Comhairle, the Irish national agency tasked with supporting the provision of information, advice and advocacy on social services, yesterday unveiled a substantially upgraded version of its information website. The new site, renamed www.citizensinformation.ie, takes the place of the existing e-government initiative known as Oasis as well as Comhairle’s online Citizens Information Database (CID).

The site covers a variety of subjects, including employment rights, buying a home, moving abroad and education. The information is sourced from many different service providers and agencies and is divided into 14 categories so that users can readily access the topic relevant to them.

Each category addresses a series of frequently asked questions on the topic, backed by more in-depth information, supporting documents and downloadable forms. This additional material is just one of the changes that people will notice about the site, said Catherine Hughes, Citizens Information project manager. “There’s more detailed information,” she told siliconrepublic.com. “One of the benefits of Oasis was its simplicity but it was also a drawback. It had a simple structure so you couldn’t add additional documents. Now we can add case studies, work sheets and more detail around the legislation.”

Oasis was originally set up in 2001 and last year clocked up 2.5 million unique visitors. The decision to rename the site was instead prompted by the wish to make a clearer connection between the physical Citizens Information Centres — there are 240 located around the country — and the phone service along with its online equivalent.

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(via E-Government News)

Patient Opinion is all about enabling (UK) patients to share their experiences of health care, and by doing so help other patients — and perhaps even change the NHS.

Patient Opinion is a revolutionary online system which allows anyone to share their experiences of receiving specialist treatment on the NHS.

Funded jointly by the Department of Health and South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority, Patient Opinion is a new non-profit company led by experienced GP and social entrepreneur, Dr. Paul Hodgkin. Based on his experience, and the service improvement requirements of the NHS, Dr. Hodgkin identified two major communication gaps which Patient Opinion will address:

• Patients and carers are now being provided with greater choice of specialist treatment options and locations – but they have little information on which options are best for them, without which choosing can be a lottery.
   
• The NHS has put in place lots of reporting and rating systems – but this formal ‘performance’ data seldom records the real experience of patients and carers.

Falling voter numbers in elections across the European continent suggest people are increasingly disenchanted with the political process. Could an enhanced webcasting system, tested by local authorities in four countries, solve this ‘democratic deficit’ and help to bind communities together?

Martine Ruzza certainly thinks so. A member of the eParticipate project, part of the eTEN programme facilitating e-services for European Union citizens, she highlights the praise heaped on its system, and the resulting webcasts, by participants at the June 2006 ‘ICT for an inclusive society’ conference in Riga, Latvia. This event also generated a groundbreaking declaration on e-democracy.

“One-way internet portals are no longer good enough,” says Ruzza. “People want two-way communication with their local authorities, so they can consult documents, provide feedback and so on. Our system addresses all these requirements.”

The project, which ended in September 2006, builds on an open and interactive video platform developed by the UK company Public-i. Though based on webcasting, this platform offers far more than the streaming of sound and vision over the internet. Its main feature is ‘contextualisation’ – providing additional information on the speakers filmed at events. So a webcast may include textual details on their name and function, plus a biography, photos and email address.

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eUser, a Europe-wide survey of citizen needs for eGovernment and other public online services, funded by the EU, finds that 55% of those who have used eGovernment services are positive. Early efforts by Member States have led to a good start.

Nevertheless, a considerable proportion (33%) of users experience at least one significant obstacle when using or trying to use online government services. These include locating the relevant online service in the first place; using eGovernment efficiently; dealing with poor or patchy quality of content; and limitations in service functionality.

To remedy this situation, European governments must intervene on both the supply side – tailoring services to user needs and the user side – developing eSkills and awareness of online advantages.

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A new initiative by Israel’s parliament will soon allow every Israeli citizen to share his or her proposal for new legislation by cellular phone text messaging.

The “Knesset SMS” program, conceived by MK Israel Hasson (Israel Our Home), will be activated and managed by his bureau. Hasson will select the best suggestions and will officially propose them to the Knesset.

So how will all this work? A citizen who wants to propose an amendment to a particular law or advance an idea for a new law can send a brief summary of his idea over the phone. The SMS must open with the word “law”, followed by the written proposal.

The message must be sent to the phone number 5454, at a cost of 40 Agorot (about 10 cents) per message.

The proposals will automatically be presented on MK Hasson’s Web site. Every few weeks, Hasson will sift through the suggestions while consulting with legal advisors and his office colleagues. He will present those deemed suitable to the Knesset as law proposals.

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(via textually.org)

On his blog Lunch over IP, Bruno Giussani discusses some high-level experiments in “participative” democracy online.

"After experimenting with participative democracy in my region, I became convinced that citizens are often experts and can contribute to solve problems". Feel there is something wrong with this sentence? (What form of democracy do you know that’s not "participative"?) It’s signed by Segolène Royal, the front-runner for the socialist nomination in next year’s French presidential election. She is trying to develop her program/platform online, "participatively", through a website called "Désir d’avenir" ("Longing for a future") where she posts drafts of her ideas and lets people comment on them. The resulting synthesis "of the ideas that I deem feasible will be published on the site, so that your contributions will be fruitful"…

José Luis Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, is testing the online waters too: PSOEtv (where PSOE is the acronym for the Spanish socialist – majority – party), which is arguably Europe’s first online TV channel by a major political party, just launched. It has immediately been nicknamed "Telezapatero" and the first show featured the Prime Minister stating that the aim of PSOEtv is to "inform the citizens and let them participate in the government’s actions". The participation bit is not clear though: all there is is a button saying "your comments", which takes users to an e-mail form.

The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-content, started in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

It is an Austrian initiative to make world leaders aware of the necessity to develop and invest in e-content in order to bridge the digital divide and the content gap.

The award is structured in eight categories: e-government, e-health, e-learning, e-entertainment, e-culture, e-science, e-business and e-inclusion.

The Being Heard website has been designed by the UK Hansard Society with the aim of inviting young people to engage with political issues and political decision-makers.

The aim of Being Heard is to build young people’s level of political awareness and participation so that they can play an active role in the democratic processes affecting their lives.

Being Heard is also a consultation space for decision-makers to engage with young people and their ideas, experiences and opinions.

How can we put the user of public eServices in the center of the designing and delivery of online public services and content?

The EU’s eUSER project wants to stimulate the availability and usage of useful and easy to use online public services.

The focus will be on the needs of citizens as users of online public services in their interactions with public administrations in general, in the management of their health and in furthering their education and developing their skills.

The project will prepare a state-of-the-art resource base on user needs in relation to online public services and on user-oriented methods for meeting these needs. It will then use this resource base to actively support the IST programme, projects, EU policy and the wider European Research Community to better address user needs in the design and delivery of online public services.

The project website already provides some very interesting statistics, country briefs and reports. Incidentally, the project is run in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada.

Read also this feature article, entitled “What users really want from online public services”, published on the IST Results website.

Lately there is a growing trend within governments and public authorities to separate citizen-focused online services from institutional communications, similar to e.g. how a telecom provider separates its customers services from its corporate information.

Here are some of the best examples of governmental service websites we know of. Sites are in English except where indicated.

• Austria: help.gov.at
• Belgium: Vlaanderen.be (in Dutch)
• Canada: Seniors’ Info, Service Alberta, Service Ontario
• Denmark: Danmark.dk (in Danish)
• Finland: Suomi.fi
• France: Service-Public (in French)
• Ireland: Citizens Information
• Netherlands: Overheid.nl (in Dutch)
• Norway: Norway.no
• Portugal: Portal do Cidadão
• Singapore: eCitizen | My.eCitizen
• South-Korea: G4C (Government for Citizens)
• Spain: 060 (national, in Spanish), GenCat Serveis (Catalunya)
• Sweden: Sverige.se (in Swedish)
• UK: Directgov
• USA: FirstGov.gov

The province of Parma, in Italy, has launched a new project – the Pa.i.S (Partecipa il Sociale) plan – aimed at bringing the region’s public institutions closer to the daily lives of its citizens. Pa.i.S is co-financed by the Ministry for Innovation and Technology (MIT) and the National Centre for Informatics in Public Administration (CNIPA), as part of the ‘eDemocracy in the regions and local agencies’ action plan.

The Pa.i.S plan, run by the Health and Social Policy Directorate of the Province, has three main action lines aimed at providing the local authorities in the Province with concrete tools for developing alternative approaches to local administration which promote greater public participation.

These will include:

• the reinforcement and extension of the Sociale.Parma web portal, encouraging an evolution towards more active public participation;
• the Provincial Observatory of Social Policy (OPP-P); and
• the Laboratory of Participative Democracy (LAB).

These three actions are closely interlinked and based on a common theme – young people. The portal will include a forum, newsletter and various services aimed at nurturing greater public involvement in social policy. The Observatory will use new ICT tools to monitor public opinion on social policy with the objective of bringing it closer to the real needs of the people.

Finally, the ‘Laboratory’ will carry out experiments in participative democracy in three of the region’s local authorities (Fidenza, Colorno and Collecchio) using both traditional means and electronic tools. Each commune will, for example, select issues on which citizens will be invited to comment through an experimental eVote portal.

eGovernment News (20 February 2006)

Planning Portal is not only a successful example of technology enablement in service delivery but could prove to be a tremendous asset for local authorities in their quest to develop and deliver citizen centric services, says eGov monitor.

Just under two years ago, the [UK] Government unveiled its ambition to develop a world class e-Planning Service which would deliver new, more efficient ways of enabling the community to engage in a shared vision for their local area.

This new service would also enable access to high quality, relevant information and guidance as well as streamlined processes for sharing and exchanging information amongst key players.

Since then, e-Planning has made significant progress towards meeting its goals, and it has been recognised as one of the major successes of technology aided service delivery. This is especially true for the Planning Portal, which continues to improve itself and has been recognised through numerous awards.

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A few progressive [public authorities in the USA], such as VA’s Memorial Affairs, have taken a step beyond early e-gov programs, using the Web as a platform for delivering interactive services, aka Web 2.0. These new services, or Web applications, make better use of an agency’s data and other resources, including human resources, by creating bridges from public-facing Web sites to back-end databases. And increasingly, thanks to a slew of new open-source and commercially available tools, government Web applications can be as rich as software run on a PC.

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L’economia partecipata è un tema affascinante che deve diventare strumento di politica attiva capace di mettere al centro i diritti dei cittadini. È anche un lungo percorso che richiede prudenza, radicalità, motivazione, entusiasmo.

Un’economia partecipata è un’economia che tiene conto di diritti e bisogni: senza partecipazione non vi è democrazia.

E’ online la nuova versione del sito dell’Economia Partecipata con tantissime novità sulle modalità di partecipazione via internet ai documenti economici della Regione Lazio.

E’ infatti possibile partecipare attraverso un forum, una grande assemblea virtuale, per farlo occorre registrarsi.

Translation:

The participative economy is a fascinating theme that should become an active policy tool to put the rights of the citizen at the centre of policy making. Full participation also is a long journey that requires carefulness, courage, motivation and enthousiasm.

A participative economy is an economy that takes the rights and the needs of people into account: without participation there is no democracy in the economical process.

The new version of the Participative Economy website is online. It contains many new tools for people to participate online in the economic documents of the Lazio Region.

People can participate through a forum which functions like a virtual meeting hall. You only need to register.

Kitchen Cabinet is a project initiated by the UK Design Council to design and prototype new systems of interaction between (UK) MPs and constituents and to create an open resource of ideas, suggestions and best practises that MPs can use to strengthen the connection between people and politicians.

Kitchen Cabinet starts with the constituent’s perspective. The Design Council has been “listening to the perceptions and experiences of constituents in North East and South East England” and they are “in the process of identifying a number of design opportunities that MPs can use to improve their relationship with local voters”.

The findings from this initial stage of research with constituents can be downloaded here:

• Download project summary presentation (pdf, 964 kb, 11 pages)
• Download complete user research report (pdf, 1.71 mb, 107 pages)
• Download user research summary film (mp4 file, 55 mb, 10 min.)

L’administration numérique au service du citoyen et des collectivités.

E-administration est une initiative du centre de compétences wallon Technofutur 3 – Aéropole.


Online government at the service of the citizen and local public entities.

E-administration is an initiative by the Walloon competence centre Technofutur 3 – Aéropole.

Prévu pour fin 2007, mon.service-public.fr devrait proposer un portail personnalisé pour les usagers intégrant tous les contenus de Service-Public.fr et un accès simplifié aux téléservices. Ce nouveau portail devrait également disposer d’un coffre-fort de données personnelles permettant de stocker des documents administratifs en format électronique, de manière à accomplir les démarches en ligne plus facilement.

Entre avril et juillet 2006, 500 expérimentateurs testeront le portail Mon.Service-Public.fr. Cette expérimentation est destinée à vérifier l’adéquation du portail avec les besoins des usagers. Ce dispositif encore expérimental permet à l’usager d’accéder à un ensemble de services mis en place par un nombre encore limité d’organismes : CNAF, ANPE, Documentation française/service-public.fr, et Éducation Nationale. Pionniers de l’administration en ligne, les expérimentateurs recevront une carte à puce “mon.service-public.fr” ainsi qu’un lecteur de carte afin de tester ce nouveau moyen d’identification. Ils utiliseront la version provisoire du portail et feront part de leurs remarques aux responsables de l’expérimentation. Les résultats de cette expérimentation seront analysés puis une synthèse sera rédigée et communiquée en juillet 2006.

Translation:

At the end of 2007 2007, mon.service-public.fr will be the address of a personalised portal where users can integrate all the contents of Service-Public.fr with a simplified access to online services. The new portal will also contain a virtual personal briefcase where users can store administrative documents in electronic version, thus allowing them to handle their online tasks more easily.

Between April and July 2006, 500 users tested the Mon.Service-Public.fr portal, which allowed us to verify if the portal was adequately addressing the needs of the users. The prototype version of the portal allows users to access a range of services provided by a still limited number of entities, including CNAF, ANPE, Documentation française/service-public.fr, and Éducation Nationale. As e-gov pioneers, the test users received an electronic card “mon.service-public.fr” as well as a reader to test this new identification card. After submitting their remarks to the project leaders, we expect that a synthesis of the results will be available in July 2006.

Adèle vous présente les services en ligne qui vous permettent d’effectuer vos démarches administratives tout simplement depuis votre domicile.

Adèle presents you its range of online services, allowing you to manage your administrative tasks and procedures directly from home.

Recently, reports FutureLab, Motorola created a new community edited “user manual” for its new Q Phone. Essentially Motorola has set up a wiki, using the same software as wikipedia, that anyone can edit to serve as the new phones user manual.

Because the possible applications for the Q will always expand, the “ideal” user guide would also be able to grow and change. This wiki is an attempt to do that. It’s a place to capture and share the knowledge of the greater community of Q users. If, for example, you have added a new application to your Q, you could post instructions on how you did it here, for the benefit of all Q users.

Again, only a tiny percentage of the customer base will actually contribute to this wiki, but it will provide a huge amount if value to the larger community.

What if a public authority did the same for how to best interact with public services? Citizens would write from their perspective, rather than from an institutional perspective, and could help guide other citizens within a system which is sometime difficult to navigate initally?

CityCita is a free service that lets people join or create local groups and organise meetings, all within an open classification system. The service offers a convenient way to connect with others who share similar interests and ideas and live locally. There are thousands of groups that people can join in an easy-to-use, privacy-protected and spam-protected environment. The CityCita service can be accessed via its web site or through any email program.

The non-profit service is specifically designed for associations, social groups, political groups, alumni groups, membership groups, conferences and events, and has been developed by a Paris and London based company.