Projects
QUESTAO PUBLICA
Gov2u in cooperation with the Centre for Research on Direct Democracy of Zurich University, Transparency International and the local organizations Avina and Ethos is developing and implementing a project in Brazil in order to mobilize citizens to participate in the forthcoming Presidential elections and familiarize them with the democratic processes. More information will be communicated shortly.
USPEAK
Gov2u in cooperation with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), is developing an institutional building project addressed to policy makers that has as scope to redefine the way Parliaments and Citizens interact with one another in the 21st Century by educating and strengthening of capacity and knowledge of MPs from African countries .More information will be communicated shortly.
Agios Stefanos
Gov2u is providing since 2008 consulting and IT services to the Municipality of Agios Stefanos so to introduce eParticipation tools in the everyday interaction of citizens with the municipal authorities.
For more information http://www.agstefanos.gr
wegov
The WeGov project : closing the loop between policy makers & citizens Enriching policy dialogue by harnessing the dynamic potential of Social Networking Sites:
The WeGov project will develop a toolset that allows full advantage to be taken of a wide range of existing and well established social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, WordPress etc.) to engage citizens in two-way dialogues as part of governance and policymaking processes. A key feature of our approach is to allow policy makers to move away from the limitations inherent in the current practice of using bespoke and dedicated platforms (e.g. specific opinion soliciting websites hosted by government) and instead make full use of the high levels of participation and rich discussions that already take place in existing social networking communities.
The consortium represented in the project WeGov is constituted of six experts in the eParticipation community (Hansard, Gov2u, GFI) and government consulting (GESIS) with an outstanding international reputation and skills in the area of ICT research and development, in particular advanced open social networking platforms.
For more information please visit: http://www.wegov-project.eu/
 This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME THEME ICT 2009.7.3 ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling.
SPOCS
SPOCS, which is the acronym for "Simple Procedures Online for Cross-border Services", is a pilot project launched by the European Commission which aims to remove the administrative barriers that European businesses face before offering their services abroad. SPOCS is expected to further enhance the quality of electronic procedures completion and has been designed for businesses that have an interest in cross-border activities. It will allow them to meet all the administrative obligations through a single contact point that will be available online in all EU Member States by the end of 2009. Gov2u will lead the dissemination – awareness raising workpackage of the project
For more information please refer to SPOCS website http://www.eu-spocs.eu
Africa4all project
The Africa4all Project initiative will provide to the parliaments of Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda a specific ICT solution that will involve both Parliaments and the general public, aiming to create a new relationship between MPs and the citizens. As a result, there will be a stronger connection between citizens and politics and furthermore the complexity of decision-making processes in the participating African countries is expected to be improved. An open source platform that has already achieved international recognition and the support of the European Union (Demos@Work – Gov2DemOSS) will be used for the Africa4all Project, after customization for all participating Parliaments.
Africa4all (FED 2009/216 126) is a project cofunded under the 9th European Development Fund by ACP Group and EUROPAID.
For more information please refer to Africa4all project website http://www.africa4all-project.eu
STORK
STORK is a competitiveness and innovation framework programme, co-funded by EU. It aims at implementing an EU wide interoperable system for recognition of eID and authentication that will enable businesses, citizens and government employees to use their national electronic identities in any Member State.
It will also pilot transborder eGovernment identity services and learn from practice on how to roll out such services, and to experience what benefits and challenges an EU wide interoperability system for recognition of eID will bring.
The STORK interoperable solution for electronic identity (eID) is based on a distributed architecture that will pave the way towards full integration of EU e-services while taking into account specifications and infrastructures currently existing in EU Member States. The solution provided is intended to be robust, transparent, safe to use and scalable, and should be implemented in such a way that it is sustainable beyond the life of the pilot.
The project will:
- Develop common rules and specifications to assist mutual recognition of eIDs across national borders;
- Test, in real life environments, secure and easy-to-use eID solutions for citizens and businesses
- Interact with other EU initiatives to maximize the usefulness of eID services.
It will do so by preparing for and implementing several pilots with services that will have significant potential impact and are adequately secure, by making use of open standards where possible and respecting with data protection regulations. The pilots will test the common specification on eID for several applications that have a substantial impact on eGovernment across Europe.
Gov2u is leading the dissemination exploitation activities of the project. For more information please refer to the project’s website http://www.eid-stork.eu/
VoiceS
"VoiceS: integrating Semantics, Social Software and Serious Games into eParticipation" is a complementary project, integrating a serious game and a semantic search function into the existing German and Spanish VoicE platforms. The project was launched on January 1st, 2009 and will be running for two years.
The consortium comprises experts from the field of eParticipation, game development, communication and policy analysis from five European countries. VoiceS will update and complement the VoicE internet platforms in order to further promote the dialogue between citizens from European regions and "their" regional policy makers from the European Parliament, thus creating a direct link between citizens and the representatives from their region. The project will continue to focus on the policy area of consumer protection in the EU, a field of high relevance to each citizen. It will build on the community and contacts that have been firmly established in the framework of the VoicE project.
More information will be published soon here on www.give-your-voice.eu.
U@marenostrum
U@Marenostrum is s trial project co-financed within the programme "eParticipation 2008" of the European Commission. The project aims at supporting citizens and local actors to identify and solve important environmental problems related to the management of water and marine environmental protection in the French Riviera, Valencia and Ionian Islands regions in order to enhance their participation in the environmental legislative and decision making processes.
The U@MARENOSTRUM technological platform will be a web-based Public Participation GIS created through the customization of the Gov2Demoss open source platform integrated with a Geographic Information System (GIS).
For more information please refer to the project’s website http://www.uatmarenostrum.eu
VoicE - Giving European People a Voice in EU-Legislation
VoicE will establish an internet platform with the objective to promote the dialog between citizens from European regions, “their” EU decision-makers and further political stakeholders on the policy field of consumer protection in the EU.
Short description of the project:
The project VoicE is designed as a citizen-driven trial project for the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg in Germany and for the Valencia region in Spain, assessing the feasibility of a regional and issue-specific approach towards eParticipation in the EU. It will establish an internet platform with the objective to promote the dialogue between citizens from European regions and policy makers from the European parliament, the Assembly of Regions, other EU institutions as well as regional assemblies – by means of innovative ICT. In terms of contents, the project will focus on the policy field of consumer protection in the EU. VoicE aims at testing the award-winning platform Gov2DemOSS, developed by Gov2u and its application in a new political environment, the EU legislative process.
Funding:
VoicE is co-funded under the IST Programme, the 2007 eParticipation call, by the European Commission.
Period of implementation:
January 2008-December 2009
Project locations:
- the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- Valencia Region, Spain
Members of the implementing consortium:
- Medien und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg , Germany
- Dirección General de Modernización de Valencia, Spain
- Europa Zentrum Baden-Württemberg , Germany
- Fundación Comunidad Valenciana - Región Europea
- University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
- EuroSoc- Think tank for European decisions, Germany
- Ministry for Nutrition and Rural Area , Germany
- Ministry of the State Germany
- Gov2u, Greece
The users will be the following:
- Citizens from Baden-Württemberg and Valencia Region
- Members of the European Parliament/Committee of the Regions linked to Baden-Württemberg and the Valencia Region
- Representatives from regional administrative bodies
- Representatives from Brussels-based organisations with links to region
- Parliamentarians from the regional assembly with EU-policy focus
Objectives of the project:
- To establish and maintain state-of the art trial online platform enabling citizens participation;
- To develop methods to reduce the complexities (27 countries, different languages, huge amount of legislative issues) with the help of a regional and a thematic focus
- To make EU legislation currently in preparation in the selected field accessible for everyone through electronic means
- To actively promote the project on a large scale, to address citizens directly and to get as many of them involved as possible
- To establish channels allowing EU decision-makers to ask for input on legislative issues, but also to ensure that citizen consultation results are forward to decision-makers in charge
- To critically evaluate the selected approach, compare its results to other eParticipation initiatives and to disseminate the results achieved in this manner
The anticipated impact:
- The citizens will be better informed about the EU policies in the field of consumer protection and about the EU political processes in general.
- The citizens will be able to really express their opinions on day-to-day legislation in the field of consumer protection, delivering real inputs.
- The legislative input created by participating citizens will really reach its addressees.
- A “public sphere” concerning EU topics with a regional focus will be established.
- The website of the project is: http://www.give-your-voice.eu/
The VoicE platform is currently under construction and is scheduled to become fully operational in September 2008.
eGovMoNet
The implementation of eGovernment solutions is expected to bring a number of advantages including efficiency, increased user satisfaction, and reduction of administrative burden. However, this cannot be taken for granted any longer. Well informed strategic decisions on investments in eGovernment developments will need measurements of impact and user satisfaction.
The eGovMoNet network therefore propose to:
The network will organise semi-annual events, preferably linked to highly profiled international eGovernment conferences.
The network will to last for 2 years, with the first year setting the focus on eGovernment measurement of user satisfaction, and the second year focusing on impact measurement. At least once a year, the eGovMoNet events, will be spiced by presentation of measurement results and insights from large scale evaluations from ongoing projects within the network.
The work will build on the experience from generic measurement frameworks such as eGEP, UWEM, the annual EU measurement of 20 key services, the national measurement efforts, such as the German WiBe approach, the British CJIT approach, or the Norwegian Norge.no annual benchmarking, or the benchmarking efforts at regional levels such as those elaborated in the UNDERSTAND project. The project will also built on new initiatives, such the new EU-funded eGovernment Bench-learning Pilots or the new study on user satisfaction, as well as nationally funded projects, such as eGovMon in Norway.
Good implementations will be shared and actively promoted both via the network’s dissemination channels, such as eGovMoNet events, web page, or newsletters, and external channels, incl. EU’s ePractice good practice exchange portal.
All eGovMoNet activities will be open to all and the results will be developed under an open licence, ensuring the ease of further development and reuse. An effort will be made to establish effective collaboration routines for further sustainable operation of the eGovMoNet community.
The consortium consists of eGovernment stakeholders with a wide coverage of different roles related to eGovernment measurement development implementation, and use. The consortium includes 30 partners from 11 countries, and 3 associate partners from 3 countries. The network is to be co-ordinated by the University of Agder, Norway.
For some more information on the eGovMoNet project please refer to the www.eGovMoNet.eu web site.
DEMOS@WORK
The Demos@Work overarching objective is to facilitate European-wide discussion between elected representatives and civil society on emerging policy issues that have a potential impact on all countries within the European Union. The issue selected for this trial project is the harmful effects of smoking.
Short description of the project:
The Demos@Work overarching objective is to facilitate European-wide discussion between elected representatives and civil society on emerging policy issues that have a potential impact on all countries within the European Union. The issue selected for this trial project is the harmful effects of smoking. This will be achieved by configuring and putting into trial an online platform that will serve for an active and open dialogue between regional/national-level elected representatives, European parliament and citizens. Trial applications including the validation of the project will be conducted in two end-user locations, namely the regional assembly of Catalonia and the national assembly of Lithuania as well as the European Parliament.
The trials will involve citizens and MPs, who will interact between them in four different ways:
- Citizen-citizen (reviewing/commenting other citizens’ opinions)
- Citizen-MP (providing feedback and opinions on the issues being discussed)
- MP-citizen (providing issues to be discussed and responses to citizens’ opinions)
- MP-MP (interacting among them during the law-making process)
Funding:
The project is co-funded under the IST Programme, the 2007 eParticipation call, by the European Commission
Period of implementation:
January 1st, 2008 – January 1st, 2010
Project locations:
Lithuania and Catalonia, Spain
The partners of the project:
- GFI Informatica - Spain
- Gov2u - Greece
- National Technical University of Athens-Greece
- Parliament of Catalonia-Spain
- Parliament of Lithuania
- Scytl Secure Electronic Voting S.A.-Spain
Target groups:
- Citizens and regional/national-level elected representatives from Lithuania and Catalonia
- European Parliament
Specific objectives:
- To address the issue of citizen disengagement from decision making processes,
- To strengthen the EU fight against tobacco use,
- To improve the quality of services provided to citizens,
- To facilitate the work of MPs,
- To accelerate the transition to a knowledge society,
- To increase the awareness of the Parliament activities among its citizens.
Expected results:
It is expected to improve consumer information and interaction with the EU as it will facilitate an open and inclusive dialogue between all EU citizens and the decision makers. Social and technological innovation to the work of elected representatives is proposed by suggesting a method that will help them to cope with the increasing complexity of legislative processes and will improve the results of their work.
For more information please visit the site
Ucount4eu
The Ucount4eu campaign is a Gov2u-led initiative that intends to rally European citizens from all the member states of the Union around the upcoming European Parliament elections, to raise their awareness of the importance of the European electoral process and how it affects their daily lives on a national level, and most importantly, to provide citizens with the means to contribute to, and impact, the debate on the issues that concern them most.
For more information please refer to the campaign’s website http://www.ucount4eu.eu/index.php?lang=en
Developing a platform for AGENCIA CATALANA DE L’AIGUA
Customized application that favours citizens' active participation in the management of water resources in the Region of Catalonia and the promotion of sustainable development.
The project is implemented by Gov2u in cooperation with SCYTL and will focus on advancing participative processes in the environmental sector.
For more information please refer to the project’s website http://www.acaparticipacio.cat
Amposta Citizen Participation Platform
Gov2DemOSS was also implemented in the Spanish city of Amposta. The platform allows the City Hall of Amposta to create digital communities and interact with its citizens in decision-making processes.
Gov2u collaborated with SCYTL for the customization of the e-participation tool Gov2DemOSS for the city of Amposta in Spain.
The customized application, which explores the potential of ICT in managing the everyday life of citizens in the municipality of Amposta, includes:
- Forums,
- Blogs,
- Calendar of events,
- Polls,
- E-Voting,
- All other standard features.
The portal is accessible over the internet from the following address: http://eparticipa.ciutatdigital.cat
DGPC of Aragon’s Government portal
A customized application of Gov2demoss is used for the Directorate General of Citizen Participation (DGPC) of Aragon’s Government web portal. The project was implemented by Gov2u in cooperation with SCYTL and focused on advancing participative processes and an easy management by non-technical people.
For more information please go the project’s website.
Gov2Demoss platform
Our most notable achievement to date has been the development of Gov2DemOSS - an open source, informative and collaborative e-participation platform. Gov2DemOSS provides an efficient channel for institutions and organizations to keep their communities informed, manage their information repositories, to interact directly with their constituents and gauge public opinion.   The platform was awarded the eGov Good Practice Label by the EU in November 2006. This labelling was initiated by the European Commission, DG Information Society and Media, and is part of the Good Practice Framework that the latter has initiated in order to support the creation of comprehensive eGovernment services across all levels of the Union, to catalogue good practice in eGovernment and to stimulate the sharing of this information. We had initially envisioned the platform as primarily a tool for various levels of government; however, we are increasingly attracting interest from a wider range of stakeholders including community groups, civil society organizations and even corporations who are seeking an efficient medium for interacting with their membership base. Gov2DemOSS Platform Its look and features can be easily customized according to the users needs. It is an open source, generic but customizable, informative and collaborative eParticipation platform that provides an efficient channel for institutions and organizations to:
- Keep their communities informed,
- Manage their information repositories,
- Gauge public opinion,
- Interact directly with their constituents,
- Involve them in the decision making process,
- Very user-friendly navigation, accessible to all,
- Instruction manuals provided for both users and administrators.
The GENERAL FEATURES OF THE PLATFORM ARE:
- A web content management system to manage published information,
- User management system for site administrators,
- Forum and Blog modules (site-wide or topic-specific on the forums),
- Polls (site-wide or topic-specific on the forums),
- Events calendar (including ability to interconnect events with the forums for citizen deliberation, e.g.: To discuss and/or vote on an issue),
- Webcasting and “Online meetings”,
- Online petitions and online surveys tool,
- eVoting mechanisms,
- WIKI.
TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLATFORM:
- The Gov2DemOSS e-democracy platform was designed and implemented using Joomla open source Content Management System (CMS).
- The portal operates in open source environments such as the Apache web server and MySQL (which is used as its database repository), and is written in PHP.
- Template-based so the HTML layout can be totally customized.
- Simple elements on the presentation can be altered by CSS with the restriction to follow certain naming conventions regarding the CSS classes used.
- The template system ensures that we can always accomplish any level of accessibility (A, AA, AAA) as defined by EU standards.
The open source nature of the software means that it is provided free of charge to interested parties, with Gov2u services covering the planning process, customization and deployment of the software, training of site administrators and users, support and maintenance.
In 2006, due to growing international interest in our product, we entered into partnership agreements with Scytl Secure Electronic Voting of Spain and with Insure Democracy of Texas, USA for worldwide marketing and distribution of the software, and for its translation into various languages. At the same time. BEDAG, one of the biggest IT companies in Switzerland, has agreed to be the authorized distributor for the GOV2DEMOSS platform in Switzerland.
The platform is currently being set up for specific clients in the US and in Europe, and negotiations are underway for several new projects in Europe and Asia.
Click below to see the brochure for Gov2DemOSS:
eConsensus Project
Within the eConsensus project the Gov2DemOSS platform was being customized by Gov2u in cooperation with SCYTL for the use of 70 municipalities in Catalonia Region, Spain.
A single portal provides access to all 73 municipal sites with common user registry and management, and a single sign-in for all the portals. The portal serves various entities including city councils, citizens and local associations.
It also includes an e-voting function, as well as a dedicated citizen community space where citizens can create their own space and select different tools for their area.
The Consensus Consortium - formed by Localret, Jaume Bofill Foundation and the Catalan Institute of Technology - has awarded Scytl a contract to develop the third version of its e-participation platform “e Consensus”.
The portal is accessible over the internet from the following address: www.consensus.cat
e-Representative : Virtual Desktop for the Mobile Elected Official
“eRepresentative: Virtual Desktop for the Mobile Elected Official” was a research and development project that created a virtual desktop to support the mobile elected representative. The project was co-funded under the IST Programme of the European Commission (project number FP6-2004-26985) and was developed between February 1 st, 2006 –January 31st , 2008.
Project aim: to create a “virtual desktop” that allows personalized interaction with, and integration of, relevant information for elected representatives at national, regional and local level in order to support their day-to-day committee work.
Target groups: representatives, civil servants and other stakeholders in five European Parliaments and Assemblies (Netherlands, Lithuania, Spain, Hungary, Ireland)
Gov2u was a member of the implementing consortium in partnership with academic and industry leaders including:
The project investigated the potential impact and viability of a "virtual elected representative's desktop" to support the work of elected representatives at national, regional and local level by making legislative services more effective and more tailored to meet their individual requirements. The focus of the application was the legislative process, and mainly the scrutiny of legislation through relevant committees. The rationale for this development was grounded firstly in current eGovernment research priorities, which seek technology support for improvements in the efficiency, inclusiveness, openness and accountability of public services and democratic processes. The technological rationale was that, while most of the assemblies are well served by intranet access to databases of legislative documents, these are either not available remotely (intranet/extranet) or, if they are, they are not designed to provide access on mobile devices.
The virtual desktop:
- Allows personalised interaction with, and integration of, relevant information for elected representatives to support their day-to-day committee work.
- Makes systems able to share information on a broad enough scale.
- Allows representatives to work away from Parliament with more robust security.
- Provide the right information at the right time, applying 'intelligent agent' technologies in the Parliamentary environment.
- Stimulates inter-assembly collaboration by enabling them to share documents.
- Is equipped with smart technologies to manage data overloads that representatives face in their work and enable seamless use of desktop with Parliaments' current systems.
- Is an innovative user-friendly and mobile-capable security technology that allows collaboration on legislative documents while meeting needs for integrity, authenticity and privacy.
Gov2u presented the eRepresentative project within the following events (indicative list):
Over 70% MPs from the assemblies involved in the project stated that:
- eRepresentative improves awareness of status of legislative proposals.
- The discussion space prepared them better for meetings.
- eRepresentatives is more convenient to use remotely than legacy search interface.
- They are satisfied with the relevance of retrieved documents.
- They are satisfied that eRepresentative allows them to share documents conveniently.
- They find poll results helpful in decision-making.
- They believe secure discussion is likely to help wider discussion of proposals before they are registered.
The project has its own website (http://www.erepresentative.org) which you can access for more detailed information.
Click here to see the brochure of the project: http://www.gov2u.com/publications/eRepresentative%20factsheet%20final.pdf
Electronic mobilization of NGOs in Karditsa
The project entitled "Electronic mobilization of NGOs and local authorities in order to promote gender equality in Karditsa" was implemented in the municipality of Karditsa in cooperation with the local authorities and the development agency of Karditsa (ANKA SA). It focused on exploring the potential of ICT in strengthening local initiatives directed at promoting equal opportunity and cooperation between civil society and the local authorities. A customized and dedicated version of our Gov2DemOSS Platform was created for the project. A series of publications and workshops were also foreseen.
The project was funded by the Greek Ministry of Labour and Social Protection
 
METAMORPHOSE
The political instances are now consulting the public more and more often (e.g. when preparing a bill for parliament or on the subject of the UN initiative known as Agenda 21) so as to gather as many opinions as possible and thus improve the bill-drafting process.
In these circumstances, the skills provided by IT companies may afford an additional means of consultation with the public. With this in mind, the City of Lausanne is in the process of setting up a participation procedure for a huge urban project that will permanently change the face of the Olympic capital - a project entitled "Metamorphosis". This project principally concerns the relocation of sporting facilities, the construction of an ecologically sound residential area, extending the public transport network and the creation of garden allotments.
In setting up a global participation process, the city of Lausanne gave responsibility for the electronic participation aspect of this project to the OLA team ("Oui, Lausanne avance!"), which chose the Gov2demOSS platform developed by the NGO Gov2u, which is implemented in Switzerland by the computer services company Bedag.
The aim is to provide anyone with access to the Internet with a forum for discussions on various subjects that have a bearing on the latest developments in the Metamorphosis project. All the user needs to do is to register, free of charge.
For more information please refer to the projects project’s website click here
Upper Kirby citizen participation platform
The Gov2DemOSS platform is already operating in Upper Kirby District, in Houston, Texas (USA). The platform was launched in September 2006.  The Upper Kirby Foundation, a grouping of community organizations, was interested in the platform as a medium for keeping residents and business owners in the district informed of upcoming community issues and soliciting their participation in making important decisions. The customized application explores the potential of ICT in managing the everyday life of citizens in the district of Upper Kirby in Houston (i.e. urban problems) and includes:
- Forums,
- Polls,
- Calendar of events,
- All other standard features.
Any decision is brought to the citizens, and they can discuss it, vote, open a forum, come to a resolution, etc.
To enable people to express view using any channel, here there is an online and offline strategy for engagement. Thus the platform is complemented with other activities such as publications, seminars, etc. For example, three professors from the University of Saint Thomas, one specialising on eDemocracy, another on eGovernment and the third on political science are involved in the preparation of question for the online forum as well as in its moderation. The platform serves
as a social platform as well, for example where people put photos. People who use the municipality platform have to identify themselves and this is in turn verified by the Council. This in itself is a legitimation process which gives eParticipation greater credibility.
The platform is available in the following address :
www.upperkirbydistrict.org
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