gov 2.0 expo – Day 3

Open City / Open 311, Jennifer Pahlka, Nigel Jacob, Philip Ashlock, Ben Berkowitz, Bryan Sivak

People who have ideas about service for citizens often approach Boston City Hall when they don’t know how to realise these things. The City of Boston helps them in the realisation and the apps created are also useful for other citizens. In Washington, citizens also have the opportunity to come up with ideas (e.g. improvement street signs and street crossings) that will eventually be realised by the city.

There is a lot of exchange between cities about open data and open city programmes. City can learn from each other when describing their best practices. Many cities have problems with the digital divide. Already the connection to the internet (speed) is dividing the pubic. Only people who have smart phones/iPhones can only use the new services provided for mobile devices. However, apps for smart phones are demanded and have to be developed. The biggest problem for open cities is to create participation but these services are not well accepted yet. Governments that want to establish an open city must establish open communication first. Reports from the public cannot be ignored by politicians, which means that improvement from inside is often more difficult than pushes from outside government’s institutions.

gov 2.0 expo – Videos

More videos from Gov 2.0 Expo – here

gov 2.0 expo – Day 2

Keynotes

Government as a Platform for Greatness, Tim O’Reilly
The iPhone was such a great success because it became a platform for 200,000 apps, only less than 20 apps written by apple. Government has become a platform for services. Are we able to face the challenges of the future? Climate change, financial reform, education, health care are some of the areas that we have to tackle in the future. The challenge of greatness is to tackle issuses that we not be able to win, but we have to try.

The Next Frontier: Embracing the Cloud, Linda Cureton, NASA
When the telephone was a new technology that might be used in public service, we had the same discussions as we have now, when establishing Gov 2.0 tools and services. Cloud computing is a technology that will be relevant in the future as it brings faster and cheaper solutions. Not everything is suited for the cloud; you must know what you need and should not follow the hype only. NASA members use social media in order to communicate what NASA is doing. It is a way to bring people and ideas together. Your customers will use these technologies with or without you, so you have to be there too.

gov 2.0 expo – Day 1

Navigating the Maze, Carolyn Lawson, CA

In 1920’s the state of California discussed if phones should be established; questions raised: We don’t need it as everything woks fine and people are satisfied with the services. How can we controll what is being said on the phone. Does the telephone only support the rich? – Now we cannot go back to a time before the telephone.

Government in the future will be open; it’s already there. Policies have to be ready for new ICT tools. Twitter is a very useful tool now, but would have been ignored according to set policies. Policies shall help government moving forward.

Governor of CA likes to twitter, but officials couldn’t read it because it was blocked. So they couldn’t read messages of their own boss. In CA driving lessons had to be cut in school, now there is full curriculum available on YouTube. By now it got 9 mio views.

Call for Papers – JeDEM

Call For Papers – eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM)
Issue 3/ September 2010
Special Issue in collaboration with PEP-NET

“Sustainable eParticipation”

Guest Editors

Rolf Luehrs (PEP-NET, TuTech Innovation GmbH, D)

Francesco Molinari (SmartIntuitions Ltd., CY)

EDem10 Videos

EDEM10 -5 Questions: Micah Sifry

EDEM10 -5 Questions:Andy Williamson

Sum up of the EDem10 posts

Thanks to all particpants, for your blog posts, tweets, videos and pics!

• Axel Bruns is an Associate Professor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technologyin Brisbane, Australia:  http://snurb.info/taxonomy/term/117
• Micah L. Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum, TechPresident, New York, USA Personal Democracy Forum, TechPresident:http://techpresident.com/category/categories/edem10
• Matthew Allen, Researcher, Educator and Net Critic: http://www.netcrit.net/tag/edem10/
• Ismael Peña-López, lecturer and researcher, information Society, Digital Divide: http://ictlogy.net/tag/edem10/
• Video by Bengt Feil - Announcement of the CEDEM11 –„ We call it CeDEM11“: http://www.twitvid.com/P4MBH
• Twitterlist by Robert Harm(http://www.ihrwebprofi.at/lifestream): http://twitter.com/robertharm/edem10-participants
• Twitter Stream #edem10 : http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23edem10
• PEP-Net Interview: Ismael Peña-López  by Bengt Feil: http://goo.gl/TklG

Thanks to the Sponsors of EDem10

EDem10 – Day 2 – #2

In the afternoon of the second day, parallel panels on Transparency & Governance and E-Voting as well as two workshops were taking place.

Track: Transparency & Governance

Evgeniya Boklage: Communication without borders

The rather theoretical but inspiring presentation focused on successful communication and the concept of the public sphere. Boklage wants to avoid the traditional concept and substitutes it with a system based approach. Public sphere has three main functions (Neidhardt 1994): Transparency (input), Validation (throughput) and Orientation (output). The traditional system of mass media does not succeed to pay attention to all of that and the Blogosphere can possibly enhance that. However, the political system is shaped in a way so that the public sphere does not appear to be transparent. The question is whether the blogosphere is a real contribution to the public sphere and whether the internet empowers citizens (vs. just a symbolic phenomenon). Boklage presented some ideas how the blogosphere could enhance transparency, e.g. the blogophere as a tribune for NGOs or politically driven citizens.

EDem10 – Day 2 – #1

The second day of the conference started with keynote speakers Micah L. Sifry and Stevan Harnard.

Micah L. Sifry: The Promises and Contradictions of eDemocracy – Obama Style

Sifry gave some insights into the characteristics and reasons for the successful Obama campaign by analsying the metrics produced by the campaign. In America there are extreemly long election campaigns and after 2 years of mobilising we can speak of mass mobilisation. Micah pointed out that it is the people who have felt empowered by the campaign at first. The election was called about 11 p.m. Within the next hour the streets were filled with people dancing and chanting which has never happened in the U.S. before.

Call for Papers CeDEM11

Conference for E-democracy, E-participation and E-voting

5-6 May 2011 Danube University Krems, Austria www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

CeDEM brings together e-democracy, e-participation and e-voting specialists working in academia, politics, government and industry.

Keynotes

• Axel Bruns Associate Professor, Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, AUS)
• Caroline Haythornthwaite (Director, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia, CAN)
• Elke Löffler (CEO, Governance International, Birmingham, UK)
• Doug Schuler (Program Director for the Public Sphere Project; Member of the Faculty at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, USA)
• Stefan Gehrke (CEO, Politik-Digital, Berlin, GER)

In the last 10 years, the world focused on the social media and the new forms of societal behaviour, including content generation, collaboration and sharing as well as network organisation. These behaviours and expectations, in particular transparency and access to data, new ways of interacting with government and democratic institutions will continue to develop, and profound changes in society are to be expected. Society has been confronted with “Open Government” and “Open Data”. What are the experiences so far? How do they impact society, democratic structures and organisations? What changes occur at citizen level? What are the implications for democracy, society, science and business?