A new government website called Your Freedom was launched today, offering members of the public the opportunity to voice their ideas and comments to reduce pointless regulation and unnecessary bureaucracy. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg explained how this provides a real chance for the public to influence government policy:

It’s a totally new way of making policy. A totally new way of putting you in charge.

Announcing the initiative on his YouTube channel, Clegg encouraged the public to get involved and tell the government if they feel their rights have been infringed :

Be demanding of your liberty. Be insistent about your rights.

Every time you have had to fill out three versions of the same form, tell us about it. Every time you have felt snooped on by the state, tell us about it. Every unnecessary law, every mind-numbing rule, every time your rights have been infringed – now is the time to tell us about it.

Public input

The Your Freedom project asks citizens three questions:

• Which current laws would you like to remove or change because they restrict your civil liberties?

• Which regulations do you think should be removed or changed to make running your business or organisation as simple as possible?

• Which offences do you think we should remove or change and why?

In his video address Clegg cautioned that the government would not be able to respond to every suggestion – the site already crashed due to heavy traffic, and received 2,000 ideas in the first day  – but he promised that every comment would at least be read.

The site explains that its part of the Programme for Government and its aim to ‘create a more open and less intrusive society through the restoration of Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness’. The site allows the public to submit, comment on, or vote for ideas on how to “free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.”

Users of the site will be able to comment on and rate their favourite ideas and relevant departments will then respond to the most popular workable ideas.:

Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.

So if there are any laws or regulations you’d like us to do away with, then submit your idea. If you see ideas here already that you like the look of, then rate them and get them moved up the list. And if there’s more you’d like to say, then talk to others in the comments section for each proposal.

The views expressed through the site will be taken into account in the Freedom Bill later this year.

Criticism

The site has already received a wide range of ideas, including as Simon Jeffery notes, calls to legalise cannabis and magic mushrooms. These topics also appeared prominently in US Open Government dialogue last year, but are unlikely to be seriously considered by a Conservative led government.

Clegg’s claims that this initiative represents “a totally new way of making policy”, however, could be countered by Labour’s highly successful Downing Street petition website launched in 2006. It is described as the:

largest non-partisan democracy site by volume of users ever, with over 8m signatures from over 5m unique email addresses, representing something like 10% of the entire UK population.

Jeffery notes some cynicism about the site launch on twitter:

When @GdnPolitics asked its Twitter followers what they thought about the Clegg initiative, replies came back along the lines of “I’m disappointed. I thought it was going to be a campaign to liberate Clegg from this ridiculous pseudo-coalition” or “FREE THE SHEFFIELD ONE“. When the question was re-phrased, people were still cynical. “A few token gestures to compensate for the coming pain, always goes down well…reminds me of the dentist’s lollipop,” said one.

This month has now seen the coalition’s launch two interesting online exercises – this, and the one asking public sector workers for ideas on ways to reduce government spending. Your Freedom seeks to build on the Conservative election pledge to try to open up the legislative process through providing citizens with an easy means to input into proposed policy. This is not without risks, however.  Ideas on legalising soft drugs are already some of the most popular suggestions on the site. If these prove to generate the most comments and approval, then the Government’s response will be an interesting test of how to manage online citizen feedback where diverges with government policy.

Further reading:

• Your Freedom
• Guardian article on Your Freedom launch
• ‘is [Your Freedom] the silliest new govt website or the most inspired?’
• BBC Newsnight discussion on Your Freedom

Earlier today, UK Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off a consultation exercise on ways to reduce government spending. Together with Nick Clegg he has written to public service workers asking them to share their ideas on where to make spending cuts.

A Spending Challenge website has been launched to solicit suggestions from Britain’s 6 million public sector workers. The challenge states that “Every single idea will be considered and the best ones taken forward by departments, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office”. Ideas will be analysed through a five step process:

1. All ideas considered by cross-government team
2. Serious ideas go to ‘champions’ team in Cabinet Office/Treasury
3. Most promising ideas sent to departments and Treasury spending teams to be worked up
4. Selected ideas reviewed by Ministers
5. Spending Review announced October 20th

The rational for the challenge is laid out in Cameron’s letter:

The biggest challenge our country faces is dealing with our huge debts – and that means we have to reduce public spending.

Reducing public spending will require innovative and challenging ideas, best developed by those working on the frontline of public services:

We want you to help us find those savings, so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontbench of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.

[...] Don’t hold back. Be innovative, be radical, challenge the way things are done. Every serious idea will be considered: by government departments, by the Treasury, by our teams in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office – and passed to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to make sure we don’t miss anything.

While the website states the government “will look at every single idea that comes in”, however, there is no guarantee any of the suggestions will make it through to the final Spending Review report in October. This will set detailed spending plans, with budget cuts of up to 25% over four years for many government departments.

The Spending Challenge will be opened to the general public from 9 July. A summary of all submissions will be published later this year.

Partner with Wikileaks

The Spending Challenge site will also monitor social media as a means of fulfilling its mandate to find innovative ideas for saving money. This represents a recognition that some of the most “out of the box” suggestions may be outlined by on blogs and forums, rather than a newly created government website:

Although this process allows you to submit ideas anonymously, we respect the fact that some people will not want to contribute directly to a government website.  As part of this exercise, we will monitor a range of blogs, social networks, forums and also http://wikileaks.org.

Save Award similarities

The UK Spending Challenge has many similarities to the Obama Administration’s SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award. On launching last year’s competition President Obama called for “a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better.”

David Cameron’s recognition that public sector workers often have the best ideas was outlined by Jeffrey Zients, chief performance officer and deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget, when he said it was important to listen to the voices of those on the front lines:

In the government and in the private sector, it is often those in the front lines that have the best ideas and who know the most… We are looking for ideas that save money, improves the way the government operates by lowering costs, simplifying processes, streamlining processes, getting rid of unnecessary red tape and that has an impact on citizens’ lives. It could be a wide range of ideas.

The competition was seen as a success with over 38,000 ideas being submitted in the three weeks of the competition. Given this, the SAVE Award was turned into an annual event with President Obama issuing his own “spending challenge” to government workers:

I’ve issued a challenge to every man and woman who works for the federal government:  If you see a way that government could do its job better, or do the same job for less money, I want to know about it

Saving through Open Source

The twitter reaction to the launch of the new site has been generally positive. The initiative is one of the latest examples of the coalition seeking to harnessing the collective ideas and experience of those working outside of central government.

As a nod to this the website itself is based on a WordPress theme developed by Simon Dickson for the recent Programme For Government site. Seeing the government use Open Source tools for the website, and reusing previous themes, demonstrates the spirit of the spending challenge.

The extension and reuse of such open source technology throughout government could help to bring down the cost of government websites. The axing of many government websites has already been proposed by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, but ideas from the public on reducing the costs of current sites e.g. through using free templates such as Govfresh’s Gov 2.0 theme, would be welcomed – especially when some current sites have a per visit cost of £11.78.

The winning idea from the US SAVE award is expected to save $2 million for 2011, and $14.5 million between 2010-2014. Any similar savings arising from the UK Spending Challenge should help establish the power of consultation with the public as a means of saving money and improving government efficiency.

Further reading

• Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized
• Measuring Government Website costs
• Government to axe hundreds of ‘unnecessary’ websites
• Technology in a Cold Climate
• Govfresh Gov 2.0 theme
• SAVE Award

Earlier this month, the Lisbon Council hosted the 2010 Innovation Summit in Brussels. The event focused on the changing nature of Innovation within the EU, and how it needs to become more open, collaborative and  interdisciplinary.

Some memorable quotes from the Panel – which included representatives from the EU, Google, OECD and Lisbon Council – include:

Andrew Wyckoff, Director – Science, Technology and Industry, OECD:

Governments sit on huge repositories of data, much of which they collect through their normal administrative functions, but some of which they’re paying for. Clinical trails…R&D that doesn’t make any progress; Failures. That’s useful information that should be put out into knowledge networks and markets…We need new markets for knowledge.

Martin Schuurmans, Chairman, European Institute of Innovation and Technology noted:

In addition to open innovation, a structural change in Europe’s innovation ecosystem also requires the full integration of the knowledge triangle; that is of higher education, research and business/innovation. To unleash Europe’s innovation potential, borders between academia and business, between teaching and research must be broken and made largely subordinate to entrepreneurship, which should be both the glue and the driver to success in innovation within the knowledge triangle

Rian Liebenberg, Engineering Director, Google:

…New Innovations face the battle of new versus old. Enabling innovations that could disrupt old ways of doing things to be successful, and not burdened by restrictive covenants..is not going to move us forward and make things better.

Along with this he outlined his ideas for Innovation policy as: Putting the consumer first; Removing barriers to innovation; Ensuring diversity in the hiring process and Encouraging risk taking for large companies.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinnn, called on Europe to step up its innovation performance, outlining how transformative changes should be used to address “grand challenges”. She went on to say:

We need to connect up and speed up innovation along the whole policy chain, from research to retail.

We are seeing the emergence of a new type of business, which co-innovates with its customers and even its competitors, and which, rather than relying solely on its own employees, puts some of its data into the public realm, to leverage the talents and insights of the global research community.

[...] The secret to success now lies in collaboration across borders and cultures. That is why we must have a single, unified research area in Europe, within which researchers and knowledge can move around freely.

Innovation is no longer the preserve of a select elite. It is needed in every walk of life…We are all innovators now – and the task ahead is to build, not just the “i-conomy”, but a cohesive and prosperous “i-society.”

European Innovation at a Crossroads

The event was underpinned by the launch of a new report Wikinomics and the Era of Openness: European Innovation at a Crossroads. The report author, Anthony D. Williams is co-author of Wikinomics, and a senior fellow at the Lisbon Council explained how collaboration was an integral aspect of the innovation process.

We’re in a period now where all institutions in a society need to be innovative. The key source of innovation today is new forms of collaboration, where institutions can reach out and tap into new sources of skills and capabilities by collaborating with people in their broader ecosystem…

Governments collaborating with citizens and non-profit organisations…it’s these collaborative models that will inevitably drive new forms of innovation and value creation in every institution…

What we need today are much more customised, interactive and collaborative public services, services where citizens themselves actually get engaged in not just designing the service, but in cases even delivering the services. Citizens become part of the value creation process.

Governments need to be more transparent. They need to be more collaborative. They need to engage with citizens and they need to look for new ideas, new innovations. Not just within the confines of the bureaucracy, but in the broader society in which they are a part.

The report examines the economic challenges facing Europe and demonstrates how Europe can benefit from increasing knowledge sharing, raising creativity and encouraging social innovation.

The key findings of the study include:

• Not all innovation occurs in laboratories; simply raising R&D spending (though important) is not enough to make Europe a global innovation leader. A new paradigm — openness — is replacing the old closed innovation systems, based on rigid protection of patents and other IP laws. The strength of openness is that it brings the intellectual and creative capacities of more and more people to bear on complex problems and problem solving.
• Web 2.0 and mass collaboration will reshape the nature of education, science and government. And, they could provide solutions to complex problems ranging from climate change to energy security
• Wherever possible, companies, countries and individuals should embrace open standards as a way of encouraging innovation…For example, an “open source” energy grid could introduce new innovation to an outmoded sector and bring greater consumer awareness and a sense of community to making ordinary household and business decisions that reduce carbon footprints.
• Europe is uniquely placed to thrive in this new era of “open” innovation; research excellence and cultural diversity are huge assets, so long as countries look beyond national borders and draw more knowledge from global and intra-national innovation webs
• Europe should require 80% of all publicly funded research to be available in open source journals after a short, six-month embargo under the Eighth Framework Programme, which is due to be adopted in 2014.

Role of Government

Speaking of government’s role in the Innovation process the report says (p25/26):

The first wave of digitally-enabled “e-government” strategies delivered some important benefits. It made government information and services more accessible to citizens while creating administrative and operational efficiencies. But too many of these initiatives simply paved the cow paths – that is, they focused on automating existing processes and moving existing government services online. This next wave of innovation presents an historic occasion to fundamentally redesign how government operates, how and what the public sector provides, and ultimately, how governments interact and engage with their citizens. Digital citizens increasingly expect to be partners in governance, not bystanders. It is time governments at all levels abandon their monopoly over the policy process in favour of participatory models that invite input – and ownership – at all stages of development, from problem definition and analysis, to identifying strategic options and making decisions. This goes far beyond the Internet consultations that for instance the European Commission occasionally conducts, or the blog of a government official. Instead, it is a process of opening up processes that have hitherto been closed and making governance and government more transparent, more accountable and more understandable.

European leaders can and must rise to these challenges. Government will either play an active and positive role in its own transformation, or change will happen to it. The transformation process is at the same time exhilarating and painful, but the price of inaction would be even worse: a lost opportunity for government to redefine its role in society and help launch a new era of participatory European governance.

The Market is the Message

Various policy ideas above are already outlined by different countries throughout the Union. However, the OECD noted that there is a need for an “upgrade” in policies for Innovation. This update should focus on embracing more than just R&D, but the bundling of associated services, software and “network” capital. Along with this collaborative / open models must be embraced (e.g. the release of open government data for the development of government as a platform applications), both between scientists, business and governments.

In his address, Martin Schuurmans spoke about how Entrepreneurship was ‘key’ – and often times more important than R&D – to developing new products and creating employment. As such, the EU should take the lead with initiatives similar to that of the Obama Administration, but particularly a focus on promoting Competitive Markets that Spur Productive Entrepreneurship. A culture and environment that promotes risk taking and allows companies to be internationally competitive in a global exchange of ideas and innovation is critical. Developing these competitive markets through which innovations can diffuse and scale is perhaps more important than increasing spending on R&D.

About the Lisbon Council

The Lisbon Council is a European think tank and policy network “committed to defining and articulating a mature strategy for managing current and future challenges.” It seeks strategies based on inclusion, opportunity and sustainability that will make the benefits of modernisation available to all our citizens.

Founded in 2003, the Lisbon Council is incorporated in Belgium as an independent, non-profit and non-partisan association.

For more see www.lisboncouncil.net and or @lisboncouncil.

With only two weeks left to vote in the POWER 2010 campaign, the top ideas have already amassed considerable support, with the introduction of a proportional voting system expected to top the poll.

There is, however, an idea that has considerable advantages and breaks new ground in how we think about major decisions facing local and national governments. Before getting into an explanation of the merits of Deliberative polling, it’s important to understand the background and aims of the Power 2010 campaign.

What is Power 2010?

The campaign is a truly diverse and mass discussion on the shape of British democracy. In just over 2 months it has received over 4,500 ideas from the public  to change how we do politics in this country.

The Power 2010 campaign explains itself as a means of giving “everyone the chance to have a say in how our democracy works for us”:

We need a healthy democracy that works for all of us and not just a powerful few. POWER2010 exists to help create it. It gives you the chance to have your say on how our democracy works so that together we can change it for the better.

Do you want cleaner funding? Fairer voting? More accountability? You decide. Tell us your ideas for changing the way we run our country. Those with most support will become the POWER2010 Pledge and the focus for our national campaign at the next election.

Deliberative poll (London, UK – Renewing British Democracy)

The POWER2010 campaign kicked off in early January with a Deliberative Poll in central London. Over 130 participants of all backgrounds and walks of life, were brought together to discuss proposals for democratic reform submitted by members of the public (phase 2 above).

The participants were representative of the population as a whole, and received balanced briefing materials detailing each of the reform ideas, with arguments for and against along with axillary background information. They deliberated in small groups with trained moderators and engaged in plenary sessions with experts. Participants’ opinions were gathered through confidential questionnaires before and after deliberations.

Together, by talking through the issues and cross-examining experts from across the spectrum of opinion, participants assembled a shortlist of reforms which they think can bring democracy back to the people.

Some of the comments from participants at the event illustrate the power of constructive debate amongst a diverse range of people:

“it has been good to meet people that don’t think like me, have completely different views, but then find out why”

“it’s quite a good learning process for me. I don’t think I knew an awful lot about politics and the processes, and I’m learning a lot here today…It has fired me up to find out more about the political process and perhaps I’ll be attending my local MP’s surgeries and raising a few more questions. ”

“In a few instances, I’ve.. been reformed to a different way of thinking”

While some of the participants were cynical about politicians, they were passionate about making government more democratic. During the event support for a more proportional system, rose from 48% to 53% and is now leading the list of reforms in the public vote.

Deliberative poll (Michigan, US – Solutions for Michigan’s problems)

Last month, Michigan public television stations broadcast “Hard Times, Hard Choices”, a special report on a  statewide citizens’ deliberation. Michigan is facing severe economic problems with rising unemployment and severe budget cutbacks due to the recession and its declining manufacturing base.

Over the weekend of November 13 – 15, 317 Michigan citizens traveled to Lansing to discuss and debate the state’s problems and what to do about them. The participants were a scientific random sample of people, representative of the population in age, education and political persuasion. Upon arrival the participants filled out a questionnaire to determine what preconceived notions and opinions each held on a wide variety of issues directly related to Michigan’s problems and any their views on possible solutions.

As with the Power 2010 event, the participants received background material in advance, debated the issues in small groups and then put their questions to a panel of experts.

The entire process was filmed by PBS to form the documentary below.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part One
Delegates are introduced to the concept of Deliberative polling and discuss jobs and education in Michigan.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part Two Delegates discuss the budget shortfall and the state’s options for taxing and spending.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part Three
Delegates discuss Michigan’s future and the hard economic choices ahead.

The knowledge the participants gleaned over the weekend alone was enough to spur many to a new activism and sense of purpose:

Carol Selden (Spring Arbor): “I need to become more of an informed citizen, and when I’m informed then I’ll be able to the ideas the legislators need to have to make good choices for us”

Michael Petross (Detroit): “In this group I’ve listened to other people’s opinions and I’ve changed some of my opinions.”

Results of Michigan’s first Deliberative Poll show what the people of the state would think if they could all become more informed, and had opportunities to discuss the issues in depth within diverse groups. When participants filled out the same questionnaire on the final day of the deliberative poll the results, showed a dramatic swing in attitudes and opinions in several major areas:

• Respondents were much more willing to support increases in the state income tax and sales tax to eliminate cuts in education and some other social services.

• Respondents were persuaded that cutting both the Michigan Business Tax and reducing small business taxes were among the best ways to attract and keep businesses, thereby creating jobs.

• Support for increased investment in a “green economy”, agriculture, and tourism also went up significantly during the weekend, as did support for a high-tech, knowledge-based economy.

Summary

The resulting changes of opinion in both Deliberative poll examples offer some dramatic recommendations for both policymakers and the public. These events increase public understanding of complex issues, and demonstrate the large difference between people’s uninformed and informed views (witness the comments and changes in support for issues following both Deliberative polls).

Stephen Whitehead, of the new economics foundation, outlines the benefits of the idea succinctly:

Deliberation – getting together and talking about issues – is a powerful tool to produce wise, well-informed decisions. Whilst critics of citizen involvement worry that the public will produce reactionary, conservative or discriminatory decisions, evidence suggests that talking through issues with people from different backgrounds moves people to views which are generous, tolerant and sometimes even imaginative.

Deliberation offers an alternative to the tiresome tug-of-war between proponents of representative and direct democracy. Rather than trusting in political elites to make decisions on our behalf on the basis of a tenuous mandate, or investing power in populist schemes like referenda which can be vulnerable to kneejerk reactions, deliberative democracy aims to create the conditions where the public can bring their wisdom, experience and empathy to decision-making.

So let me join with Stephen, and nearly 600 others, in recommending you to vote for deliberative polling as a means of “putting political power back into the hands of the people best qualified to use it – all of us.”

Further reading

For more on Deliberative polling check:

• Hard Times, Hard Choices Results
• The Center for Deliberative Democracy
• Deliberative Polling (1-pager)
• Tomorrow’s Europe (European Deliberative poll)
• [Video] Channel 4 News Report on Power 2010
• [Book] When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
• Public Participation methods – Deliberative polling

For details on new ideas from the University of Michigan – (as mentioned in the PBS documentary) – check 1000 pitches.

On November 19th, EU governments will meet in Malmo to sign a Ministerial Declaration on the key priorities for European e-government strategy over the next few years.

In recognition of this, a group of concerned citizens setup a campaign to collaboratively craft and get endorsed a declaration highlighting core principles for the advancement of European public services.

This Open declaration has now been created and will be presented at the official programme of the Ministerial Conference. The team is now seeking 2,000 endorsements for the declaration ‘in order to convince governments to fully embrace these values’.

A dedicated website has been created to allow citizens to register their support. The declaration has already received hundreds of endorsements (over 300 at last count) and has been translated into many languages including Greek, Catalan and Spanish.

Background

The video below explains the origin of the declaration and how the final text was arrived at.

The process towards the final declaration consisted of three phases:

1. Brainstorming - Uservoice was used to provide a platform through which citizens could submit policy recommendations for Public services 2.0. More than 40 recommendations were received and over 800 votes were cast.
2. Drafting the manifesto – The manifesto itself was drafted through the MixedInk platform. This enabled others to comment on and edit the document. Dozens of comments were collected which helped craft the final version of the declaration
3. Endorsement - This phase of the campaign is still in operation. A  detailed supporting programme on how to implement the key action points has been created, and the team is now seeking endorsement for the manifesto’s core principles and the actions needed for implementation.

The phased approach outlined above is similar to that taken by the Whitehouse during the drafting of the Open Government directive (to be released later this month). It’s also a similar approach to that being taken by the Australian government in relation to their Gov 2.0 taskforce. The medium through which the manifesto was created embodies the principles it seeks to embed within European public services i.e. that of openness, transparency and participation.

Manifesto Objectives

One of the primary objectives of the manifesto is for e-government policies to embrace ‘the open, meritocratic, transparent and user-driven culture of the web’. Encouraging innovation within European public services and allowing citizens to play a larger role in their provision is also a key objective. This can include the public building new public services based on open data, or simply engaging in dialog with Government around how service provision can be more citizen centric.

The manifesto focuses on three core principles for European public services:

1. Transparency – all public sector organisations should be “transparent by default”
2. Participation – government should pro-actively seek citizen input in all its activities
3. Empowerment – public institutions should seek to act as platforms for public value creation

The team note how these three principles converge in issues such as the importance of making data legally open. By doing this governments can empower citizens to proactively contribute towards improving public services or engaging in civic debate:

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 enable all citizens to solve their problems for themselves by providing tools, skills and resources. They should also treat citizens as owners of their own personal data and enable them to monitor and control how these data are shared.

European governments are already under an obligation to open up their data under the European Council Directive on the re-use of public sector information. The declaration, however, is pushing for ‘real openness, not just accessibility on a website‘. This means conforming to Open government principles and a recognizing that, as Vivek Kundra says:

government does not have a monopoly on the best ideas.

Work is already underway in many of these areas. For example, the Semantic Interoperability Center Europe seeks to support the sharing of assets of interoperability to be used in public administration and eGovernment. Also, many of the finalists in the European eGovernment awards exemplify how the web can be used to empower citizens and businesses to more effectively interact with government.

The manifesto seeks to provide principles in which to frame answers to the pertinent questions regarding public service. The design, delivery and accountability of public services has been questioned, and new thinking is required in order to redefine the function of public services in the 21st century.

In order to facilitate new thinking, however, those working within government must be empowered to experiment and take risks in the delivery of public services. Andrea DiMaio highlights how the declaration fails to take into account how these tenets should be embraced internally by government employees. Gwynne Kostin also identifies this as an issue and quotes Mark Drapeau on Gov 2.0′s mid-life crisis:

Despite some leadership from influential individuals on using social software in government, there is still in many cases a disconnect between authorities issuing directives and ground troops carrying them out…

There are some key issues that need to be overcome in order for the principles of Open Government to be embraced. Nevertheless, the manifesto tenets are not necessarily directed toward only government-to-citizen interaction. Rather they are principles required for an open civic system, which includes Government to Government communication. Given this, I believe endorsing the manifesto can also be considered as a recognition that Gov 2.0 tenets need to be promoted as a necessary prelude towards effective reform of public services.

I’ve endorsed the manifesto and encourage you to do the same.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Note: Malmo09 are organizing a conference to coincide with the 5th official EU e-government event in Malmo. Their aim is to offer a ‘creative statement of what Europeans really want from e-enabled government’. This Pecha Kucha style un-conference will issue their own popular declaration on e-government for Europe. For more information, or to attend see http://www.malmo09.org.

(Photo courtesy European Parliament on Flickr)