WikiDemocracy is the first experiment in the world to write the parties’ programs bottom-up.

It is still under development and focused on Italy, but we plan to internationalize it as soon as possible. If you wish to cooperate in order to translate some pages, if you want to support with donations, and/or you are a no-profit organization and willing to support us for deployment in other countries.

In the age of ubiquitous participatory culture - from the explosion in user generated media to the very way we do business, art, collaboration and even education - the world of politics often feels left behind, writes Robin Good on his blog.

“Democracy has become indirect, stale and something far removed from the daily lives of everyday people. But this is changing.”

“Participatory democracy is high on the agenda of the European Citizens’ Initiative (or ECI) who are launching their campaign today in the European Parliament in Brussels. The aim of this ambitious campaign is to empower citizens to propose concrete policy and legal changes to the European Commission, by exercising the right of initiative.”

“With hundreds of organizations behind them, and volunteers in their thousands, the ECI are determined to show that collective action can have a direct impact on the way we live our lives as active producers, rather than passive consumers of democracy.”

“Bringing power to the people that are effected directly by legislation is a bold and necessary measure in an age when accountability is often swept under the carpet, and politicians increasingly fail to represent the interests of those that elected them once the final votes are cast.”

“By attempting to gather one million signatures, the ECI campaign aims to gain the right of initiative, so that European citizens and civil society organizations could then directly influence the political agenda of the EU for the first time in history. With one million citizens collective voices, it is possible to demand changes to European law and policy, placing the right to challenge the actions of politicians firmly in the hands of the people at street level.”

In this exclusive video interview with the ECI’s Carsten Berg, and former rector of the College of Europe and supporter of the cause Gabriel Fragniere, Robin Gold “talks through the key questions about what the ECI aims to achieve, how it can be done, and what you can do to make a difference in the emerging participatory democracy that promises to tip power in favor of everyday people.”

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- Read full story (versione italiana)

Lavorare meglio, conciliare vita privata e professione: con l’aiuto delle tecnologie digitali.
PA@lfemminile è uno spazio per conoscere, comunicare, condividere. Dedicato alle donne della Pubblica Amministrazione.

Working better, reconciling private and professional life, with the help of digital technologies. PA@lfemminile (”Public Service in a female way”) is a space to be informed, communicate and share. Dedicated to the women in public service.

The site is run by Roberta Cocco, Director of Marketing of Microsoft Italy, who is also the driving force behind Futuro@lfemminile (the future in a female way) which aims to teach women about technology and empower them via technology.

(via a thousand tomorrows)

Antonio Di Pietro, the man behind the famous Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) enquiry and currently Minister of Infrastructure in the Prodi government, launched a blog in January 2006 to enable “direct communication and participation for people in the political life”. Interestingly (and exceptionally), the blog content is identical in English and Italian.

Today, he writes that at the national conference of his political party, Italia dei Valori, he also invited a group of bloggers, because, he says, the internet can be a “tool for direct democracy, “thanks to the possibility of giving direct knowledge about the facts whether they are political or related to the actions of the government”. He believes “that this is a first for such a group to be officially present at a political meeting”.

French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, who is the executive vp & managing director of Europe of Six Apart, the company behind TypePad and Movable Type, immediately picked up on this.

(via Loïc Le Meur)

Can governments truly boast of services that rival the private sector’s? Leadership in Customer Service: Building the Trust, Accenture’s annual report tracking the evolution of Internet usage and customer service in government, says yes and no.

Accenture interviewed 46 high-ranking government executives in nine countries to assess government services delivery, and concluded that governments using a wide range of technologies and modes of operation are on par with the private sector. Those lacking integrated technologies for robust, online services have a long way to go to reach service delivery matching that of the private sector.

The report also concluded leading governments recognize that true citizen-centricity means removing — through simplification and re-engineering — as much work as possible from the system for citizens.

In addition to improving government services, greater IT automation must also gain the trust of the public, a theme of this report. For e-government to succeed, governments must build trust and comfort with those services, and tap into the public’s preferred modes of communication, whether by telephone or over a network.

• Read full story (Public CIO Magazine)
• Download report (pdf, 8.5 mb, 108 pages)
• Download executive summary in Italian (pdf, 357 kb, 18 pages)

(via eGovernment News)

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)

The conference “Towards e-Democracy: Participation, Deliberation, Communities“ (in short, TED06) will take place from 24 to 26 October in Mantova, Italy.

For the past four years the European Science Foundation programme Towards Electronic Democracy (TED) has focused on the development of methods to address societal issues via the WWW and favour e-participation using the methodologies of modern decision analysis and support to involve citizens and stakeholders in the actual process of decision making: a true step towards e-democracy rather than the e-administration techniques that, by and large, have been emphasised by e-government initiatives. At TED’s heart is a vision to develop methodologies which enable multiple decision analyses to be communicated, explored and, indeed, built over the WWW, thus providing the mechanism by which stakeholders may be drawn more closely into the decision making process.

This conference occurs at the end of TED’s funding cycle and aims both to reflect on progress over the project and to set future research agendas.

The conference will be hosted by the University of Mantova and will be kindly sponsored by the Township of Mantova.

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.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the TED (Towards Electronic Democracy) Conference on E-Government, TCGOV 2005, held in Bolzano, Italy in March 2005.

The 28 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 92 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on e-democracy: improving citizen participation and policy making, e-democracy: experiences from different countires, political and societal implications, security for e-government services, semantic Web technologies, architectures for government application integration, case studies for government application integration, decision support systems, managerial and financial aspects of e-government projects, and e-procurement.

(By clicking on “Online version available” you can download all the text or individual chapters for free.)

Open Polis è una community di persone che si interessano di politica e nuovi media. Alcuni lavorano da anni nel campo delle nuove tecnologie, altri stanno nelle universita’ e nella scuola.

Open Polis is a community of people interested in politics and new media. Some work in the field of technologies, others are at educational institutions and universities.

Democrazia elettronica partecipazione pubblica (DEPP) è un’associazione senza scopo di lucro che promuove l’uso delle rete per favorire la trasparenza pubblica e la partecipazione collettiva al controllo delle informazioni e delle scelte politiche.

Crediamo nel potere della collaborazione, della condivisione, della creatività collettiva, del dono, del gioco, della passione disinteressata, del controllo comunitario senza centri di comando.

Sosteniamo e utilizziamo il software libero e aperto , il sapere, la conoscenza e la creatività liberi da diritti d’autore, i Creative Commons , le reti peer to peer.

Ci proponiamo di lavorare a progetti che sperimentino forme evolute di democrazia che favoriscano nuove relazioni tra rappresentanti e rappresentati.

Intendiamo collaborare con le istituzioni pubbliche e sviluppare progetti indipendenti sostenuti da comunità di persone e gruppi.

voi siete qui è il primo strumento del progetto openpolis, per una politica liberamente accessibile, modificabile e migliorabile dalla comunità degli utenti.

Un intervento permanente nella cosa pubblica, di controllo e influenza sulle scelte politiche.

L’idea è dare uno strumento che permetta a tutti di confrontare i programmi dei partiti su 25 temi fondamentali.

I prossimi strumenti saranno progettati per permettere il monitoraggio comunitario, per ognuno dei 25 temi, delle posizioni di tutti i partiti nel corso della prossima legislatura (prima delle elezioni hanno detto questo, dopo hanno fatto…).

Tutti i progetti di openpolis sono geneticamente open publishing, open content, open source creati e moderati dalla comunita’. Per saperne di piu’ vai su openpolis.

L’idea del progetto openpolis, di cui voi siete qui è il primo strumento, parte dai soci dell’associazione democrazia elettronica e partecipazione pubblica.

Poi si e’ allargata a un gruppo di persone che si interessano della politica e di nuovi media. Alcuni lavorano da anni nel campo delle nuove tecnologie, altri stanno nelle universita’ e nelle scuole. Tutti condividono i principi del progetto. Siamo una comunita’ che vuole crescere, in fretta.

Il sito Voisietequi.it nasce come nuovo strumento per un’azione attiva sull’amministrazione pubblica

Di quali strumenti dispongono i cittadini che intendono monitorare e valutare la politica del proprio paese? Da tempo due siti britannici, Theyworkforyou.com e Opendemocracy.net, lavorano per consentire alla popolazione inglese un controllo più attivo della pubblica amministrazione. Queste esperienze segnalano dunque internet come un valido sistema per avvicinare le masse alla politica favorendo il coinvolgimento trasversale degli individui.

Adesso, attraverso il sito Voisietequi.it, è stato avviato anche in Italia un simile percorso per incentivare la partecipazione. Tramite questo nuovo progetto i cittadini avranno la possibilità di confrontare le posizioni dei partiti sulle questioni più importanti della campagna elettorale, di comprendere quale formazione politica è più in sintonia con le proprie idee e, soprattutto, di conservare un archivio di tutte le promesse dei partiti per poi verificarne in seguito il mantenimento. Questa iniziativa nasce come strumento di lancio di un progetto più vasto, che si svilupperà sulle pagine del sito Openpolis.it.

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