From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 24 November 2008 15:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-Government Bulletin, 24 November 2008: BBC launches political webcasting; Green ICT; Blogging with a purpose; Participatory budgeting, part 2.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 277, 24 November 2008.
- A Headstar Publication
http://www.headstar.com .
IN THIS ISSUE: BBC launches political webcasting; Green ICT; Blogging with a purpose; Participatory budgeting, part 2.
Please forward this free service to others so they can subscribe - full details at the end. We never pass on email addresses.
++Special Notice: Techno-Footprint: ICT and Sustainability in the
Public Sector
27 November 2008, New Connaught Rooms, London http://www.headstar-events.com/techno08/
The Cabinet Office's 'Greening Government IT' paper sets a deadline of January 2009 for central government to address the impact on carbon emissions of all new ICT procurement; and larger councils will face significant financial penalties if they fail to meet carbon reduction targets from 1 January 2010 onwards, when a carbon trading scheme comes into play.
Headstar's second annual conference and exhibition on ICT and Sustainability in the Public Sector is a must-attend event, offering practical advice on reducing your IT footprint. Our fantastic speaker line-up includes Caroline Lucas MEP, recently elected as the first ever leader of the Green Party; Catalina McGregor from the Ministry of Defence, a department spearheading environmental activity in IT; and Chris Head from Socitm Insight.
Registration costs £295 + VAT for public sector workers and £395 + VAT for private sector:
http://www.headstar-events.com/techno08/
[Special notice ends]
++Issue 277 Contents.
01: BBC To Launch 'Democracy Live' Political Webcasting Service.
- Director of News Helen Boaden delivers E-Democracy '08 keynote.
02: ICT Energy Use 'Might Rise' To Save Emissions Elsewhere
- Technology industry chief offers green briefing to MPs.
03: Video Consultation Platform Among Innovation Fund Winners
- Ministry of Justice gives boost to e-democracy pioneers.
News in Brief: 04: Good Handling - data guidelines for councils; 05:
Ostrich Time - e-democracy blog row; 06: European Blueprint - recommendations adopted; 07: Inclusion Minister - correction.
Section Two: Conference Report - E-Democracy 08.
08: Blogging With A Purpose: Several government departments and agencies, including the Foreign Office and the Food Standards Agency, are making extensive use of blogging to engage citizens. But, as Tristan Parker reports, it is vital for those wishing to follow suit to have a clear set of aims from the outset.
Section Three: Special Focus - Participatory Budgeting, Part 2.
09: Sympathy For The Devil? Hamburg City Council used an innovative piece of software to let citizens try and set their own budgets for the city and help reduce a multi-billion euro deficit. The results were fascinating - and one high-profile participant even ended up feeling sorry for politicians. Dan Jellinek reports.
[Contents ends]
++Section One: News.
+01: BBC To Launch 'Democracy Live' Political Webcasting Service.
The BBC is to launch a political webcasting platform known as Democracy Live, Helen Boaden, Director of News at the BBC, told delegates at Headstar's E-Democracy '08 conference in London this month.
The site "will offer live and on-demand video from all the main UK institutions and the European Parliament. Users will be able to search across the video for representatives and issues that are relevant to them. They will be able to find out more about their representatives in the institutions and follow their contributions," Boaden said.
The site will also provide information on how the institutions of UK government work and what powers they have, as well as providing a resource of must know information concerning the issues in the news.
"And while this will make for a compelling mix on the site, we also want it to be a shareable resource, with video and text content that users can take and place on their own sites or blogs," she said.
In her keynote speech, Boaden focused on the role of citizen journalism enabled by new technologies in a modern democratic free press.
"Today, and increasingly in the future, audiences want the news at the time they want it; on the platform most convenient to them and tailored to the subjects or agenda they find most appealing.and for audiences who want to join in, that means including them in the process of making the news."
The London tube bombings of July 2005 brought the realisation that news gathering had changed forever, she said. It introduced citizen journalism on an unprecedented scale fuelled by the use of mobile camera and video phones. Within 24 hours of the attacks, the BBC had received 1,000 stills and videos, 3,000 texts and 20,000 e-mails.
The technology also gives organisations like the BBC footage that would be difficult to obtain otherwise, for example the BBC is barred from entering Burma but when the protests erupted last year they were bombarded by emails, pictures, texts and video from citizens observing the events. The importance of user-generated content (UGC) is now reflected in the creation of the UGC Hub -"a seven-day, 24-hour operation at the heart of our newsroom".
Boaden's speech is available in full on the BBC editor's blog:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/hb1 .
NOTE: Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=173 .
+02: ICT Energy Use Might Rise To Save Emissions Elsewhere, MPs
Told.
The amount of energy used by ICT systems might have to increase if organisations are to make optimal use of technology to reduce their carbon footprints overall, a leading industry spokesperson has said.
John Higgins, director general of UK technology industry body Intellect, told a November meeting of the cross-party Parliamentary IT Committee (PITCOM) that IT can contribute a great deal to developing more sustainable ways of working, such as cutting travel emissions through wider use of videoconferencing. As a result, while the IT industry should also take steps to improve the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of its products, the overall footprint of ICT may still have to enlarge if broader benefits are to be realised.
Higgins set out three conditions that would have to be met for such an increase to be acceptable: that energy is not being wasted; that sectoral emission growth is tied to greater savings elsewhere in the economy; and that total emissions are a small fraction of their 2000 levels.
Public sector bodies must ensure their energy use policies are well harmonised, Chris Chant, Chief Information Officer for the Olympics, told the meeting. "I know one organisation that installed energy management equipment but weren't getting the results they expected.
Then they discovered that another part of the organisation was running a 'switch off' campaign, so the equipment wasn't being used as it should have been."
All government departments have "green" strategies that require them to justify the carbon footprint of equipment purchased from 2009, Chant said. For IT purchases, this will include showing how the equipment will help to reduce emissions across the whole department, and from 2010 this information will be made public, he said.
Departmental green strategies will also cover issues such as outsourced IT, the ratio of devices to staff, and server utilisation, he said.
NOTE: A full report on the PITCOM's November meeting on green IT can be found at:
http://www.pitcom.org.uk
Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=174
+03: Video Consultation Platform Among Innovation Fund Winners.
An online consultation website combining text and video is among the nine winners of this year's Building Democracy Innovation Fund ( http://www.buildingdemocracy.co.uk/),
set up by the Ministry of Justice to promote democratic engagement.
Yoosk.com is an online conversation platform which allows anyone to ask questions of people including politicians, celebrities and other public figures. Votes cast by site users decide which questions get asked, and those selected are put forward to the figure in question.
The service allows respondents to post their answers in video format as well as text, an option which will soon be extended to users.
The site's co-founder Tim Hood said: "It can be used as an engagement and consultation tool for government, as a campaigning tool for political parties or as a means to conduct MPs' online constituency surgeries. Its aims are to improve the accessibility and accountability of public figures but also, seeing it from their point of view, to help them manage impossibly large volumes of direct communications and to get feedback on their performance."
Yoosk has recently completed a project with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). When Foreign Secretary David Miliband visited Wales, people were invited to ask him questions through Yoosk. Miliband posted his replies via video format, with site users then rating his answers (see http://www.yoosk.com/fco ).
Other innovation fund winners of up to £15,000 each were UK Feedback; LocalEyes - The Voice; All Hansard on TheyWorkForYou.com; Policy Slam; Tagwagon; Young Assets; Empowering the Blind Citizen; and the Cambridge Parliament High Support Needs Committee.
NOTE: Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=175 .
++New In Brief:
+05: GOOD HANDLING: A set of data handling guidelines for local
councils have been published by the Society of IT Management
(Socitm) with the Local Government Association and Welsh Local Government Association. The guidelines outline the steps every council should take to lessen the risk of personal information being lost or data protection systems failing. Details can be found at the local government Improvement and Development Agency website:
http://www.idea.gov.uk/datahandling .
+06: OSTRICH TIME: MPs are 'burying their heads in the sand' when
it comes to e-democracy, according to political blogger Iain Dale, a panelist at the closing 'Question Time' session of Headstar's recent E- democracy '08 conference. Other panelists included MPs Margaret Moran and Willie Rennie, who were partially dismissive of blogging, a lively debate which continued online on several blogs including Dale's own and that of Welsh Assembly member and blogger Bethan Jenkins.
Links to some of the relevant blog posts can be found at the conference
website:
http://www.headstar-events.com/edemocracy08/ .
+07: EUROPEAN BLUEPRINT: A set of recommendations on e-
democracy to be presented to the Council of Europe have been officially adopted by the Council's Ad hoc Committee on e-democracy
(CADHE) at the group's fourth meeting in Strasbourg on 13-14 November.
The text of the document as adopted is available here:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/cahde1 .
And for our previous report on the consultation process, see:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=171 .
+ 08: INCLUSION MINISTER: In issue 276, 10 November 2008 we
stated that the Digital Inclusion Action Plan was launched by cabinet officer Tom Watson. In fact, the action plan was launched by the Minister for Digital Inclusion, Paul Murphy.
[Section One ends].
++Special Notice: Designing for all: an inclusive approach to web,
print and electronic publishing
- A practical, one-day training course and document clinic
- Wednesday 3 December, RIBA, Central London http://www.headstar-training.com/dfa/ .
Trainer: Katie Grant, former publications manager, Disability Rights Commission.
'Designing for all' is a practical course designed to introduce organisations to the importance of designing accessible, easy to read information for a range of different audiences including older people, people with disabilities and people for whom English is not their first language.
It will help you assess current design and content of information - please bring examples to our document clinic. The course will be of interest to anyone who is involved in the design and delivery of information in print, electronic and web formats. To book a place see:
http://www.headstar-training.com/dfa/
[Special notice ends].
++Special Notice: Opportunities and risks of open source software in
the public sector.
-A Headstar Training/Positive Internet Masterclass Thursday 05 February, Central London http://www.headstar-training.com/Open/
Free and open source software have revolutionised ICT. In the public sector, an increasing number of bodies are making use of these technologies.
Cost is the main driver, since open source software has few of the costs and licensing restrictions of traditional software. However, the area is complex, and the savings analysis - taking into account training, full cost of ownership, and other issues - can lead to confusion.
Our masterclass can help. In our unique open source software overview training course aimed at the public sector, Nick Mailer unpicks the major controversies and myths surrounding free and open source software.
Nick will illustrate how you can leverage this software into your ICT environment, and move on safely to larger scale deployments. He shows how best to get support, advice and maintenance, and how best to secure your investment. To book a place visit:
http://www.headstar-training.com/Open/ .
[Special notice ends]
++Section Two: Conference Report
- E-Democracy '08.
+07: Blogging With A Purpose
by Tristan Parker.
Is it still acceptable in these health-conscious times to have a bacon sandwich as a snack?
It might not sound like an enormously significant question for a government agency to pose, but for Jane Seymour, web editor at the Food Standards Agency, it was this and similar everyday dilemmas that proved the most successful way to engage people online.
Seeking to increase the profile of the agency's chief scientist, Andrew Wadge, Jane Seymour and her team set up a blog for him in November 2006. "I was sceptical at first," admits Jane, but the blog has proved popular, having received more than 330,000 visits, at an average of 15,000 a month (20,000 when a popular topic is being discussed) and around 450 user comments posted since the project began.
Many of these comments were in response to popular or controversial topics explored by Andrew, such as the bacon sandwich question, the value or otherwise of detoxing, and 'traffic light' labelling of food. The results saw both Andrew and the blog featured in the national press, hence achieving the raise in profile for which Jane and her team had been aiming.
The site also experienced positive feedback, with 45 per cent of users rating it highly and 80 per cent saying they would return. Based on her experience, Jane offers three main points for maintaining a successful
blog: "Choose your blogger carefully, making sure it's someone who will get involved; don't underestimate the time needed; and know what you're trying to achieve."
Seymour was addressing delegates at a 'digital dialogues' workshop, hosted by the Hansard Society at this month's E-Democracy '08 (
http://www.headstar-events.com/edemocracy08 ).
The need for blogs to be set up with a specific goal in mind was reiterated by Stephen Hale, Head of Engagement and Digital Diplomacy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Hale developed the 'FCO bloggers: global conversations' site for the department (http://blogs.fco.gov.uk), which features a range of bloggers led by Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Encouraging ministers and officials to write on the site has been one aspect of a programme by Stephen to develop digital engagement throughout the FCO.
Hale outlined the usefulness of digital diplomacy as a method of working towards foreign policy objectives, for example, in supporting the global Arms Trade Treaty: "It's not enough just to say once that we support the treaty - this is where blogs come in. They allow us to have a continuing narrative.
"If we had published the [Arms Trade Treaty] campaign on the web, it would have been a one-off. What blogs can do is keep talking about something and keep generating new content. They give us a mechanism for providing commentary. However, they are just one tool for engagement. In some cases they are brilliant, but there will be other cases where they are not appropriate."
Although the FCO has already set up blogs in around 40 languages, Hale stressed the need for a continual widening of the department's global community of engagement: "We still need more foreign language blogs. If we are trying to influence people, we have to do it in their own language."
The session was chaired by Andy Williamson, eDemocracy Director of the Hansard Society, which has recently concluded an independent 'digital dialogues' review of how ICT can be used effectively by central government to enhance public engagement ( http://www.digitaldialogues.org.uk/ ).
Williamson concluded that online tools must still always be complemented by more traditional forms of public engagement: "If we are going to engage people online, we've got to have clear aims about what we want to achieve. We do not yet live in a digital society. We can't look at digital democracy as a single solution."
NOTE: Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=176 .
[Section Two ends].
++Section Three: Special Focus
- Participatory Budgeting, Part 2.
+09: Sympathy For The Devil?
by Dan Jellinek.
As we saw last issue, participatory budgeting (PB) - the direct involvement of citizens in public spending decisions - began in Brazil but is spreading across the globe like democratic wildfire.
The enhancement of PB with online tools - 'e-PB' - is also developing rapidly, from the small town of Jun in Granada, Spain, where citizens can participate live during the budget debate using mobile phones and wireless internet, to the city of Parma in Italy; the French region of Poitou-Charentes; and the German city-state of Hamburg.
In Hamburg, participatory budgeting was introduced in 2006 on the initiative of city politician Rüdiger Kruse, Christian Democratic Party spokesman for finance and the environment. Kruse and his party were frustrated with the city's large budget deficit - running at around 10 billion euros, attracting annual interest payments of 1 billion euros.
Kruse's idea was to encourage more prudent budgeting by making the process more transparent, and making cuts more acceptable by using some of the money saved on debt interest payments to fund future participatory budgeting projects.
"My idea was to pay back 200m euros of debt a year, and give 50 per cent of interest back to the public to decide what to do with it," he told delegates at a workshop on PB at the recent World E-Democracy Forum in Issy, Paris ( http://www.edemocracy-forum.com/).
"And then there will be a point of no return [on participation], because people will like to do it."
Any worries that involving the public in spending decisions would simply lead to even higher budgets was not borne out, Kruse said.
"Sceptics always say people always want to spend more money, but the public consultation shows the opposite is true. Planning budgets reduced spending by 10 per cent, and helped in the fight to ban new debt."
Once the council had agreed to let all citizens have a go at setting the next city budget, the problem they faced was making what is an extremely complex financial calculation understandable, he said. The solution was to use a piece of software developed by Tutech, Hamburg's technology transfer company which spans the city's universities and the private sector.
The software displayed the various parts of the city budget as three- dimensional pie charts, with accompanying 'sliders' which people could use to move spending plans in each area up or down, to a maximum of 150 per cent and a minimum of 50 per cent of their current positions. Participants were forbidden from exceeding current spending overall, though they could spend less.
The exercise was then publicised widely throughout Hamburg between
18 April and 12 May 2006, using the image of an iced cake decorated with the city's castle logo being sliced up by a large knife (this image is still visible on the project's German language website http://www.hamburg-haushalt.de/ ).
Other publicity was generated from billboards donated by the French street advertising company JCDecaux.
By the end of the four-week project the website had attracted around 50,000 unique visitors, with 2,870 registering as participants; 2,138 creating draft budgets (people were allowed to begin drafts, save them and return later); all of which led to 38 final concrete new budget proposals.
The process of creating a new budget for the city of Hamburg took around an hour. For such an important task, "this might not seem like a long time", said Kruse, "but most of my colleagues in Parliament do not spend 60 minutes looking at the budget."
Overall trends of citizen-set budgets included more spending on services for children, less for culture and less for adults and social welfare, he said. There was also generally less money allocated for the Ministry of Finance - "no-one likes them" - and more for universities.
Local papers published some of the budget ideas - "they also published my budget, and I had some interesting discussions afterwards with some of the senators," Kruse said.
Although the results of the project had no formal status, they were debated in the city's Parliament, and out of that and may have played a part in the council's subsequent decision to stop new public borrowing, Kruse said. Other positive outcomes included that the city's finance department "decided they had had so much fun with this software, they decided to set up a budget planning education programme for children and young people."
The software's creator Tutech has since launched the software as a generic system, 'Demos Budget', on offer to any public body interested in running a similar exercise (http://www.demos-budget.eu/).
It seems clear that more and more public bodies will be interested in e- PB in 2009, so this tool and others like it could be coming soon to a city near you.
However the last word on e-PB in Hamburg should be left to Cornelius "Corny" Littmann, president of the local football club FC St. Pauli and one of a few high profile individuals that tried his hand at budgeting.
In a statement that became widely quoted, Littmann told the press:
"With the financial planner, one goes through three phases: First it's fun, then it gets complicated, and finally you are annoyed because it's so hard to achieve a balanced budget. At the end, you really feel sorry for the politicians responsible for the budget."
A tool that generates sympathy for politicians - truly a miracle.
NOTE: The Hamburg budget planner tool can be experienced online in the German language by logging on with the user name and password 'test' and clicking on 'planer' at:
http://demos.tutech.de
Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=172 .
[Section Three ends].
++END NOTES.
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ISSN 1476-6310
+PERSONNEL
Editor: Dan Jellinek.
Reporters: Majeed Saleh, Tristan Parker.
Associate Editors - Derek Parkinson, Mel Poluck.
[Issue 277 ends].
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