e-Democracy

Managing democracy?

7 years ago
by John Gøtze in

A group of Canadian researchers led by Sandford Borins, and Perry 6 from the UK, have established an interesting site, Information In the Public Sector – Political, Policy, and Management Challenges, in preparation for a book about the experiences of the federal (Canada) and Ontario governments in “achieving the great potential presented, and meeting the enormous managerial challenges posed, by the application of information technology (IT) to services, policy consultation, and political processes up to the end of 2005.” I look forward to reading the book.

Thanks to Alexandra Samuel for pointing also to their e-democracy biography, which I cannot find via the “offical” site. The bibilography is partially annotated, and seems comprehensive and very useful.

We the Media

7 years ago
by John Gøtze in , , ,

Dan Gillmor‘s new book, We the Media is available online. The book is subtitled Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, and is about how new media and the explosion of conversations that blogs in particular represent, represents a deep shift in how we make and consume the news. Dan, a well-known blogger and professional writer/columnist, is a good storyteller. Buy it (UK/Europe) or buy in US. Or follow the explosion of blog conversations about the book.

I fully agree with Dan about the profound changes we see. I think we have only seen the beginnings of what will be a long revolution. Which takes place at many levels.

One of these is in politics, obviously. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen won the European elections in Denmark, and even though I doubt his blog significantly changed the vote, it was a good initiative. Respect. Even more so he deserves for continuing to blog after the elections. Let us see if he can make Bruxelles more “alive” by blogging his time in the parliament.

There are far too few politicians who blogs. Tom Watson and Richard Allan, over in the UK, are some of the few who does a good job at it too.

In the US, the politicians – who have significantly larger campaign budgets than we ever see in Europe – don’t seem to “need” to blog. They have people to do so. ConventionBloggers.com is the latest Dave Winer project. The Big Media (CNN) and grassroot-turned-”dotcom” (Technorati) “marriage”, CNN/Technorati Election Watch 2004, is another new project worth checking out.

I have added a new category for Political blogs in GotzeLinked. Feel free to add blogs of a clearly political nature here. Especially elected officials blogs, but if that rules out US blogs, anything political goes. The list of links in this category will be available in OPML, so you can import the list directly into your feed reader.

Viva the evolution

8 years ago
by John Gøtze in

Tom Riley and his The Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance has published the International Tracking Survey Report, Number Five named E-Governance to E-Democracy: Examining the evolution.

The conclusion:

E-democracy is in its nascent state and while we cannot accurately predict what shape it will take in generations to come, we do know that there will be changes. The key to the success of e-democracy will be the participation and partnership of all the stakeholders in government and the citizenry alike.

For the record: I’m no longer with the Swedish government, as the report states.

Steve pointed to BBC on e-democracy, with him appearing on BBCWorld’s Click Online. He also said this is not supposed to be public until the new year, so don’t click on it until after the holidays.

e-Democracy Technical Committee

8 years ago
by John Gøtze in

E-Democracy.Org‘s Technical Committee, which I’ve joined, was picked up by Howard Rheingold. There are some good ideas floating around. And lots of work to do …

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