Ieri la Federal Communication Commission (semplificando, l’Agcom USA ma con poteri veri) ha lanciato il primo sito in assoluto dedicato a migliorare l’interazione dei cittadini con la commissione stessa. In contemporanea è stato presentato anche il blog che ospiterà post e riflessioni degli impiegati della FCC e di ciascuno dei cinque membri della commissione.

“Transforming the Commission into a model of excellence in government is one of my top priorities,” ha dichiarato il Presidente Julius Genachowski. “The success of this transformation depends on strong public participation throughout the process. With the launch of Reboot.FCC.gov, our goal is to get input from all corners of the country on ways to improve usability, accessibility, and transparency across the agency.”

Per portare avanti i temi di agenda di riforma, Genachowski ha messo in piedi un team di responsabili senior all’interno dell’agenzia dedicati a identificare le aree più importanti su cui lavorare. Reboot.FCC ha evidenziato cinque elementi chiave su cui instaurare una discussione pubblica e ricevere feedback:

Redesign of FCC.gov: dopo una fase di ritardi nel re-design del sito di FCC, la commissione vuole ricevere idee su come migliorare la grafica e aumentare la fruibilità da parte dei visitatori.
Data FCC.gov/data è un luogo aperto e pubblico per tutti i dati della commissione che vuole cercare di aumentare trasparenza, apertura, accessibilità.
Engagement: FCC sta analizzando come i cittadini si relazionano con le istituzioni governative e vuole esplorare nuove vie per favorire la partecipazione pubblica attraverso l’uso dei nuovi media
Systems: la commissione vuole revisionare e riformare i sistemi e le reti informatiche e per questo vuole feedback su come renderli più adatti alla navigazione e più semplici da usare
Rules and Processes: FCC ha l’obiettivo di modernizzare e implementare l’efficienza dell’agenzia, attraverso input su come migliorare la qualità dei processi decisionali, la riduzione degli arretrati, l’aumento della capacità pubblica di capire partecipare alla vita della commissione.

Un interessante esperimento che guarda alla democrazia digitale nel Sud America.
Con questo blog si tenta di analizzare, attraverso indicatori di democrazia elettronica, siti di partiti e parlamenti e di individuarne il grado di democrazia e usabilità.
Il blog apre anche una finestra sull’espansione e il concetto del Software Libero nelle PA del Sud America.

Con un impegno finanziario di legislatura di 1380 euro, 80 progetti raccolti su 4 ambiti di intervento prioritari, per un totale di 27 obiettivi da realizzarsi al 2012, è stato presentato ieri il Piano quadriennale di e-Government.
In conferenza stampa a Palazzo Chigi, il Ministro della Pubblica amministrazione e dell’Innovazione, Renato Brunetta ha illustrato i punti principali del Piano e- Government 2012, mentre il Presidente del Consiglio, Silvio Berlusconi ha esplicitato la centralità di una PA digitalizzata ed efficiente nella strategia di superamento della crisi attuale, ricordando l’obiettivo di portare i costi annui della Pubblica amministrazione italiana dagli attuali 4.500 euro pro-capite ai 3500 della media europea, entro la fine della legislatura.
Al fine di rendere efficace il programma e-Government 2012, Berlusconi ha assicurato che è allo studio un programma parallelo diffuso e capillare di alfabetizzazione informatica e di incentivazione progressiva all’uso delle ICT nei rapporti con la PA.

Via Forum PA

Vittorio Pasteris ha anche pubblicato le slide riassuntive

Negli ultimi anni è cresciuta, anche in Italia, l’attenzione delle amministrazioni locali nei confronti della partecipazione dei cittadini ai processi decisionali. Si stanno diffondendo forme innovative di democrazia partecipativa, come il bilancio partecipativo, che presuppone un coinvolgimento forte nelle scelte principali di governo del territorio, in quanto le proposte avanzate dai gruppi di cittadini possono incidere su una certa percentuale del bilancio comunale.
Di questa e di altre forme di coinvolgimento (laboratori di progettazione partecipata, Agenda 21, giurie dei cittadini, e così via) si parlerà a Modena dal 21 al 23 gennaio prossimi, nel corso della prima edizione di ParteciP.A. il salone della Democrazia Partecipativa.

Leggi tutto

Il Comune di Torino si apre ai servizi del web 2.0 e prova a sperimentare nuovi canali di comunicazione

le notizie in evidenza della nostra homepage, i comunicati stampa, e le informazioni dai siti in lingua per i residenti stranieri in città sono disponibili anche su Twitter, il popolare servizio di microblogging: per ricevere gli aggiornamenti è sufficiente “seguire” l’utenza @twitorino. Per le ultime dal nostro canale video YouTorino, è possibile seguire l’utenza @youtorino.

In più c’è anche un canale Youtube e Ustream.
Altre informazioni sul sito del Comune

Il 12 maggio prende il via a Roma il Forum PA 2008, tre giorni dedicati all’approfondimento, ascolto, diffusione e valorizzazione delle più importanti iniziative di innovazione che provengono di sistemi settoriali e territoriali italiani.

FORUM PA si è affermato negli anni come occasione unica di incontro e confronto sull’innovazione tra attori pubblici e privati. Il processo di crescita del paese ha, infatti, trovato nella pubblica amministrazione locale e centrale un soggetto trainante dell’innovazione, soprattutto quando questa ha assunto il ruolo di regia e messa in rete dei diversi soggetti protagonisti nei sistemi sociali ed economici, in un più maturo sistema di governance.

Visita il sito di Forum PA 08

Il presidente della Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia, Riccardo Illy ed il sindaco di Pordenone, Sergio Bolzonello,
hanno inaugurato il 7 Aprile Wireless Naonis, la nuova rete wireless grazie alla quale tutti i cittadini potranno connettersi gratuitamente ad Internet.
La novità, frutto di un protocollo di intesa per la realizzazione di un progetto di e-government e di e-democracy, è promossa con lo slogan di Internet gratis ai cittadini.

Leggi tutto l’articolo

Il Governo Britannico è desideroso di abbracciare la tecnologia per migliorare i servizi dei governi locali; ma prima è necessario un cambio di culture, dice The Guardian.

The government is providing ever more pilot schemes and opportunities to engage but increasingly fewer people believe that “getting involved” is a good use of their time.

This results in the same people who are already active citizens being offered many more opportunities to engage, whereas the individuals who have not engaged are not benefiting from these new opportunities. So just because new channels of engagement are built, they will not necessarily be used by new participants.

Leggi l’intero articolo

Last week, the UK think tank Demos launched the Everyday Democracy Index (EDI).

The EDI is an original and innovative tool for assessing the democratic health of European countries beyond the ballot box and across many different dimensions. That includes the formal dimensions of democracy, like procedural rights and election turnout. But it also includes more everyday features of democracy – how important democratic principles and practices are to the cultures of workplaces, to people’s community life, to the way they interact with public services, and even to the way they talk to their friends and family.

The first index covers 25 EU countries.

To see the results and read the pamphlet, visit the interactive website.

Government websites are organization-centric, complicated and confusing, according to a survey of government web professionals in the United States, New Zealand and Canada, writes Gerry McGovern on his blog New Thinking.

Governments are addicted to proving that they are doing their job properly. Many government websites are politics-centric. They talk about the 5-year plans they have just launched, rather than using the website to help implement the 5-year plan.

Too many government websites tell us about what their political masters did. With soft focus pictures we are told that the minister has just arrived down for breakfast. Oh, look, he sat down and is reaching for the toast. I wonder will he have marmalade or honey this morning. (I really care about his diet.)

Too many government websites tell us about the legislation they are enacting. We are victims of a tsunami of policies, procedures and publications in a language that is often meaningless.

Read full story

Involve, a UK-based independent organisation focused on the practicalities of giving more power to ordinary people, just launched a new participation website.

People and Participation.net is a new radical resource to help people across the UK influence Government decision-making. The site combines the strengths of an expert guide to participation with interactivity and inclusiveness of a wiki.

Key features include:

• An interactive tool which helps practitioners to select participatory methods based on their specific circumstances
• A comprehensive methods database, covering over 30 traditional and innovative approaches to public participation from around the world
• A selection of case studies, showcasing good practice and allowing site users to post their own success stories to inspire others
• A section for site users to post their questions about participation. Involve staff will respond to these questions and thereby create an ever growing knowledge bank of answers to common.
• News and events information from the UK and beyond
• A comprehensive library of written and web-based resources from around the world to help site users make sense of public participation

It has been designed by social media specialists Headshift, with funding from a couple of UK Government departments. Involve hopes that the site will be a creative space where officials, councillors and citizens can share their success stories.

New Zealanders have been given the chance to write their own laws, with a new online tool launched by police.

The “wiki” will allow the public to suggest the wording of a new police act, as part of a government review of the current law, written in 1958.

Police say they hope to gain a range of views from the public on the new law before presenting it to parliament.

The wiki, one of the first of its kind in the world, is open to any internet user, police say.

Read full story

Every year, the EU Benchmark Survey assesses the quality of online public services in Europe. For the first time, the survey also looked at the users experience when accessing on-line public services, in recognition of the growing importance of this topic, and found mixed results.

From the press release:

“The survey examined three elements which are important to the user experience: the provision of a legally recognised, secure electronic identity, whether the service could be accessed via alternative channels such as call centres, kiosks, mobile phones and TV, and compliance of the websites with the International Accessibility Guidelines. The overall result for this indicator is more mixed and reaches 19%, with Austria, Bulgaria and Norway scoring above 30%. The most striking finding was that only 5% of websites make a specific reference to their compliance with international accessibility guidelines (WAI).

National portals fared much better. The report looked at the number of basic public services which can be accessed from the portal, the existence of personalised options, ease of navigation and whether its presentation is targeted at different kinds of users (businesses vs. citizens, around life events or around the structure of the administration). The overall score of 75% demonstrates that national governments consider the national portal as one of the cornerstones of their eGovernment plans.”

However the report itself puts some further qualification (page 27) on the above optimistic assessment of the user experience of national portals:

“We conclude that the national portals are well developed as user-centric gateways to public service delivery points.

However on the level of the transactional services itself, the agencies, the e-services delivery is still primarily organised around the needs of governmental organization more than around the needs of the users, being citizens and business. [My emphasis]

The survey, carried out for the European Commission by consultants Capgemini, examined over 14,000 web sites offering 20 basic public services in the 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Turkey. In 2007 the online sophistication of public service delivery reached an overall score of 76%, while 58% of the measured public services are fully available online.

Austria stands out both on sophistication and full on-line availability, with scores of 99 and 100% respectively. Portugal has made major progress since 2006 and Malta and Slovenia stand out as countries that have embraced eGovernment and advanced online service delivery and therefore top the charts in 2007.

- Read press release
- Download report (pdf, 15 mb, 123 pages)

Management guru Don Tapscott, the co-author of best-seller “Wikinomics”, wants to teach governments to harness the power of the Internet to reinvent democracy.

Tapscott is an evangelist for Web 2.0, the second-generation Internet based on participation through social communities such as Facebook and MySpace, participatory sites like free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and blogs.

In “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” published this year, he and co-author Anthony Williams dared big companies to reveal their trade secrets on the Web in a gamble to collect the ideas they need from people outside the firm.

Now their thinktank, New Paradigm, is starting a project to involve governments, non-governmental organizations and citizens around the world to revitalize the public sector.

Read full story

Tiago Peixoto sent us a link to this report presenting the results of a joint OECD-World Bank stocktaking of social accountability initiatives in OECD countries. The report which was written by Peixoto, together with Joanne Caddy and Mary McNeil is part of OECD’s efforts to identify emerging trends and develop policy lessons for countries seeking to build more open, accountable and responsive government.

OECD countries have done much to enhance government openness and encourage citizen engagement and participation throughout the past two decades.

Although countries now understand that a whole-of-government perspective is necessary to ensure that system-wide impacts are considered, planning and implementation issues remain. This stocktaking of social accountability initiatives aims to collect information about existing initiatives and country experiences, in an effort to help countries meet these challenges while building more open, accountable and responsive government.

This exercise generated 40 templates detailing social accountability initiatives in 27 OECD countries, and the European Commission. Cases were selected based on focus, level of government, and transferability of policy lessons. The group as a whole illustrates the wealth of innovative practices currently available, and provides a rich resource for practitioners.

Several cases explored the use of online tools to enhance public scrutiny and engagement:
- Canada: Online Pre-Budget Consultation (p. 44)
- Denmark: Danmarksdebatten [currently part of Borger.dk] (p. 55)
- Germany: Online Dialogue Participatory Budgeting (p. 72)
- Hungary: e-Games (p. 81)
- European Union: e-Agora (p. 164)

- Full abstract
- Download publication (pdf, 1.2 mb, 196 pages)

The method of selecting representatives for presenting the view of a constituency was deployed at the time when internet and mobile technologies were not available and there was no method of making a collective decision on policies to government the society.

In today’s times , most of the population have mobile phones that can be used by the citizens to communicate their opinion on important policy issues. Should not we therefore relook at the ways of people representation and amend the democratic processes accordingly?

m-GovWorld is an Indian initiative to create an observatory for mobile government developments and developing a community of stakeholders with the aim to enable acceleration of adoption of mobile technologies by government agencies.

The comments from readers are welcome to suggest innovative ways of making democracy more vibrant using mobile technologies where citizens can be continuously involved in policy decisions rather than voting once in five years.

(via MobileActive.org)

From climate change to social care, innovation will be critical to meeting the public service challenges of the future. But traditional approaches to generating new ideas will not be enough. Rather than focusing on processes and pipelines, policymakers and service deliverers needs to harness the potential of citizens to be innovators in their own right.

Unlocking Innovation: Why citizens hold the key to public service reform is a publication by the UK think tank Demos that collects essays and analysis from a wide range of public sector experts and practitioners. The pamphlet’s chapters offer lessons on how public services can better engage their users based on examples of best practice in the public and private sectors.

It argues that the public sector must embrace new forms of ‘user-driven innovation’ that use the needs and potential of service users as the spur to radical service redesign.

The publication also presents a series of case studies that showcase citizen-focused innovation in action, including:

• ‘In Control’, a social enterprise that provides social care users with easy and flexible access to individual budgets, making it simple for them to choose their own package of services.
• Hammersmith and Fulham council using detailed survey data to redesign their customer contact centre to better serve local people.
• Public private partnerships for tenant management organisations using deep dialogue with local residents to improve levels of service in social housing.
• ‘Innovative ecosystems’ that have allowed educationalists, academics and artists to come together to build ‘mediascapes’ that allow pupils to enter a virtual world of sights and sounds in order to learn in an interactive and cooperative way.

Download report (pdf, 525 kb, 186 pages)

A new website for young people has been launched by West Sussex County Council aimed at giving them vital information and a voice for their concerns.

The front page of www.yourspacewestsussex.co.uk also has the first details of how young people aged from five to 19 will soon be able to apply for a free ‘3in1′ card that will give them cheaper travel on the buses, an instantly recognisable ‘proof of age’ and discounts with retailers.

The ‘YourSpace’ website also contains information and advice for young people on a wide variety of issues such as bullying and health.

There is also a link to new-look pages for the West Sussex Youth Cabinet, information about clubs, holiday activities, and dance nights for the under 18s.

There will be regular quick polls to find out what young people think about major issues of the day. The first is about the July 1 ban on smoking in public places.

Read full story [eGov monitor]

YouScotland.com is not a political party, it is a citizens’ movement aimed at influencing the political process.

With elections pending to Holyrood and at Council level on Thursday, May 3rd, electoral politics will inevitably dominate the next few weeks. But there will be another 204 weeks before there are new elections to these bodies. It is then we believe youscotland.com will come into its own, irrespective of the results on 3rd May – an online citizen’s voice that will hold the politicians we elect on 3rd May to account.

But we do believe we can have a here and now influence by informing and exposing where parties, politicians, the media and others are clearly “at it”, and we will do so without fear or favour. We are in nobody’s pocket, though we hope we are on the right side.

Demos, the UK think tank for everyday democracy, has published a collection of essays by leading thinkers and practitioners that assesses how far the UK has already come towards a more collaborative style of government and sets out international case studies of some of the most interesting initiatives to date. It concludes by asking how future governments can use collaboration as a key design principle for transforming the UK’s public services.

“Competition and choice have become the watchwords of public service reform over the past decade. But while these principles have delivered some important gains, they are not enough in isolation. Tight accountability and choice have often come at the expense of fragmenting the way that schools, hospitals and councils provide their services. Service improvement has come at the expense of the capacity to solve local people’s problems.

If we want to sustain improvements into the next decade, then we need a new generation of reform that builds on experiments with collaboration between both different parts of the public sector, and between institutions and the people they serve. Joined-up government, place-based policy making and co-production with citizens offer exciting new possibilities for creating flexible, dynamic and democratic public service organisations.”

- Read table of contents
- Download publication (pdf, 1 mb, 203 pages)