An Open Declaration on Public Services in the European Union
The needs of today’s society are too complex to be solved by government alone. While traditional government policies used the web to automate public services and encourage self-service, the biggest impact of the web will be in improving services through collaboration, transparency and knowledge-sharing.
Europe is uniquely well placed to be a leader in this area. It should grasp the opportunity to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the state by opening up public institutions and by empowering citizens to take a more active role in public services.
Against this background, we propose three core principles for European public services:
1. Transparency: all public sector organisations should be “transparent by default” and should provide the public with clear, regularly-updated information on all aspects of their operations and decision-making processes. There should also be robust mechanisms for citizens to highlight areas where they would like to see further transparency. When providing information, public sector organisations should do so in open, standard and reusable formats, but with full regard to privacy issues.
2. Participation: government should pro-actively seek citizen input in all its activities from user involvement in shaping services to public participation in policy-making. This input should be public for other citizens to view and government should publicly respond to it. The capacity to collaborate with citizens should become a core competence of government.
3. Empowerment: public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation. In particular, government data and government services should be made available in ways that others can easily build on. Public organisations should also enable all citizens to come together and solve their problems for themselves, by providing tools, skills and resources.
We recognise that implementing these principles will take time as governance mechanisms will have to be adapted, but we believe they should be at the heart of efforts to transform government. Citizens are already acting on these ideas and transforming public services “from the outside”, but governments should support and accelerate this process.
We call on European governments and the European Commission to incorporate these principles in their eGovernment action plans and ensure that Europe’s citizens enjoy the benefits of transparent, participative, empowering government as soon as possible.
Co-creating an open declaration on public services 2.0 
One issue where I would be interested in views and help is on the name of the last principle – empowerment is OK, but it does not work as well as the names of the other principles. For me, the principle is about people doing it for themselves and government facilitating that. I suppose empowerment captures that, but maybe someone has a better suggestion.
Good stuff!
Three comments and an invitation:
I think it’s a mistake to dangle the carrot of “being a leader”. Politicians love this kind of language but it’s a false temptation. Europe will be Europe. It won’t “lead” Japan or be further down the path towards being Latin America than Africa is. The question is how we best fulfil the destiny and potential that Europe has.
> As citizens, we want full insight into all the activities undertaken on our behalf…
Does this include decisions taken about our security? My own view is it should, to the greatest possible extent. But there is a huge cultural problem here.
This does not include the propositions which I made about user-driven online IDs and user-driven personlisation of services based on personal data owned and controlled by the data subject. This is an emerging field, but transformative. It’s quite different from the transparency agenda, but it removes obstacles to and supports the participation agenda in a respectful way.
You have othing about what we at IdealGov call the “Foundation of Trust which is about
– not alienating everyone with instrusive surveillance and data retention and
– building systems in a way which, when they go wrong as rthey inevitable will, nevertheless will demonstrably have been “fit for purpose” as far as possible for reliability, integrity etc. In th euK we have a “security by obscurity” culture which is flawed
Now, the invitation:
– come and present this overall to the First Popular e-gov conference in Malmo on 20th (or evening of 19th)
ALSO: to the proponents of individual propositions
– come and advocate your proposition in six-minute slots in PechaKucha format on morning of 20th in Malmo.
See malmo09.org, Twiiter emalmo09. Or email me 🙂
William – great points and thanks for the invite. I would tend to agree with you on the leadership point and if others agree would be happy to see that sentence go, i.e just say “Europe should grasp …”. On your second point if you want to suggest a specific amendment, please do so and lets see how people react. Your third point is obviously a bit more substantive – I agree there are big important issues but they could distract from the focus of the declaration (and make it harder to secure mass support?). If you want, you could suggest a fourth principle to cover the sort of issues you mention and then we could see whether most people think it should be included. (As for the invite, be very happy to attend – lets finalise the details by email). Paul
very interesting text… i would just add something on eInclusion
Congratulations, not only for the collaborative job you have leaded but also for having the acceptance to present the declaration at the ministerial conference.
I hope we can make some influence. Great job David!
@williamheath the notion of “leading” is a matter of personal taste I think. I see your point on user-driven eId and it would be good if you could propose an amendment – which you should have done on the mixedink phase 🙂
@evika thanks can you elaborate as we have the part on empowerment which covers digital skills as well
@ocortes thanks but this is totally shared effort so we should pat ourselves on the back. But now we need to get traction otherwise it’s a lost opportunity!
Hope people comment more!
I really like the first paragraph. Down to earth, clear and disruptive.
Rethnking about WilliamH comment, I agree on removing the part on Europe being a leader. The web20 spirit is also about “cutting the crap”, if you allow me. So we should stick to the criteria of meaningfulness and avoid policy jargon.
Why is Europe uniquely well placed? Is it the generally poor protection of Freedom of Speech? Is it the statist-corporatist approach of many of the member states? Is it the legacy of fascist and communist totalitarian regimes? Just askin’
Lovely disruptive comment! Following William’s comment, my view is to drop the “leading”. It is highly debatable as to who is best placed to lead and why and what leading really means!
Yes Paul, and let’s hope that the EC learns also from this. Remember the Lisbon strategy to make Europe the most competitive economy?
No more cheap talk about EU leading, it’s not a race!
Dear David,
Dear All,
A practical suggestion to the second to last paragraph of the current version (see CAPITALS):
We recognise that implementing these principles will take time, AND RESOURCES, as governance mechanisms will have to be adapted, but we believe they should be at the heart of efforts to transform government.
The suggestion is made for the following reasons:
* The cost of implementing new working processes into existing organisations is often underestimated
* The resources required for Web 2.0 type policy and decision making is often underestimated. In particular in terms of the facilitation, tailoring of information, monotoring, moderation, feedback to participating citizens and stakeholders required to ensure value-adding and successful ePetitions, eConsultations etc.
Hope the suggestion is of use
Morten
Totally agree Morten. Very important point.
@ David: Glad that you found it useful.
“Resouces” could be elabroated upon by adding “efforts” i.e. : “…will take time, efforts and resources….”.
Alternatively it could be toned down a little and use “efforts” instead of “resources”
Up to you.
Excellent initiative by the way!
I also agree with Morten.
Suggest deleting
‘This is not because we want to reduce government’s role’, so that the last sentence reads
“ We believe open collaboration will make public services better.”
‘Role’ is vague – do you mean size, cost, scope ? Lots of people from across the political spectrum do want to reduce the role of government, whatever they believe it to mean.
Hi Andrew, my point on this is explained in a previous blog post https://eups20.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/its-not-about-small-or-large-government-gov2-0-is-augmented-government/
Hi Osmid
that’s a useful typology of the main metaphors in use. Would be worth including in supporting documentation.
Each of these metaphors appeals to particular interest groups. The underlying debate about *who* (public, private, voluntary sector) should do *what* in public services is ongoing. It is also intensely political.
So, the role of government is very much in question.
My point about the Declaration is that to improve the chance of adoption it is better to keep the declaration simple and appeal to the broadest range of support.
Hmm… I stand with David on this one. God knows a lot of presence is required to do public services 2.0.
Hey, wanna know something? This is actually good stuff. Well done guys and girls! It’s been a long stretch, but we are finally there. I received my invitation to Malmo today, my thoughts will be with those of you who go.
Hey Alberto we’re not there yet! from next week we need billions of people to endorse the declaration! 🙂
“When providing information, public sector organisations should do so in open, standard and reusable formats, but with full regard to privacy issues.”
Why are two distinct issues blended into one sentence, joined by a ‘but’? It implies there’s a trade off between an issue of format of data and the content of data. There is no such trade-off.
It’s a two step process. Step 1: Decide what level of transparency is appropriate given citizens’ rights to access government-held information taking into account any countervailing privacy concerns. Step 2: Provide the data in an open and re-usable format.
good point jack – not a but but an “and”
I also agree. Is the best way of handling this to end the sentence after formats and put the point about privacy in the supporting document?
The needs of today’s society are too complex to be solved by government alone.
>> Obvious to the point of meaningless. Is there anyone outside North Korea who really thinks government can solve societies needs? I’m not sure that you solve a need. You meet a need or solve a problem.
While traditional government policies used the web to automate public services and encourage self-service, the biggest impact of the web will be in improving services through collaboration, transparency and knowledge-sharing.
>> Yes.
Europe is uniquely well placed to be a leader in this area.
>> Really? Why? What makes Europe more well placed than the US? This is a statement that’s just put out there with no explanation or justification.
It should grasp the opportunity to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the state by opening up public institutions and by empowering citizens to take a more active role in public services.
>>Yes.
As citizens, we want full insight into all the activities undertaken on our behalf. We want to be able to contribute to public policies as they are developed, implemented, and reviewed. We want to be actively involved in designing and providing public services with extensive scope to contribute our views and with more and more decisions in our hands. We want the whole spectrum of government information from draft legislation to budget data to be easy for citizens to access, understand, reuse, and remix. This is not because we want to reduce government’s role, but because open collaboration will make public services better.
>> Good stuff.
Against this background, we propose three core principles for European public services:
1. Transparency: all public sector organisations should be “transparent by default” and should provide the public with clear, regularly-updated information on all aspects of their operations and decision-making processes. There should also be robust mechanisms for citizens to highlight areas where they would like to see further transparency. When providing information, public sector organisations should do so in open, standard and reusable formats, but with full regard to privacy issues.
>> Good, subject to the comment I left on the unhelpful conflating of privacy issues with format of disclosure.
2. Participation: government should pro-actively seek citizen input in all its activities from user involvement in shaping services to public participation in policy-making. This input should be public for other citizens to view and government should publicly respond to it. The capacity to collaborate with citizens should become a core competence of government.
>> Is this a rather traditional, staid interpretation of participation, rather like governments already do with formal consultations? Are there not other ways for citizens to participate?
3. Empowerment: public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation. In particular, government data and government services should be made available in ways that others can easily build on. Public organisations should also enable all citizens to come together and solve their problems for themselves, by providing tools, skills and resources.
>> “Pubic value creation”. Buzzword bingo!!
>> “Come together”. Wow, man, San Francisco 1968, peace out, pass the bong.
We recognise that implementing these principles will take time as governance mechanisms will have to be adapted, but we believe they should be at the heart of efforts to transform government. Citizens are already acting on these ideas and transforming public services “from the outside”, but governments should support and accelerate this process.
We call on European governments and the European Commission to incorporate these principles in their eGovernment action plans and ensure that Europe’s citizens enjoy the benefits of transparent, participative, empowering government as soon as possible.
>> It’s all good stuff but I think it needs to be put through an Obamafilter to make it really come to life.
great remarks Jack. Agree on solving problems rather than needs
Agree on Europe leading (as said before)
On the rest I believe it is a matter of taste and tone. I feel the current version is already disruptive enough. And I don’t have the Obamafilter!!!
thanks
tks, jack. agree with most of what you say. any specific wording suggestions you have would be most welcome. Otherwise all I can do is try to obama-ify (or de-obamaify) as best I can which I am very happy to do. (is that what an obama filter does?)
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Great initiative, impressive declaration and really thoughtful comments.
One small observation from the point of view of Patient Opinion (attempt to improve health services from “outside in” and “bottom up”): Is there a clearer distinction to be made between government and public services?
Some public services are run from the heart of government. Others, like the NHS, are large quasi-independent and even quasi-markets. Here, the issue (we find) is persuading managers far from government of the need to respond to and act on user feedback or engagement on the web. Government ets the policy framework for such services, but increasingly (in the UK) the implementation is a local matter. It is not just government, but public service managers, who need to become open to the core principles of transparency, participation, empowerment.
I think just a few tweaks to the wording in the light of this distinction might show that this is about local services as well as central government?
Good points about services James.
Where services are delivered by contracting out to 3rd sector and private companies or public/private consortia we also need transparency to apply to the non-government organisations.
In the UK recent legal judgement UK FOI blog
http://foia.blogspot.com/2009/10/right-to-inspect-audit-documents-trumps.html
and the open data initiatives from the Cabinet office are encouraging.
good points James. Maybe you can add the “local” dimension into the supporting document? http://eups20supportingdoc.pbworks.com/
Hello all,
first i want to congratulate to this great initiative and i hope it gets heard in Malmo! And even if not, i think, it is a very good and important step in the right direction.
I agree with the point of solving “problems” and not “needs”. Nevertheless I think, that viewing everything as a problem is somewhat too negative and many actions taken are about needs of citizens. So i suggest not to change “needs”, but to change “solved” to something like “handled”: “The needs of today’s society are too complex to be handled by government alone.”
I also agree, that stating Europe to be “uniquely well placed” and as being “a leader” is a rather problematic formulation opposing an inclusive standpoint. But i think, the point here isn’t to drop the sentence completely, but to rephrase it and to say something about Europe having a great basis (education, wealth, infrastructure, …) and potential and therefor should grasp the opportunity …
“… open collaboration will make public services better”: whilst I fully agree with the content of this sentence, I think this is phrased too general and maybe radical and might therefor be too debatable. I think, we should at least add a sentence on why we think, that open collaboration will (or could, if done properly) enhance public services, or maybe only exchange the word “better”.
A general comment is, that the wording switches between 3rd person and 1st person. Whilst this is good for the principles, i somehow noticed a slight disruption between the 2nd and 3rd paragraph … but maybe this is only a subjective matter of taste.
Hi Mandana and thanks.Yes we will go to malmo!
Agree on most of your points
best
Reading the “Code of good practice for civil participation in the decision-making process” uploaded by Csaba Madarász (http://eups20supportingdoc.pbworks.com/f/Code_good_practice_en.pdf), i have the feeling, that the required level of participation is still very vague in the declaration …
To me it is not clear, if the collaboration aims for consultancy, dialogue or partnership.
Jack’s commentary is excellent, and I did not expect anything else from him. I would, however, refrain from being too clever on the first line: we are writing a declaration, not a technical statement. I suppose you could take Article 1 of the Italian constitution (“Italy is a Republic…” and go “yeah, ‘course it’s a Republic. That’s what we had a referendum for, remember? 1946? The king exiled and all the rest?”. But that’s not entirely fair, and it misses the point which is to reaffirm values that cannot really be taken for granted, for good. I actually think it’s good to start with some decent common sense, that we all can agree which.
I would prefer “meet the needs” rather than “solve the problems”.
Good stuff David – and thanks for getting it together for all of us. And a useful set of comments below – though comments seem a bit UK-centric? How widespread is suport and understanding of these issues across the EU?
My thoughts:
– “This is not because we want to reduce government’s role, but because open collaboration will make public services better.”
I’m not carrying any banners for the Conservative Party or the right generally here but actually the organisations and government departments that we deal with here in the UK ARE too big, too risk averse and have taken responsiblity for too many aspects of civil society sphere, And are pretty incapable of carrying out much of this agenda. So why not leave it neutral by removing teh wrods ” . This is not because we want to reduce government’s role but”?
This relates to a wider concern – the document comes over as though governments are largely in charge of all this. Of course they do have a big faciltitative role to play. And it may be good politics to suggest they are the prime movers. But actually much of this will be out of their control and will flow round and over them in ways none of us, least of them, can foresee or lead. The declaration implies its just a matter of Governments tweaking their attitude to data and lying back to enjoy a bit of citizen empowerment. In fact power is being transferred to (many but not all) citizens by these tools. This will not end the state of course (just as a similar transfer of power via file sharing did not end the music industry) but it will be disruptive and more about power leaching away from them, than about them ’empowering’ the rest of us. So may be toughen up the language a little?
Paul you touch on 2 important issues – would have been good to have them in the previous phase on Mixedink
big-small government: we want to avoid getting in this discussion because it is political and it creates splitting while we look for common goals which are more important at this stage for us. See also my blog post on augmented government.
the issue of toughening the language is important. But the most important thing is that we say what we are convinced of – regardless of the tone.
Paul, this kind of discussion is exactly the reason why we did this: to have good discussion and start nailing down the issues!
Guys, nothgin to add from here, just a wow! great work done. The several comments above have served to improve it even a bit more. Fantastic job. Kudos to David and Paul fro driving the process and the rest of the team for the contributions. Best of luck in Malmö!
Thanks Josema. Your support and inspiration with W3C have been very important!
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[…] DRAFT DECLARATION […]
Sorry I missed contributing the right things at the right phase. Here goes anyway:
> On your second point if you want to suggest a specific amendment,
in para 2: Even on security matters, we assert the value of active public participation and endorsement, and draw attention to the limitations of “security by obscurity.”
> Your third point is obviously a bit more substantive – I agree there are big important issues but they could distract from the focus of the declaration (and make it harder to secure mass support?). If you want, you could suggest a fourth principle to cover the sort of issues you mention and then we could see whether most people think it should be included.
“4. Governments and public services should demand no more personal data from people than is necessary and proportionate, and should share it only in narrowly defined legal circumstances, as European human rights and data protection law requires. To the greatest possible extent, people should own, manage and share their personal data under their own clear control. People’s personal data is valuable and it is the data subjects themselves who should be able to realise that value.”
William, thanks for this. This is an important addition. Personally, I do not feel as strongly about this point on user-controlled personal data, as about the others. But this might be due to ignorance.
It is crucial to hear what people think on this!
William
Many thanks for taking the time to make specific suggestions. The big issue is the second suggestion which would increase our principles to four. I would be interested in the views of others on whether they think this should happen or not.
If we do include a new principle, I would suggest changing “narrowly defined” to “clearly specified” and possibly ending after the second sentence. To be consistent with the other principles we would also have to add a title perhaps just Personal Data?
On your first suggestion I think people might find it hard to understand as it currently stands and would suggest it might better be mentioned in the supporting document where we could make the point that transparency and participation should also apply in relation to security measures.
Thank you David and all the others for putting this declaration together. I think it is good and will hopefully gain some traction in Malmo. Although this seems to be a citizen-centric document I have one remark though: What about public servants? They need stronger involvement in (high level) administrative and political processes. That way the knowledge within public authorities can be utilised in a better way. Without encouragement and support for the employees to reform administration and reach out it could be difficult to gain empowerment for citizens.
I fully agree Jens. We should add this in the supporting document.
Great work! I like very much the style and the language: direct and understandable. Very few buzzwords.
One suggestion in the last part of third paragraf:(in capital).
“This is not because we want to reduce government’s role, but because open collaboration will make public services better AND QUALITY OF POLICY DECISION HIGHER.
I’m not sure about the wording. My meaning is that open collaboration produces policy decision that are more easily accepted and makes their implementation smoother.
@evika: eInclusion is one of the buzzword I’d like to avoid. I think the part on empowerment already cover effectively the issue.
Grazie Pizzican 🙂
good remarks, we took note
I would suggest:
* Changing ‘transparency’ to ‘transparency and openness’ – to cover legal openness as well as accessiblity online (hence gesturing to implementation of EU PSI Directive). This means that people are legally able to “access, understand, reuse, and remix” as stated in the third paragraph.
* Clarify ‘open’ to ‘open as in the Open Knowledge Definition’ (http://opendefinition.org/).
* Make data available in raw form, not just via web interface, API or value added service. See ‘Raw Data Now’ post on OKF blog, which Tim Berners-Lee mentioned at TED:
– http://blog.okfn.org/2007/11/07/give-us-the-data-raw-and-give-it-to-us-now/
– http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
Jonathan I agree with your points but please add them directly to the supporting document in order not to hinder the readability of the declaration as they are quite detailed.
Agree with Jonathan. Thanks!
Thank you for taking this timely initiative — which is long overdue and much needed. Indeed, innovation in the public sector is the next frontier in Europe’s quest for social renewal, citizen-centric services and user empowerment. This Declaration should be an integral part of the EU’s Innovation Act, which will be launched in spring 2010. Expanding the common understanding of innovation – and seeing public services as a key driver of change – is crucial if Europe hopes to cope with rising demand and growing expectations — not to mention the budgetary pressures on the horizon. With the onset of new technologies, there are no justifications for “business as usual.” Europe has the technologies, the active and participatory citizenry, the track record of social innovation. In this age of mass collaboration, co-creation and collective ingenuity, we would be foolish not to tap into the genius and insights of our citizenry. That is why this Declaration is as much an exercise in democracy as it is an idea whose time has come.
[…] is approaching (it will be held in Malmoe, Sweden, on 19-20 November), I have come across a draft Open Declaration on Public Services in the European Union, which – as far as I understand – will be presented at the conference, where we can expect a […]
My comments in-line. See you in Malmo :_)
The needs of today’s society are too complex to be solved by government alone. While traditional government policies used the web **(wider than web – i.e. digital channels)** to automate public services and encourage self-service, the biggest impact of the web **(needs to be wider)** will be in improving services**(and conversations?)** through collaboration, transparency and knowledge-sharing.**(how about overcoming barriers to participation, connecting communities etc?)**
Europe is uniquely well placed to be a leader in this area.**(actually it has some disadvantages such as language and slow broadband)**. It should grasp the opportunity to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the state by opening up public institutions and by empowering citizens**(my view is it’s tricky to get citizens to ‘take’ power, you can’t give it)** to take a more active role in public services.
As citizens, we want full insight into all the activities undertaken on our behalf. We want to be able to contribute to public policies as they are developed, implemented, and reviewed. We want to be actively involved in designing and providing public services**(citizen centric?)**with extensive scope to contribute our views and with more and more decisions in our hands**(careful, entering direct democracy terriroty. Would play it that it’s more representative decision making)**. We want the whole spectrum of government information from draft legislation to budget data to be easy for citizens to access, understand, reuse, and remix. This is not because we want to reduce government’s role, but because open collaboration will make public services better.**(actually, isn’t this about being in the spaces where people are instead of making them come to ours?)**
Against this background, we propose three core principles for European public services:
1. Transparency: all public sector organisations should be “transparent by default” and should provide the public with clear, regularly-updated information on all aspects of their operations and decision-making processes. There should also be robust mechanisms for citizens to highlight areas where they would like to see further transparency. When providing information, public sector organisations should do so in open, standard and reusable formats, but with full regard to privacy issues.
2. Participation: government should pro-actively seek citizen input in all its activities from user involvement in shaping services to public participation in policy-making. This input should be public for other citizens to view and government should publicly respond to it. The capacity to collaborate with citizens should become a core competence of government.
3. Empowerment: public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation. In particular, government data and government services should be made available in ways that others can easily build on. Public organisations should also enable all citizens to come together and solve their problems for themselves, by providing tools, skills and resources.
We recognise that implementing these principles will take time as governance mechanisms will have to be adapted, but we believe they should be at the heart of efforts to transform government. Citizens are already acting on these ideas and transforming public services “from the outside”, but governments should support and accelerate this process.
We call on European governments and the European Commission to incorporate these principles in their eGovernment action plans and ensure that Europe’s citizens enjoy the benefits of transparent, participative, empowering government as soon as possible.
Erm, while I like the declaration I can cite examples of where government *is* doing all of the above. Not least the EC who have funded the eParticipation preparatory action.
In my opinion the place that it falls down is:-
* Infrastructure. A commitment to providing the technology infrastructure (both wired and wireless) to access services on a fair and equal basis for all Europeans (including those in transit) in-line with the rest of the developed world.
* Education. A programme of up-skilling those in government (including politicians) with new media literacy and best practices in terms of citizen engagement
* Identity. Providing all citizens with a means of digital identification for the purposes of trusted transactions.
Good initiative, but I do agree with the remarks of mr dimaio that there is still to little participation an empowerment for individual governmental emplyees to seriously participate. Problem rests primarily at the management level in public organisations who see this kind of novelty as an unwanted personal hobby from individual emplyees.
When advocating values such as transparency, it helps if we can do it too. Reading all this for the first time it may not be as clear as it could be how stage 3 was arrived at from stage 2.
Governments sometimes put limits on participation which may not always seem reasonable to citizens. These can be to do with timing and context. In the case of this exercise, although the timescale has a logic to it, it could perhaps be better if set in a wider context. The usefulness of advocating such values or developing a supporting document for example are unlikely to disappear after a single event. It may not be clear how this initiative fits in with advocating similar initiatives within individual countries. I’ve put this question to ukgovweb. http://www.ukgovweb.org/forum/topics/cocreating-an-open-declaration
(Of course it may be that this is covered somewhere and I just haven’t found it yet)
As with other people I’m not convinced empowerment is the ideal word, but can’t suggest anything better as yet. Seems to be more to do with resources rather than power. It’s about resources of all kinds, including less measurable ones such as trust and social capital. It’s also not just about financial resources but community resources such as meeting places, and will become about resources which are likely to become rationed eg carbon footrpints.
Support dropping the leadership ‘hook’, more about building on promising foundations?
Again may have missed it but seems a need for some sort of intro to the detailed document for points which apply to all three values:
eg that the values apply to all public services, including especially local government
and voluntary and community sector (for example some of the bigger, longer established and more traditional organisations) should be encouraged (by both government and others) to embrace them. Hope to be able to contribute to the detailed document especially the participation bit.
Phil
many thanks for this. We changed a bit the process from the orginal plan, in order to make it more transparent. See here https://eups20.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/and-the-winner-is/
As fro the policy impact: we aim to influence the eGov action plan of the EC, which will be drafted in the next months. This will influence national policy as well.
All your comments are worth taking into account in the accompanying document, but at the moment we’re very busy leveraging endorsement which is going more slowly than expected! Please help and join the facebook group http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=150661944506
The most important change is to be promoted cultural change (and the statement goes on that line): It is essential to understand what is the objective of the Administration and all who work there. The real purpose of government is to serve the citizens and the citizen must be at the heart of management. Achieving this in the public means a cultural revolution in the way of doing things and the attitudes of the rulers as and / or other public and / as workers of the public. The loss of control and / or power resistor can fuel certain sectors of the public to change. It is very common that the information generated power, and therefore administered in a hierarchical context “protect” allegedly at the highest levels of the hierarchy of an organization against possible situations. The so-called web 2.0 is changing the practices of many public services today. Governments are increasingly called upon-and some committed “to strengthen their management, to provide citizens / as an extraordinary tool, interactive, it will inform them about their interests and who can listen to their views and assessments. One of the fastest growing activities in the state and trends of the most advanced governments is to provide timely information and interaction with citizens, with easily understood information on how to reverse the taxpayer, the way it is being spent.
The participatory environment and Web 2.0 leading to a change in attitudes of people, of the nodes where such work, the group that they themselves are and what they achieve: are geared to the needs of citizens and / or customers and therefore through the motivation to become increasingly achieve great loyalty from them.
Im having a tiny problem. I cant get my reader to pick-up your feed, Im using bing reader by the way.