eGovPoliNet Project

Acronym of the case:

eGovPoliNet

Web address of the case:

http://www.policy-community.eu

Country of the case:

Belgium , Germany , Greece , Ireland , Italy , Netherlands , United Kingdom , Other european countries , Asia , Central and South America , North America , Oceania

Posting Date:

16 September 2011

Last Edited Date:

14 February 2012

Author:

Laura Schina (INNOVA SpA)

Governance | Community Building | Policy Modelling

Type of initiative

Network
Strategic initiative

Case Abstract

eGovPoliNet is a project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. eGovPoliNet sets up an international community in ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling. The international community of researchers and practitioners will share and advance research and insights from practical cases around the world. To achieve this, eGovPoliNet will build on experiences accumulated by leading actors, bringing together the innovative knowledge of the field. Capabilities, tools and methods brought forward by academia, ICT industry, highly specialised policy consulting firms, and policy operators and governance experts from governments will be investigated and collected in an international knowledge base. Comparative analyses and descriptions of cases, tools and scientific approaches will complement this knowledge base. Therewith, the currently existing fragmentation across disciplines will be overcome.

Community building of experts from academia, industry and public organizations, and other interested stakeholders will be supported by a community portal for knowledge sharing, collaboration, dissemination, and multidisciplinary constituency building in an open environment. eGovPoliNet expertise covers a wide range of aspects for social and professional networking and multidisciplinary constituency building along the axes of technology, participative processes, governance, policy modelling, social simulation and visualisation.

Through the sharing of approaches and exposing them to the community's discussions, eGovPoliNet will advance the way research, development and practice is performed worldwide in using ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Policy

Sector

Other

Start date - End date

August 2011 (Ongoing)

Target Users

Target Users Description

The project focuses on the following target groups. A primary target group is represented by policy makers operating at different levels, e.g.- mayors, executive officers, heads of administration, elected representatives (members of the regional parliaments etc.), civil servants dealing with policies planning, implementation and evaluation, as well as policy advisors, policy analysts, think tanks, representatives of civic society (NGOs, civic organizations) as well as the research community, which can have multiplication effects on policy makers at all levels. A secondary, broader target group is represented by all stakeholders who can benefit from improved social and societal models to show policy and decision-making consequences, facilitated dialogue and interaction with policy makers and ultimately enhanced relevance of policy-making to their needs.

In addition the consortium policy will be based on the following points:

R&D Communities / Studies Groups will have a fundamental role in eGovPoliNet. In this case the engagement strategy will be based on the direct contact and commitment of main people working in the management, so as to ensure an effective and actual data exchange and sharing among organizations and eGovPoliNet.
Universities and R&D Centres will be engaged by deploying the open and field-thematic events, which they will be invited to join to share ideas and provide feedback about the running draft of field-technology roadmaps. Furthermore, it is envisaged to provide a continuous mutual feedback for current research results between this cluster category and eGovPoliNet.
Industries, software developers, private subjects are directly interested in acquiring the knowledge about future scenarios and technologies in the medium and long term; furthermore they should base their business plans also by taking into account the application policies at European and local country scale. The recommendations to be drafted and developed in eGovPoliNet will include also the mentioned data and this cluster of stakeholders will be naturally engaged in the project process.
User Communities will be approached by showing the usability, the envisaged features related to the technological achievable level, the potentialities of the envisaged solutions and how they would impact on actual everyday life. These activities will be characterised by a doubleflow "providing information / gathering ideas".

Scope

International

Status

Implementation

Language(s)

English

Policy Context and Legal Framework

eGovPoliNet is a project funded by the European Commission under the FP7and aimed to set up an international community in ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling.

The project type is a coordination action to establish a global multidisciplinary digital governance and policy modelling research and practice community. Its main aims are to overcome the currently existing fragmentation of research and practice in the field, to exchange experiences and lessons and to build a researcher & practitioner community in order to streamline and advance implementation and application of large scale ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling. The project therefore aims at achieving momentum in e-governance and at contributing to the implementation of the Lisbon Agenda, the Digital Agenda for Europe (one of the flagships of Europe 2020; IP/10/225), the Commission's new economic strategy for Europe and other strategic policies of the EC and local agendas.

The overall strategic framework is articulated on three main levels corresponding to three phases:

Enabling: referred to the initial setup of the community network and the participants will review and define its strategy and assemble the resources necessary to build a global multidisciplinary digital governance and policy modelling research and practice community.
Growing: referred to the growing of the initial setup of the eGovPoliNet constituency by inviting wider networks and actors in the field to participate and contribute to the knowledge assets. In addition, networking will be fostered across existing communities to strengthen and to widen their original scope and to bring in their views on ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling of their respective disciplinary or practical fields. These two activities already reach beyond the currently involved partners. Hence a wider range of stakeholders are brought into the network.
Sustaining: related to sustain the established network and to feed the assets of the community into a sustainable organisation which will actively network among the newly eGovPoliNet community and other existing communities of individual disciplines and actor groups.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Participation

Overall Implementation approach

Partnerships between administration and/or private sector and/or non-profit sector

Technology choice

Standards-based technology | Mainly (or only) open standards

Funding source

Public funding EU

Project size

Implementation: €500-999,000

Implementation and Management Approach

The eGovPoliNet project aims to build a strong Policy Community through the consensus-building approach on aspects related to:

management issues the consortium has to decide upon
expansion policies of the eGovPoliNet consortium
establishment of a sustainable community organisation beyond the funding period
reaching consensus on thematic issues, e.g. the classification framework for ICT solutions in governance and policy modelling, the establishment of task forces for specific topics emerging as of particular interest to the activities and aims of eGovPoliNet
reaching consensus on a common understanding of related (scientific and practical) knowledge content of the community portal on ICT solutions in governance and policy modelling.

Consensus-building among the consortium members of eGovPoliNet will be performed in several ways:

discussions at working meetings and consortium meetings among the consortium partners
online and offline discussions among community members within the shared workspace of the collaboration space in the eGovPoliNet portal
open discussion via a semantic media wiki, blogs and open discussion in related and affiliated social media
electronic voting means will be explored to vote on disagreements.

eGovPoliNet will maintain openness towards new members of the community to enlarge the participation provided that new members bring in additional competencies and experiences and, hence, add value to the activities and outcomes of the community. Acceptance of new members will only take place under the conditions that the original objectives defined for eGovPoliNet remain unchanged. More detailed strategies for the expansion will be specified and agreed upon among the consortium in the consortium agreement and in the strategy development and exploitation plans.

Active dissemination and awareness raising strategies will help to spread the objectives and outcomes of eGovPoliNet as widely as possible outside the community to attract relevant stakeholders, advancing the current networks associated through the consortium.

eGovPoliNet will keep most of its results freely accessible to any interested party through the public web space.

The effective Management of the initiative requires effective decision-making, clear external communication, operational internal communication, and effective administrative and technical control.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The project aims to facilitate and streamline technological and socio-technical excellence on ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling thereby enabling better understanding of social and societal behaviour. The multi-disciplinary approach and international community-building is a key aspect of the project. Findings from distinct disciplines need to be linked with one another or even more, these need to be integrated to understand the overall field. To achieve this, eGovPoliNet will connect relevant international actors to build a global multidisciplinary digital governance and policy modelling research and practice community, which is engaged in research and practical use of ICT use for citizen participation, open government, open data, governance and policy modelling areas. Thematic areas to be interconnected are e.g. policy modelling tools, (social) simulation and visualisation tools, process modelling techniques, gaming and mixed reality tools, techniques to generate added-value content from linked data and data available in unstructured and/or dispersed environments, and online participation tools including web 2.0 and web 3.0 capabilities.

eGovPoliNet will thereby exploit physical and digital means to connect and establish the community: physical meetings will mostly serve to strengthen the community through social relations. These meetings will be organised in conjunction with important conferences and other events relevant to the community and serve as point of reference, where results and information gathered in the recent period will be discussed, structured and amended, and plans for the subsequent period will be confirmed from the work plan or will be revised accordingly. Regular virtual discussions (online and offline) will support the achievement of eGovPoliNet's objectives to strengthen the community.

The eGovPoliNet achievements can be described in three different dimensions:

The establishment of a network that is interacting regularly via online and offline international and multi-disciplinary constituency-building events;
The eGovPoliNet community knowledge portal;
The performance of studies and comparative analysis to identify research, practice and development projects and good-practice examples concerning modelling and simulating, as well as understanding and visualising of social behaviour.

Lessons learnt

The project has just started so we need to wait for the initiative to be fully operational in order to provide valuable lessons learnt.

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