bottom-up initiated.
• Get more information about the citizen though data mining from participation tools.
• Plural participation: more people from more strata.
• Tools that highly motivate the youth, approach youth channels and ways, “speak in their language”.
• Information through participation.
• Generate a multicultural platform, a virtual community of youngsters.
• Alternative channels, complementary to other channels.
• Stable channel of communication.
• Returns of scale.
• Easy to update information, cost-effective error correction
• Generate a culture of participation, of engagement, which can lead to a culture of accountability and transparency.
• Enables networking.

Black: what can go wrong.

• Lack of knowledge of how tools work, or even that they exist.
• Difficult to catch-up with changes.
• Information overload, participation proposals overload.
• Time consuming.
• Crowding out effect.
• Loss of non-verbal language.
• Who owns personal data? Who is monitoring the conversations?
• Security and privacy hazards. Lack of awareness on a wrong use of ICTs.
• Banal participation.
• Participation rich in debate but leads to no conclusion or decision.
• Poor netiquette, impunity, cyberbulling.
• Digital divide: only those who have access and can use the tools can participate. And as access and usage depends on socio-economic status, participation is biased.
• Serendipitous participation: face-to-face participation makes it easier to know other initiatives or people by chance (e.g. when visiting the civic centre).
• Adjust expectations of the tool to what can actually be achieved with it.
• Mediated communication, not direct.
• That people that “should not participate” actually participate (non-identified people, not relevant to your proposal, etc).

Red: feelings.

• Overwhelmed.
• Many possibilities.
• Lack of self-confidence.
• Risk of hypes.
• Have to be there.
• Fosters egocentrism.
• Lack of commitment.
• Challenge.
• Enables experimentation.
• Difficult to trust.
• Uncertainty.
• Push own limits.

e-Administration and Transparency: the diffusion of public information on the Internet
Enrico Carloni

Public administration as a glass house, where people can look through it and peek on the inside. In Italy, public transparency is a constitutional value, though it is not referred in this terms but using: impartiality, responsibility, democratic principles, politic responsibility or accountability. All these principles require transparency and that all citizens are knowledgeable of what the government is doing.

But, traditionally, in Italy, the de facto rule was secrecy. It is in 1990 that transparency is added in a reform of the Law that regulated the public administration. The right to transparency is strengthened in 2005 in the Italian Law for Digital Administration. In 2009, the ‘Brunetta’ Law regulates the publication of information on the Internet, including transparency as publicity online, instead of right of access to information, which was what was stated in 1990. Right of access vs. publicity online are quite different rights.

Right of access (law of 1990) required a “motivated” request, disclose direct interest, etc. In the end, this requisites implied an “access without transparency”, and the right of access was more of a monitoring device rather than a principle in itself.

In 2005, the law for Digital Administration (or Codice dell’amministrazione digitale) requires that transparency is guaranteed as a principle in itself, forcing a shift from right of access to publicity.

The new law uses an old device — open data and transparency of public information — that had been set up for efficiency purposes, and adds a new use for that old device: public information for transparency. This will, with time, be applied in the Operazione Trasparenza.

Advantages of the new model

• Absence of mediation, any capable citizen can individually access all the information (Orsi Battaglini).
• Increase and ease of availability, abandonment of the request-and-wait-for-a-response approach (Herz, 2009).
• Possibility of new products, creation of new knowledge, really in line of transparency 2.0.

Risks of the new model

• It is a system too weak in front of digital divides and knowledge divides in general.
• Privacy hazards, from the glass house to the glass official.
• Messy rooms: against maximum transparency, maximum opacity: the area of public information is fully open, but very limited.
• Information overload
• Biases of accountability, where transparency is used instrumentally: massive information on non-significant information, propaganda, etc.

Discussion

Blanca Torrubia: What are the limits of public information publicity? Who sets the rules of publicity? Who decides what is to become public information? A: The Law is very clear about that.

Ana Delgado: What happens if the information that is made available is wrong and this damages the citizen’s interests? A: This situation follows the usual legal paths of damages to third parties.

Ignasi Beltran: Is there a system to penalize misbehaviours? A: A way to penalize misbehaviours, by law, is firstly to penalize the responsible of that information. Another one is to assume the responsibilities that come from a lack of information (e.g. a citizen cannot be fined if they did not something that was not properly published). Citizens can also denounce misbehaviours and ask them to be corrected.

Ismael Peña-López: What does publicity exactly mean: open data or information? First hand raw data, or elaborated second hand information? A: Italy is in its transition from open information to open data. Traditionally, it was about opening documents, as the document was both content and container. The logic of the document and the logic of the data went together. And the inertia is still to high, so the logic of date is superseded by the logic of the document. As some new laws are designed with the logic of data, there are some pressures to push ahead the transition from document to data.

David Martínez: Has there been a constitutional evolution about the concept of transparency? Has it been more formally recognized as a right in itself? How do we monitor impartiality in public transparency? A: There has not been a change in the Constitution or the like, but there have been court rulings that have strengthened the new nature of the concept of transparency. But transparency still is not a principle in itself, but an enabler or an instrument to reach other principles (e.g. transparency for accountability).

Mònica Vilasau: How to monitor privacy? And how to cope with the trade-off between privacy and access? A: Access usually prevails on privacy. But the citizen can perform any “treatment” on their data. Some data, nevertheless, are private and cannot be published unless they are anonymised. On the other hand, if some public data are used to harm privacy of third parties, this can be treated as a law infringement, as it is like a non-consented use of private data.

Agustí Cerrillo: Does the CAD allows for an increased efficiency in public administration? What relevant information does get to the citizen? Wouldn’t it be better to keep the right of access, which allows for asking for further information, instead of right of publicity, which just provides public information on specific issues? A: Efficiency of the act, efficiency of the Administration, efficiency of a more transparent administration. The more the knowledge about the procedures of the public sector, the more likely to achieve higher levels of efficiency.

References

Enrico Carloni (2010). La “casa di vetro” e le riforme. Modelli e paradossi della trasparenza amministrativa (, 214 KB)

• 5 Words to eDemocracy?
• The future of eDemocracy in a nutshell?
• Your favourite eDemocracy project?
• Prospects and risks of eDemocracy?
• What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?

Find below the video and, after, short answers to the previous questions:

5 Words to eDemocracy?

eDemocracy is not about making democracy “electronic” (i.e. to use digital devices to perform our usual democratic participation), but how Information and Communication Technologies have transformed democratic institutions — mainly parties and governments — and what will be the role of such institutions and the role of the citizens because of the introduction of these ICTs, digital content, and the Information Society as a whole.

The future of eDemocracy in a nutshell?

The future of eDemocracy is about how to mainstream Democracy in people’s lives. It is usually said that (a) people are not interested in politics and/or that (b) people have other problems more important than democratic participation.

I think that we should be able to “embed” democratic participation in people’s daily lives so that participating (being informed, deliberation, voting, etc.) could be part of your daily “routines”, mainstreamed in your daily activity.

A simplistic though illustrative example of this mainstreaming — helped by ICTs and out of the democratic arena — is what Amazon does with your online behaviour and recommendations: you do not need to take any especial activity besides buying to build your profile upon which Amazon recommends books for you. Is that possible in political preferences?

Your favourite eDemocracy project?

One eDemocracy project that I know of and that I really like is Parlament 2.0, the Parliament 2.0 initiative by the Catalan Parliament led by its president Ernest Benach himself, a project that opens up the whole activity of the Parliament and really enables and fosters citizen participation.

President Ernest Benach wrote a book about this project and other “politics 2.0″ reflections: #Política 2.0.

Prospects and risks of eDemocracy?

The main risks are, of course, the digital divide in all its senses (physical access, digital competences, etc.).

Besides the digital divide, we have to rethink political institutions… without necessarily destroying or ignoring or circumventing them.

What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?

• Did we succeed in transforming political institutions and how?
• Did we manage in how to mainstream democratic participation in everyone’s daily life?

The main points I make on the interview are:

• During the 250 years of our industrial society, capital owners (capitalists) have been the ones that have ruled the world, the ones that are in power.
• Our democratic system is shaped according to this industrial society and its power relationships.
• In the upcoming knowledge society, the ones that will be able to manage cleverly knowledge by means of digital tools (digerati) are likely to have a higher share or power in all the aspects of life, especially the government (goverati).
• We need to work to make access to knowledge as widespread as possible — access to infrastructures, digital competences, effective usage — so to avoid replacing the existing plutocracy with a new e-aristocracy.

Communications: e-Democracy

Župa – Grassroots Democracy Revolution on the Web
Alois Paulin

We have to find out a way to get rid of inefficiencies, lobby-influenced politicians or sheer corruption in governments.

The Župa — slavic for community — model aims at reducing the size of the government through an intensive usage of Information and Communication Technologies.

You can set up a profile (with your blog, ideas, etc.) and be elected as anyone’s candidate.

[this projecte reminds me of something Ethan Zuckerman explained to me two years ago]

E-Parliaments and novel Parliament-to-Citizen Services: An initial Overview and Proposal
Aspasia Papaloi and Dimitris Gouscos

Age group parliaments, social parliaments, thematic parliaments, alternative or counter parliaments, etc. have been initiatives to open up parlaments.

e-Parliaments are a new way, supported by ICTs, to open up the parliaments to their citizens.

IPU guidelines for parliamentary websites (2009). And a survey shows that the members of parliament mainly use digital assistants, laptops and mobiles.

Examples of activities taken up in e-Parliaments include participatory budgeting.

For these to work there is needed: political will, strategy planning, etc.

European Status of E-Participation and what is needed to optimise future Benefits?
Jeremy Millard and Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen

eParticipation initiatives are quite common all along the European Union, and they are especially relevant at the local level. And while eParticipation initiatives are important too at the national level, we still find crossborder initiatives, aiming at people that communte between countries, are immigrants within Europe, etc.

At the local level, e-Participation initiatives have much more users (in % of the targeted population) and participation decreases as we move up in the scale of the government (regional, national, international, etc.), though the latter are better funded than the former.

Among the tools, e-Voting or e-Petitioning are in the lower end of usage, being websites in the upper part. It is surprising that voting has such a poor importance in these initiatives.

How to optimise e-Participation?

• Formalise and mainstream e-Participation as part of a coordinated ‘open engagement policy’.
• Help establish or support independent, neutral trusted third party service for e-Participation.
• Governments/institutions should listen to and provide frameworks for building citizen participation from the bottom (but not control it).
• Unleash the empowering potential of easy to use Public Sector Information for re-use in machine-readable format.
• Empower the civil servant.

Other reactions on this session

• EDem10 – Day 2 – #1
• Župa: Making Democratic Society Machine-Readable
• New Opportunities for e-Enabled Parliaments
• Strategies for Strengthening e-Participation in Europe

Workshop: Social Networking Tools supporting constructive Involvement throughout the Policy-Cycle

Initiatives:

• HUWY
• IDEAL_EU
• PIAZZA TOSCANA
• Hope+ Plus
• i-Folio
• Državljanski forum Evropskega parlamenta

The Policy-cycle is a simplified, ideal-type model of policy processes. It is useful to structure and systematise the complex, though in real-world policy-making does not follow clear-cut stages and chronological sequences:

1. Problem definition;
2. agenda setting;
3. policy development;
4. implementation;
5. policy evaluation.

Most e-Participation initiatives focus on the first two stages, while other stages are largely ignored. Notwithstanding, we do not have to underestimate these first stages or the power of “non-decisions”: indeed, many projects went on or were prevented to evolve in these precise two stages. Indeed, agenda setting is but another way to decide what is to be dealt with and, hence, what is to be decided in the latter stages.

[interesting debate difficult to catch on these notes]

Other reactions on this session

• EDem10 – Day 2 – #2

Communications: Transparency & Governance

European Citizens’ Initiative
Alexander Balthasar

Even if petition initiatives are interesting, there still is a very tiny minority that participate in any kind of petitioning, be it online or offline. Indeed, people do have the right to write letters to their governments or their representatives and actually nobody does.

[the speaker assumed that everyone at the audience had read his paper, included in the book of proceedings that was delivered yesterday, and based his speech upon that assumption — I wonder how many people could easily follow his reflections and without the help of visual support...]

Communication without borders
Evgeniya Boklage

The political blogosphere is about political blogs dealing with political issues, from a professional or non-professional point of view.

Public sphere: open communication system, based on exchange of opinions, free type of participation, and that includes three functions: transparency (input), validation (throughput) and orientation (output).

Transparency requires openness. But transparency is not about journalism transparency, as transparent journalism can be embedded in a non-transparent (political) system.

Is the blogosphere a significant asset to the public sphere or is it information overload? Is the blogosphere citizen empowerment or is it merely a symbolic tool?

How can blogosphere enhance transparency?

• Media-watchdogs
• Shed light to obscure topics
• Observation of mass media, the political system and the society
• Navigation, creation of an embedding context, providing additional materials, raise awareness on immediate and noticeable impact
• Access to the public discourse
• A tribune for NGOs, advocacy groups and politically driven citizens

Throwing the Sheep’s Long Tail: Open Access
Noella Edelmann and Peter Parycek

New Journal of eDemocracy (JeDEM), which will be an open access journal.

We can find a close relationship between open access publishing and e-democracy and transparency.

We can now publish all the information we can without anyone’s permission.

We have to force a policy change where openness is the default, and closeness the option you might choose.

Other reactions on this session

• EDem10 – Day 2 – #2
• Towards European Citizenship?
• Political Blogs and Transparency
• Open Access to Scholarly Information

Open Access to Research: Changing researcher behaviour through university and funder mandates
Stevan Harnad, Université du Quebec à Montréal & University of Southampton

The common point between open access and democracy has a good example in Wikipedia’s outcome: though the mechanism of meritocracy is not that good. In Wikipedia, the criterion is not truth but notability. If everyone says that cows fly, this is what the Wikipedia will say, even if it is not true. We need some sort of mechanism, of metrics, to measure feedback. And open access can be a good base to that.

Open access means free, immediate, online access to the 2.5 million annual research articles that are published in all 25,000 peer-reviewed journals in all scholarly scientific disciplines. It is not about removing peer-review but, on the contrary, to bring access to scientific outcomes validated, legitimated, credited, certified by this peer-review system.

It is important to note that none of the authors of the 2.5 million articles wants money for their articles: it is attention and feedback they’re asking for. this is a radical difference from other authors that make a living from writing. And that is why open access focuses on scientific publications.

Other knowledge outputs as books, textbooks, magazine articles, newspaper articles, music, video, software, other “knowledge”, data, unrefereed preprints are just not a priority, because they are not peer-reviewed and because these are not all author give-aways, written only for usage and impact, or because the author’s choice to self-archive can only be encouraged, not required in all cases (the cases of data and preprints).

Two ways to provide open access.

• Green OA: once the article is accepted, the pre-print referee-accepted version is made open.
• Gold OA: open the published version, desirably the journal itself.

Reasons for open access: To maximise the uptake, usage, applications of a publication. Research open on the web has 25-50% more impact, and the better the article, the higher the impact of making that article open.

Surprisingly, despite the benefits still only a tiny fraction of researchers provide green access to their papers, and the only successful way so far has been mandates, mandates to provide green access enforced by funders and/or universities. Indeed, most researchers are for open access, but they just claim lack of time to do so, which means they would not oppose a mandate provided it came with the necessary resources to put it into practice.

Sample of candidate OA-era metrics: citations, CiteRank (like PageRank), co-citations, downloads, citations and downloads correlations, hub/authority index, chronometrics (latency, longevity), book index, endogamy/exogamy, links, tags, commentaries, journal impact factor, h-index (and variants), co-authorships, publication counts, number of publishing years, semiometrics (latent semantic indexing, text overlap, etc.), research funding, students, prizes, etc.

Discussion

Q: what is then the future of journal publishing? A: for the time being, even in the areas where OA is higher, there has been no journal cancellations. Once everything is open access, many journals will have to change their business models, and only peer-review will remain: no archiving, no paper publishing, no online publishing, etc. And they will only need a small fraction of the money to be sustainable, and they’ll get if from funders, governments, universities, authors or whatever.

More information

Brody et al. (2007) Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web: Publication-, Data-Archiving and Scientometrics. CTWatch Quarterly, 3(3).

EDEM10 – Five Questions – Stevan Harnad from digitalgovernment:

Other reactions on this session

• EDem10 – Day 2 – #1
• Open Access as Enabler for e-Democracy

The Promise and Contradictions of E-Democracy, Obama Style
Micah L. Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum

Expectations that the Obama administration would continue the tone of the Obama campaign: lowering barriers to participation, opening the government, etc. But it does not seem that expectations have been accomplished.

The Campaign

The open government directive was the first one to be issued when entering the White House. It claimed for a more open, more participative, more collaborative.

Obama campaign, from the primary elections, was a different campaign (and a different candidate too).

And the voters were different too: almost everyone in the US is online and is not only online to get information but able to participate. For instance, amongst the total videos mentioning Obama or McCain (circa 150,000) only 10% of the were made by the candidates.

Obama metrics: 13m e-mail addresses, 3.9 individual donors (double the highest score since), 2m profiles on MyObama, 200K offline events created, etc.

The Government

There was no small-donor revolution, at least not in the early money (money raised in the previous year to the election), which is very important in the US: the candidate that raises more money that year, wins the election: money votes, the money primary. $1000+ donors dominated and almost doubled donors below $200. Indeed, the only candidate that fliped the profile and got more than 50% in small donations was Howard Dean.

Obama believed in the structure that the volunteers had created, and to make it last beyond the election, to help him in not surrendering to the powers of the lobbies and the machinery of Washington, D.C. But often the idea was to circumvent mass media and beam a packed message directly to the voters, without letting this “structure” to participate in that beaming.

And this is still happening: Obama runs out of the filter of mass media whenever he can, being present in less open interviews and more available to closed ones or youtube-aimed videos.

The Open Government Dialogue worked quite well, but got an infinitesimal share of attention that the campaign did — maybe because the average citizen is more interested in their daily problems.

Data.gov has also been a good initiative to be transparent (schizophrenic, though, with other initiatives to avoid accountability).

Opinion Space to register your opinion about some international issues. While the initiative looks interesting, the real purpose behind it has never been disclosed by the government.

But, the general public is not responding to these initiatives, people do not feel engaged, people do not find that the government is more transparent, accountable, listening to people, etc.

Empowerment?

The Internet does not empower anyone, we empower ourselves. One-to-many communication and many-to-one is easy, many-to-many is hard.

If we’re going to empower ourselves, we need better tools.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: Let us assume these open government initiatives are genuine. If people do not feel engaged — for whatever reason, but maybe because they still tend to mass media to get their political information —, are not mass media missing the point of “translating” what’s on the “open” websites to the general public? Or maybe these initiatives are not that genuine? A: Mass media might be not knowing what is their role. They are fascinated by this new media, but they do not how to handle it. On the other hand, people do not understand that a government can become a media itself, and not be mediated by others. We are in a transition: the mass media think their role as gatekeepers is over, people have to learn what their (new) sources are, there is no balance in focusing on the real participation (vs. the extremes demonstrations of opinion). Existing mass media give as a distorted view of what citizen engagement is, and this blocks more fruitful encounters.

Matthew Allen: why online tools are so week? is it because ties are also week? A: All Blue platform allows anyone to raise money for a candidate, cause, etc. or the case of Move On are ways to crate more committed ways to participate, and to strengthen the bounds between the candidate and the voter, and set the former freer from the big money. Impact + real time feedback can create a positive loop of engagement.

Q: why such low engagement in open government platforms? How to manage the tension between top-down and bottom-up approaches? A: people interested in these issues are not many. About the tension between approaches, the truth is that there was no plan for day 1 after the election concerning participation, engagement, etc. even if the campaign supporters kept on calling and writing to the campaign office with “now what?” and “how now?” questions.

More information

EDEM10 – Five Questions – Micah Sifry from digitalgovernment:

Other reactions on this session

• EDem10 – Day 2 – #1
• Dashed Hopes? Citizen Engagement with the Obama Administration

Workshop: Momentum project
Daniel Van Lerberghe

What is understood about participation is not the same thing across Europe.

Momentum aims at monitoring the existing eParticipation projects in order to collect and consolidate their results and disseminate them to all relevant institutions in the EU and to all interested civil society acgtors.

Began in January 2008 and is to last 30 months.

The Role of eParticipation in the European Climate Change Debate
Oli Lacigová

WAVE project to engage citizens in the debate about climate change.

Usability has been an issue, even if the website is really visual and, at first glance, easy to track the related topics.

Another example: eMPOWER.

Results of the debates are aggregated and presented to members of the parliament(s).

e-Government strategy in Austria

Different working groups to cover all the different aspects of an e-Government strategy: presentation layer, integration and access, law and security, infrastructures and interoperability.

VIDI project
Sinan Sen

Goals of the VIDI tool/software:

• advance visualization of messages
• highlight discussions and topics
• real-time notification about discussion
• proactive involvement
• complex event processing techniques

Examples:

• http://www.evropske-volitve.si
• http://forum.index.hu

HUWY – Hub Websites for Youth Participation
Ralf Lindner, Fraunhofer ISI

HUWY is meant to support youth participation in politics-related debates, to encourage young people to talk about policies and laws which affect the Internet. On the other hand, there is another aim to channel these reflections, ideas, recommendations to people in governments and parliaments.

There are four national websites (UK, Germany, Estonia, Ireland) and a European hub were you can access the results from all conversations.

Some topics that arouse: cyberbulling, child abuse and safety, ID theft, privacy, phishing, file sharing, security, copyright, censorship, freedom of speech, etc.

New approaches in the project: emphasis on process, deliberation in own spaces, use existing groups and networks, blending off- and online spaces, policy-makers involved as partners, use of stories to engage.

(note: these were all demos of the several projects, hence much more happened than these notes might reflect)

Communications: Network Society

Social Networking on Climate Change: The IDEAL-EU Experience
Francesco Molinari and Erika Porquier

Deployment of a multilingual Social Networking Platform in three European Regions (Catalonia, Poitou-Charentes and Tuscany) dealing with the issue of climate change and energy policy-making at the level of the European Parliament (http://www.ideal-debate.eu).

Research questions:

• Are computer-based SNS valid extensions for F2F interaction?
• Can they be of use for policitians and policy-makers?
• Are there any structural differences between a EU and US approach?

Social Networking Sites are growing in audience and in amount of time spent in them. But it is problable (according to data) that though being used really intensivelly, SNS are still used by a minority: they pattern of adoption differs from most other online applications.

And it seems that Dunbar’s number (n=150) also applies to SNS.

Chris Kelly (2007) stated that there are five impact areas of social networking sites in US politics: branding, voter registration, fundraising, volunteering and voter turnout.

The project

The project featured a social networking site to debate climate change. Topics were launched and moderated by community facilitators.

Five characters of successful social networking sites in EU/US politics:

• Specialist rather than generalist
• Top down (by government initiative, rather than bottom up (party campaign)
• Dealing with policy issues, rather tahn electoral aims
• Presence of lively debates increases reputation and attractiveness, thus Google driven traffic (only EU)
• They can induce mass imitation and multiplicative effects (only EU)

“Vote Rush” (US) vs. “Bar Chat” (EU).

Recommendations:

• Limited in scope, single issue
• Aiming at structural change in behaviour of people

E-Government and Social Media: The Queensland Government’s MYQ2 Initiative
Matthew Allen and Mark Balnaves, Curtin University of Technology

• Toward Q2: information-oriented website with markers of “interaction” but little action.
• MyQ2: informatics in action, commitments, communications, citizens adopting behaviours aligned with governmental goals.

MyQ2 lets you create a “commitment” on the website (i.e. a task you’ll perform, a goal you pretend to achieve, etc.) and you can make it public, state why it is important, comment it, be reminded about it, etc.

Shift from understanding e-government as “talking” to understanding e-government as “acting”.

Other reactions on this session

• EDem10 – Day 1 – #2
• Building Issue-Based Social Networks in Europe
• Positioning Citizens as Agents of Governance: MyQ2