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.

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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)

Fields of Gold: Lifting the Veil on Europe’s Farm Subsidies from Farmsubsidy.org on Vimeo.

The film above tells the story of Farmsubsidy.org. It explains how journalists, researchers and computer programmers worked together to make information on the European Union’s farm subsidies more open and transparent.

Until recently,  data on the allocation of €55 billion a year through the Common Agricultural Policy was a closely-guarded secret. However, through Freedom of Information requests, and the determination of  a wide variety of people right across Europe, taxpayers now have easy access to detailed information on how this money is spent.

This detailed analysis, is not provided through a European Union (EU) website however, but rather through Farmsubsidy.org. This  project is coordinated by EU Transparency, a non-profit organization in the UK and Kaas og Mulvad, a research and analysis company in Denmark. Their aim is to obtain detailed data relating to payments and recipients of farm subsidies in all EU member states, and make this easily accessible to European citizens.

The Importance of Open Data

Jonathan Gray notes the film’s central tenet regarding the importance of making data open. Journalist Brigitte Alfter argues that the public have a right to know where public funds are spent, while policy analyst David Osimo explains how making data open allows it to be mashed-up and visualised by third-parties. In order to do this, however, the EU member states need to ensure their datasets conform to the principles of Open Government data. While some countries are more open with their data formats, these principles have not been universally applied. Indeed, FarmSubsidy.org contains a Transparency Index which grades countries on the openness of their recipient data.

The film also hears about  Siim Kallas’s broader drive towards transparency in European institutions, and hears about how FarmSubsidy paves the way for more open access to official European datasets. While some datasets are already available, a data.gov style European portal would be a useful addition to ensure data from all EU countries is made easily accessible for comparative analysis.

Future

The film briefly highlights other initiatives such as:

• FishSubsidy.org – detailing the subsidies paid under the European Union’s fisheries policy
• FollowTheMoney.eu – making the EU budget more transparent i.e. how it gets decided, where the money comes from and how it is spent

These EU initiatives are similar to US projects such as SubsidyScope.org. This project aims to raise public awareness about the role of US Government subsidies in the economy. It’s current project details information on the financial institutions receiving benefits from various federal programs as a result of the Financial Bailout. It provides an easily accessible mechanism to allow citizens understand how and where taxpayer dollars are being spent. Their next project will cover the Transportation industry and detail Government subsidies in this area. Indeed, their vision is to build a comprehensive federal subsidy database by economic sector.

Such an initiative would be extremely valuable at an EU level. For example, data relating to transportation subsidies at an EU level, as exemplified in the recent Airbus/Boeing case, is not easily accessible in a manner in which citizens can easily understand. Ideally, Siim Kallas’s transparency initiative will expand on initiatives such as FarmSubsidy.org, and bring greater openness to EU spending i.e. through expanding the information and details provided through the Financial Transparency System and other recipient databases.

The EU launched a new website last week as part of an online debate to discuss new ideas for future innovation policy. The site aims to gather proposals on how to stimulate and promote innovation throughout the EU. This debate, and the ideas it generates, will then feed into a final report to the European Commission on how to shape the future innovation strategy of the EU.

The site is centered around ideas and proposals from a business panel established to provide inputs on the economic priorities for an innovation policy. This panel includes representatives from manufacturing companies such as Kone, financial institutions such as the Czech bank CSOB, as well as technology companies such as Cisco. They are due to provide a final report to the Commission in early Autumn, which is intended to provide a major input to the European Innovation Plan.

Initial consultation notes prepared by the panel discuss many of the shortcomings of current EU policy. They note that while Innovation has been a central EU priority over the last decade:

Europe has not achieved its full goal of being the most competitive global knowledge economy and is not investing effectively or appropriately in the infrastructure, competences, creative environments and businesses needed for 21st century innovation.

The panel believes the EU needs an innovation policy which is “decentralised, self renewing, and connected; and which builds on the unique diversity of an enlarged Union in an increasingly competitive globalised world.” They emphasise how building a knowledge society is not enough, and rather Europe must create an innovation society “where knowledge is utilised rapidly and powerfully for societal benefit and development”. Establishing such a society requires a:

systematic transformation from fragmented, single issue, closed approaches favouring large incumbents to networked, flexible and open approaches favouring new entrants and ideas.

Innovation ideas

The current proposals developed by the panel center around five main areas. These include:

1. Broadening the concept of Innovation – From business to social innovation
2. Speed and synchronisation - From fragmented bureaucracies to flexible partnerships, from better regulation to pro-innovation regulation
3. Invest in future infrastructure and unlock its potential – From bridges to fiber optic, from control to open access
4. Innovative financing models - From public vs private to public private partnerships
5. New places for new types of collaboration - From closed processes to the power of networks
   

The site is currently seeking new proposals and ideas from the public to enhance and build on these concepts. Google and others have already submitted proposals as part of this consultation. Google notes, however, that some issues have not been fully discussed by the panel. For example, there is no discussion of Copyright, and Intellectual property is only briefly mentioned. Also, there’s little discussion on new forms of grass-roots innovation funding (think 4IP/Social Innovation Camp, Social Innovation Funds etc), with the panel acknowledging public financing is frequently “directed to incumbents in mature industries”.

In order to gather together the innovative ideas necessary to make the EU’s fifth freedom (the free movement of knowledge) a reality, proposals from diverse interests need to be debated on the site. The issues currently absent from the panel proposals, represent significant hurdles to the innovation society the EU seeks to create. Ideas on new education models, sustainability and fundamental rights should be allowed to flourish and garner support on the site. Unfortunately, the current incarnation of the initiative does not allow for such focused debate.

Consultation implementation

Many of the ideas outlined in the consultation, such as Changing public procurement to support innovation, Opening up Government owned data and Improving broadband infrastructure, have been discussed at at length at conferences such as RebootBritain and in reports such as Digital Britain. In this vein, the ideas (e.g. as setout in the RebootBritain essays) and recommendations already progressed to enhance innovation, should be more visible throughout the site. Much detailed work has already been done on these topics throughout various EU countries, however, these recommendations are not highlighted in the current consultation.

David Osimo highlights the lack of Web 2.0 functionality throughout the site, and makes some good points about their means of ‘publishing ideas’. There is no facility available in which users of the site can publish their ideas and have these rated and commented on. Instead, ideas are sent to the panel for deliberation. The use of platforms such as Uservoice would provide a more user-friendly and democratic means for the dissemination of ideas. It has been used successfully to brainstorm ideas on how EU governments can use the Internet to transform public services, and would have been a useful addition to the site.

The UK Government has experimented with many different tools (e.g. Netvibes, Twitter, Commentpress) to encourage greater participation during consultations. Steph Grey from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has outlined ideas on how to improve online discussions about policy. One of the important characteristics is to enable the community to improve on, and enhance ideas submitted by others. This requires openness and transparency in how consultation ideas are published, so as to encourage a debate about the merits of different suggestions.

A Collaborative approach to developing government policy

This consultation would have benefited from a more structured approach like that taken by the Whitehouse. The mandate for their open government initiative was to be:

fully transparent in our work, participatory in soliciting your ideas and expertise, and collaborative in how we experiment together to use new tools and techniques for developing open government policy.

As such, they created a 3-phase process, with which to inform the crafting of an open government policy. This involved:

• Phase 1: Brainstorm – Ideas were shared and voted on using an Innovation management and Crowdsourcing application (http://opengov.ideascale.com)
• Phase 2: Discuss – The results of the brainstorm were discussed and distilled into topics to focus on in the third phase
• Phase 3: Draft - During this phase the public was invited to collaborate on crafting proposals originating from the discussion phase. This was done using a wiki at http://www.mixedink.com/OpenGov

This approached experimented with new and innovative tools to engage with the public, and allow for mass collaboration in the drafting of policy. While this approach generated some comments which needed to be deleted (and others seriously off topic e.g. UFO, birth certificate questions), these should not detract from the many excellent ideas it generated. The process would have suffered significantly were the ideas of the public simply solicited using traditional means, and not published in commentable format.

While I welcome the emphasis on soliciting ideas and comments from the public, the execution of the initiative has not exemplified the nature of the policy discussion. Crafting an Innovation policy deserves the utilisation of the most innovative tools appropriate. In this regard, the EU has fallen short.