Wednesday, 10 December 2008
What is CitizenScape?
CitizenScape - eParticipation in Legislation Implementation
CitizenScape is a 2 year eParticipation ActionTrial Project that will integrate and test state-of-the-art Web 2.0 social networking ICT-based tools and solutions in a socially purposeful way in concrete legislative and decision-making processes - specifically looking at engaging Citizens to debate and engage with the implementation of EU environmental legislation at a local level. It will define the precise conditions to be fulfilled, the desires and needs expressed by citizens for collective participation in major EU issues, and the specific barriers to be overcome for deployment. The project will, in parallel with integrating “best of breed” components into the technological solution, adapt the very successful Public-i webcast methodology to create a framework for recruiting citizens to CitizenScape and then moderating their inputs. From this experience it is planned that the platform and approach will be applied and contribute to other EU policies as a key driver to sustain and expand the service after the trial period. The project seeks to create a ‘democratic pathway’ by attracting and recruiting citizens to use the Web 2.- style space of CitizenScape and then migrating them to more formal online democratic tools (such as petitioning). These formal tools will be the means to access the decision makers – in this case Local Councillors.
CitizenScape is unique in its combination of a strong and focused implementation methodology alongside the operational use of innovative technology. CitizenScape will be a flexible online space that will blend and integrate social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies with more formal online democratic tools. The Citizen eParticipation methodology will create an accessible and inclusive model for online and offline engagement with citizens which will ensure that CitizenScape implementations not only have effective technologies but also effective offline recruitment activities and support to guarantee that the Citizen Scapes are vibrant and active democratic centres. Experience with the eParticipate and LEGESE projects has indicated that these offline plans and activities are essential for driving traffic and use of eParticipation tools and that a blended approach is essential to ensure high take-up and best value from services.
The CitizenScape Trial Project includes:
- Identifying and recruiting community activists
- Creating a frame of reference and then code of conduct for the CitizenScape
- Recruiting and training community moderators to help mange and maintain the site
- Integrating Web 2.0 tools with online democratic tools to provide an easy-to-use coherent service.
- Amending and extending the Public-i methodology to create an inclusive and accessible citizen eParticipation process
- Programme of offline recruitment and training activities in order to support the online space
- Implementing the trial with real-life users for a period of one year.
- Analysis of the results and assessment of the impact of the trial.
- Dissemination of the project objectives and results, and joined-up activities with other initiatives in the eParticipation Action.
CitizenScape is a citizen-driven initiative that will provide tools, applications and services that empower citizens to contribute to legislative and decision-making processes and address the implementation of EU initiated legislation by Local Authorities. CitizenScape will involve key stakeholders, i.e. actors from both civil society and public institutions in a shared environment that is moderated and managed by the Local Authority.
The CitizenScape Partners are:
| Partner |
| Role |
| Web |
| 1. National Microelectronics Applications Centre Ltd | MAC | Project Manager, Coordinator, user requirements, sustainability. | IE | |
| 2. Public-I Group Ltd | PI | Technology Platform service Provider/Evaluator. | GB | |
| 3. Bristol City Council | BCC | ePetitioner/Viewfinder System & User Org/Field Trials | GB | |
| 4. Comune di Genova | CDG | User Org/Field Trials – Large City | IT | |
| 5. Donegal County Council | DCC | User Org/Field Trials – Remote Rural Area | IE | |
| 6. RDA Zilina | RDA | User Org/Field Trials – less favoured region. | SK |
Contact: Dr. John J O’Flaherty, CitizenScape Project Manager, j.oflaherty@mac.ie
Information on the CitizenScape tool/service supporting a targeted legislative process and/or decision making process. |
| The targeted legislative or decision making process and the proposed CitizenScape tool/service.
CitizenScape will be a flexible online environment that will blend social networking technologies with more formal online democratic tools such as ePetitioning and webcasting. The project team will also refine the current eParticipate methodology in order to create an inclusive and accessible pattern for online and offline engagement with citizens which will ensure that CitizenScape implementations not only have effective technologies but also effective offline recruitment activities and support to ensure that the spaces are vibrant and active democratic centres.
Citizens will be actively involved as moderators of the discussion and will be encouraged to engage with and influence decision makers.
Social networking is one of the greatest areas of Internet usage and CitizenScape seeks to exploit and harness this within a democratic context.
This shift to a more inclusive debate is an important one for Local Government to consider – and is clearly a big shift in behaviour for many organisations. As with any major change there are also risks to be considered. As a project CitizenScape will look at these risks and how to manage them.
CitizenScape will use web 2.0 tools in order to create interactive spaces which Local Authorities can use in order to encourage and stimulate debate around the legislative process. Web 2.0 tools such as discussion boards, wikis and blogs will be used in order to create citizen interaction around either a single issue or a single legislative process. The project will not be dominated by technology however as the project team also intend to extend and validate the project management methodology which has been used in the eParticipate project. These tools will be used to focus and channel citizens into formal online democratic tools such as online petitions and thereafter to influence Local Councillors..
Online democratic tools can be considered to be divided into those which replicate traditional offline democratic instruments and those which offer more informal engagement and participation in the general debate. The key objective of CitizenScape is to connect into the current trend and interest in online social networking – the Web2.0 phenomena – and to use this in a socially purposeful way to provide a space for citizens to debate and engage with democratic issues. These informal tools will then migrate people towards formal democratic instruments such as petitioning to ensure that the energy and interest created online can find its way back to into the mainstream of democracy in order to influence decision makers. Importantly the Web 2.0 tools will also be used to directly feed back outcomes and responses from decision makers in order to sustain an ongoing community of debate.
An important feature of the project will also be the blending of offline with online activities. Each of the Consultation Space implementations will have an outreach programme alongside the virtual environment to help build social networking and to reach a greater part of the citizen body. Activities could include: o ‘Question time’ debates – involving community groups as well as the Authority o Vox pop video sessions with citizens o Video training sessions for participants
This kind of blended project will need careful management both in terms of how to seed and nurture interactions as well as how to moderate and manage the discussion. The final part of the project will be to create a reusable methodology for community engagement in the process that encompasses not only the technological project considerations but also addresses the social and offline requirements for a successful project.
The idea is to connect CitizenScape to existing activities and the project will build on the experience of two earlier EU funded projects:
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| How the CitizenScape tool/ service relates to the eParticipation 2007 Work Programme.
CitizenScape will be a flexible tool that, as part of the implementation, will focus on involving citizens to create an accessible and inclusive online community – a social network – of people interested in Democracy. From this strong basis the Local Authorities will be able to focus attention on different democratic areas. Initially each of the sites will focus on environmental legislation from an EU and then local level, and subsequently expanding to all EU initiated legislation and policies. However the CitizenScape will also be encouraged to raise issues which are of general public interest as well.
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| The public interest and the anticipated impact of the tool/service on the legislative process.
In spite of the potential of the Information Society and the huge investment in eGovernment initiatives in all Member States, there is an emerging democratic deficit with fewer citizens than ever involved in the democratic process. CitizenScape will work with Citizens to help them rediscover the relevance of local democracy by enabling them to raise issues and also connect with other interested citizens. With the use of formal tools such as petitioning, users of the service also have a direct route to influence decision makers and to add their views to the mainstream debate.
A 25% increase in participation – most generally in the area of consultations - is set as an initial target over the 12 months pilot trials in the 4 very different legislative regions across Europe. This increase needs to be looked at with reference to increases in informal participation as well as participation in the formal democratic process.
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| The owner / provider / maintainer of the tool/service.
Public-i own the operational components of the CitizenScape service. Public-i will be provider and maintainer of the service. eParticipate, a previous eTEN Market Validation Project proved the technical and logistical trans-European viability of this approach. This will be documented in a Consortium Agreement amongst all Partners, that will be completed in the first 3 months of the project.
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| Users of the CitizenScape tool/service.
The users of the service will be Local Authorities. The end users will be citizens in all Regions across Europe. The Local, Regional, National and European Authorities will buy, and operate the service, so these will be targeted in the Viability Plan as the revenue providers to sustain the commercial operation of the CitizenScape Service across Europe.
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| How CitizenScape will be used (typical usage case from users point of view)
Citizens will either be recruited for the site or be introduced to it via one of the offline marketing activities or events planned.
Citizens will then access the CitizenScape service, using any standard Web-Browser on Dial-up (or Broadband) Internet access on any standard PC. Much of the content will be available to non-registered users however anyone wishing to post content will be asked to sign-up and join the site – as per other social networking sites such as Facebook.
Once on the site the user will be able to select their area of interest and either browse latest postings and events or add their own contribution. Users will be encouraged to migrate between informal social networking and more formal engagement with decision makers through online tools.
The site host will aim to encourage the debate and will regularly post short video which will provide a quick, easy and engaging digest to the site and signpost users to key parts of content. They will also recruit and train site moderators from the user community.
Users will also be encouraged to attend online and offline events in order to create a sense of community and focus.
Users will be recruited on one of two basis: · They have a strong interest in a particular topic and will benefit from the tools available on the site · They are prominent members of their community and can benefit from using the tools in order to create an online community to complement their offline activities.
The recent ePractice.eu publication “State of the art good practice in information exchange and Web 2.0” identifies the importance of recruitment in the success of any online community and suggests that hosts “try to find the people with personal attitudes closest to Web 2.0 values and community building” (P.85).
Once these two main groups are engaged then a wider marketing campaign will be initiated in order to recruit users more widely
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| How the CitizenScape tool/service be sustained - Who will pay the cost.)
Most Local, Regional, National and European Authorities will pay commercial operational and support costs for the service from their own budgets to ensure that their statutory citizen-engagement responsibilities are met by enabling easy communication and information exchange for effective public participation in legislation proposal formation, debate on draft legislation, legislation implementation and/or follow-up/monitoring of the legislation life cycle. Smaller Local and Regional Municipalities in less favoured regions across Europe will probably operate within groupings that will be publicly subvented from National and/or EU sources.
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| Technology that will be used - (hardware, software, delivery channels)
Citizens will use standard/Open PCs, Internet and Web Browsers. The CitzenScape service will run on the established eParticipate Public-i platform that centres on multimedia webcasting supported by the inclusion of contextual information and feedback facilities (www.public-i.eu
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Information on the trial | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Number of users that the CitizenScape tool/service will be validated with
| 1.25M | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Where will it be validated (All locations and the number of estimated users per location)
The current eParticipate project is able to engage over 1200 citizens in a single webcast and numbers of at least this magnitude would be expected for the CitizenScape service. This would achieve interactions with approximately 36,000 citizens across the entire project. This would include passive ‘lurkers’ who will be information consumers as well as more active participants. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Welcome to CitizenScape
This is an example of how content can be pulled in from another source - in this case a blog. This should widen out the people that we can get creating content and also make sure that we leave people with general web 2.0 skills at the end of the project rather than specific CMS skills for just one website.
The next stage will be to work out what happend when you view all posts on the blog (or rather all posts with the right tags) - I am proposing that you see them pop up in a lightbox as per viewfinder but this may not be possible!
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