A video explaining the fuctionalities of FUPOL is now online:

Social Media, Simulation and Urban Politics (youtube)

Thank you for this information!

The video is available at www.fupol.eu. The FUPOL project has released its first video with statements of Norbert Weidinger deputy CIO of Vienna and Giorgio Prister, President of the Major Cities of Europe.

Policy modelling has significant role, because wrong decisions affect our life and welfare. Unfortunately very often most accessible tool for situation analysis still is EXCEL, which is useful for carrying out some simplest calculations if the algorithm is clear and the amount of influencing parameters is insignificant. Sadly, but in real socio-technical systems the amount of important parameters is considerable. Factors are stochastic, and algorithm is complex. The simulation often plays exclusive role giving possibilities for checking the different scenarios and promoting chances for forecasting of influence of decision making activities. Unfortunately major part of simulation tools cannot be used without specific knowledge on IT or programming skills. The FUPOL is aimed to designing the simulator, which would be exploitable without special grounding. The simulator will allow visualising the results in foreseeable form taking opportunities of advanced visualisation technologies. Will it enhance the quality of decision making? I guess: “yes”. Always something really tangible is better than empty talk and divination in coffee thicknesses. FUPOL is interesting with its consortium, because there are not only programmers and representatives from social sciences, who cannot live in one room for longer time. There are also project partners who working in both sides of frontline, and therefore together we have a chance to overcame an abyss.

Dear Giorgio, Anna, Kawa,

The objective of ePractice's blog/comment sections is to "discuss, praise, disagree", and I think this is what we are doing now. ;-)

@Giorgio: thanks first of all for your friendliness and for all information and perspective you provide. I'll for sure follow the project, and believe me: nothing would please me more than seeing this project being a success and achieving a high impact. What I have done so far is to express some "scepticism" and worries, based on the information available. The project is still to be started, and any real criticism would need to be based in facts.

I have, sure, some legitimate (and informed) concerns about the research design, the schedule, etc. But if you read carefully my interventions... you will see that my critizism is not directly oriented to FUPOL but to the general EC Innovation Support Framework, as its rules and design could be setting perverse incentives, that do not really favour innovation in the field. It's not me who says this, it is the own EC! That's the reason why they are trying to revamp EU's Innovation Support Framworks.

Based on the description you provide, Giorgio, I would recommend you to look at this recent paper: "Computer-mediated deliberation for citizen self-government: A theoretical design of an integrated policy process", by Vanessa Liston et al. (from Ireland), as part of the SOWIT project (http://www.sowit.eu). They provide one of the more intelligent proposals (presented so far) to articulate citizen engagement with representative institutions. I think this model suits specially the approach of FUPOL. You could want to use it as a basis for your "governance model" and extend it as needed to pay more attention to the inclusion of "policy simulations".

@Anna: Some clarifications:

1. I haven't said that wider consortia lead to lower quality research. I have only said that wider, multi-site, multi-institutional, multi-lingual consortia... increase the coordination effort and coordination costs. Whether this affects the quality of research depends on each case. My point is that the size and the composition of the consortium should be mainly justified by the characteristics of the project and the area of research. The same applies to the "pilots" developed as part of the project. There will be cases where it is best to run many pilots, and cases where it would be more appropriate to concentrate energies in making just one pilot (or several pilots in the same or similar countries) successful, and only then extend its use elsewhere.

The problem is that EC criteria are somehow favouring the creation of big consortia and multi-country pilots even in the cases where other approaches would be best. This is a problem.

2. I do not criticize diversity of partners as something bad. Actually, what I am saying about FUPOL is that more diversity would be positive. I think the project would benefit from a trans-disciplinary approach by incorporating partners with "social and human sciences" expertise.

3. As you explain, one of the objectives of EC policy is to allow countries and institutions to share know-how and get interconnected. Also: it helps small countries, or countries that need to develop their R&D capacities to benefit and learn from the common work. That's all good. But this kind of aims can sometimes conflict with the aim of making research optimal. EC needs to find a balance and look for the best instruments.
You say: "Definetely that does not imply that partners join for the sake of their geographic location". It is sad, but to some extent I have to disagree. People with experience in making research proposals to the EC know very well about this kind of informal rules and trends: at some point if you wanted to increase your chance of success you had to include members and pilots for East European countries. And now the trend seems to be moving even further (to Asia, LA, etc). Again: I do not judge it, or claim this is bad. It is legimate for the EC to decide that the promotion of this "mixtures" is important. I only acknowledge that this conflicting aims can have an impact on research.

Kind regards to all. I wish you all the best!

As part of the FUPOL consortium (and member of Major City of Europe) I agree with the position of Giorgio. But I want to add that it seems to me that the position of Pedro is more regarding the EU research funding system, rather that FUPOL project rationale.

I can quite agree with him about the real results of the funding mechanisms followed till now by the Commission, but this is the way they are going on now, so any research center that want to access EU funding needs to proceed in this way.

FUPOL  consortium succedded in this effort and obtained the needed funding.

Dear Pedro,
I've read this morning your interesting reaction about FUPOL and the debate that has followed which shows quite different point of views.
I'm also part of the FUPOL team but I’m at the same time also president of an association of European cities called Major Cities of Europe (www.majorcities.eu). Let me explain why I’m participating with great interest to FUPOL and more specifically to dissemination. I’m bringing in this debate the point of view of policy makers, CIOs and IT managers if cities that I’ve already engaged in discussions about FUPOL.
But first I’ve read the information about your initiative Ciudades Kyosei (www.ckyosei.org). It looks good. It promises to answer effectively to the very high demand of citizens to participate and influence the policy decisions. As you know this is already happening widely in Internet with a huge variety of groups of citizens discussing about different topics in the multitude of generic and specialized social networks. Some are global networks, some are national, some are local. Your initiative brings the idea of localization of debates versus the globalization of Internet.
This huge variety of debates has the potential of being extremely valuable for policy makers … but put yourself in the shoes of a policy maker. He/she struggles to extract from the Internet this information in a usable and effective way: he/she is not only interested in the single debate from a single group about a single topic. Policy making is about having a solid perception about citizen ideas and priorities with a wide and integrated view about the whole landscape of ideas, topics and discussions related to the city.
Nowadays this is almost mission impossible. More and more policy makers participate actively to some of the groups on the Internet. Although more and more are interested the ideas they get from these debates are very fragmented and difficult to manage. Policy makers are unable to extract from it the understanding of the overall view of citizens priorities and ideas, but at the best they get only the ideas from a single set of debates about single topics.
The objective of FUPOL is to respond to this challenge. It is about extracting from the Internet an integrated view of the citizens debates. It’s about being able to automatically collect, analyze and interpret opinions expressed on a large scale from the Internet. This will enable policy makers to gain a better understanding of the needs of citizens. FUPOL will provide the capabilities to simulate the effects of policies and laws and to assist governments in the whole policy design process.
You don’t trust that FUPOL will lead to any valuable result? As any research project guarantee for valuable results is not given in advance. This depends on the project design and objectives, on the new technologies to be developed and moreover on the value and the complementary skills and capabilities present in the team and also on the effectiveness of the teamwork. All these elements are in place and we trust that we will succeed. If so, a very innovative and effective way to manage the wealth of Internet will be available for policy makers. This is worth the effort and the risk.
Follow us! I’m sure that you’ll change your mind!

As a member of the team of one of FUPOL's partners coming from a smaller member state (InterFusion from Cyprus), i'd like to address the parts of Pedro Prieto Martin's post that concern FUPOL's 'multi-country consortium'. The consortium's size and diversity is criticised as if it were a weakness, but I believe that such arguments are largely inconsistent with the EU's core 'knowledge spillover' philosophy and general objectives of regional coherence...

I believe that the criticism is faulty for 2 reasons:

1. I feel that it does not give any evidence/real arguments to back up the claim that wider consortia mean lower quality of research. Indeed, the skill of project management and the goodwill of partners largely account for project success regardless of the number of partners...

Also, there is an assertion that multi-country pilots are 'cute' but problematic. However, I feel that these are basic ideas that we shouldn't even be wasting time on repeating: If pilots are not applied to more than a couple of settings then how can their results/feedback ever be applicable/relevant to the diverse settings of the EU? Particularly for a project that you have branded as 'overambitious'?

Regarding the 'problematic' part- certainly problems/issues may arise with any pilot implementation- but isn't that part of the reason for having pilots? To identify problems before a solution hits the market?

2. If larger consortia were avoided (even for such large scale projects) then substantial research initiatives would essentially be limited to a small number of member states with strong and established research infrastructures...and countries like Cyprus would never have the chance to develop their research potential...so how would we ever catch up?

Of course, minimizing such regional inequalities is one of the EU's major objectives and encouraging wider participation in research consortia is one way.

Definetely that does not imply that partners join for the sake of their geographic location... but I think that goes without saying: that all the partners in FUPOL bring in unique expertise and experience that ultimately guarantees the success of this project.

As just one
of the FUPOL researchers, I am really confused about the discussion here. Pedro
is talking about a huge “budget” of the project. I just want you to take a look
on the other side of the ocean, where research and technology get “really” huge
amounts to work on innovations. As you know innovations and ideas are the core
engine of the European economy. So it is now, in the crisis, more than
necessary to work on the heart of our economic power: on knowledge, ideas and
innovations.

We, in
Europe, need much more projects like FUPOL, consisting of such a coherent consortium,
with real good background technologies, with ideas, with euphoria and with
INNOVATIONS - Leading by an institution, which is able to do handle a
consortium of “only” 17 partners. And this amount of partners is necessary, if
you want to transfer knowledge from academia to industry, from politicians to
IT-researcher and vice versa.

Research is
creating new “A”, new “C” and enhancing existing “B”. If you are today able to
develop a system for 40 000€, please consider that this is just because the pioneering
work of researchers like involved in the FUPOL project. They do not earn money
with their inventions, but provide you with algorithms, methods, standardizations
and even with programming languages and enables you developing such systems.
And that is one of FUPOLs never mentioned impacts: the technologies will live
as foundations of new innovations and will help us all.

Dear Peter,

I will not be able to attend at the "transparency and openness" workshop, so... we will have to wait for another occasion to meet. :-) What I was planning to present there has been released in PeP-Net blog.

Please, do not get me wrong. I am not moved by any personal animosity against the FUPOL project or against you. It's just that 6 million EUR (public money) is a lot of resources, especially in this moment of crisis.
By pointing out some weak points of FUPOL I am in fact (friendly) criticizing the general EC's Innovation Policies, which are at the end responsible for setting the framework of incentives for you all. My impression is that the incentives created by FP7 calls are clearly not the best to promote Innovation in this field, and cause a huge waste of public resources. 

The skeptical comments I did in my previous message are based on my previous experience evaluating EC projects, and are also informed by the (scarce, and mostly vague) information provided at FUPOL website, and in this ePractice case. You ask for some more detail and suggestions... and I'll try to provide you with some feedback.

- You mention several times the "Consortium", and value its size and diversity.
It's 17 members wide, which is a lot, considering that in any project the addition of each extra partner increases, more than linearly, the coordination effort. Ockham's razor applies indeed to Research Consortia: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" (ie: "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"). So... I ask myself: Why is the consortium so big?

For anybody experienced with EU Research Projects the answer is clear: it is not that big because of scientific reasons, but rather for "political" reasons. Specifically: the "predilection" (or rather: "obsession") the EC has for multi-country projects. If you do not create such a "monster", you don't get the money. That's the rules!! And if you want to ask for much money, like in this case, you better have a big consortia asking for it. Are big, dispersed and multilingual consortia good, or needed, for high quality research? In some cases... maybe yes. But in most cases NO. The EU has its (legitimate) reasons to promote this kind of multi-national consortium, but it is sure that in many cases the price to pay for it is less quality of research. And, by the way: the same applies to the multi-country pilots. They are nice, cute to have, but in most cases, cause more problems than benefits. :-(

- Regarding the balance within the consortium... I have to tell you: this is one of my reasons of concern. You mention multinational corporations, research institutes, SMEs and public administration. The problem is that, apart from the administrative bodies, all members seem to have an ICT focus. I haven't identified any member with a clear "social sciences" or "political sciences" expertise. The understanding of the social processes inherent to policy making matters a lot. Especially for  a project that aims to start from "creating a new model of governance" and an "Urban Policy Knowledge database". But the expertise and knowledge of the Consortium in this field seems to be poor. There is a high risk that this will be another project leaded by ICT people, who create a device very disconnected from the real needs, practice and social reality... that will later be of no use.

- You mention the word "overambitious", claiming that it cannot, by definition, be applied to a resarch project. I disagree: â€œoverambitious” can perfectly apply to research projects, in the cases where their aims and results are not balanced with the means it has and the research approach. 

It is thus a question of how you design the research and how you frame the tasks. And in the case of FUPOL, the design seems to be quite risky: too many and too dependent task, which are depending on each other in a linear way. This means that if the first objective/result is not achieved, the whole project is compromised.

FUPOL is not saying: "we have already A and B working, and a little bit of C, and we think we can achieve OMEGA by adding A + B +C. Let's improve C and verify the results". What you describe in your website is more like: "Let's invent A and C, develop further our existing B, and see what happens" (being, by the way, A = policy process, B = multi-agent simulation, C= electronic participation). This research design is very high risky, for a four year-9 million euros project.

- And it especially risky when taking into account the late validation cycles. A prototype that integrates all components will not be ready till the 3rd year. This is quite late, considering that in the area of successful Digital Innovation the main mantra is "Build early and fail fast to succeed sooner".

- Another weak assumption of the project is that multi-agent policy simulation in addition to be a "cool thing" can be successfully applied to simulate policy effects, and thus bring "politics two steps ahead". But as you know, a simulation is usually as good as the parameterization and knowledge you can feed the agents with. For sure: the project plans to create a DB of urban policy knowledge. But this knowledge is very, very precarious at this moment, which means it cannot be just gathered, but developed. It is hard to believe ICT technicians will be able to do it.

- Another weak assumption applies to the electronic Participation field. All e-Participation experiments that the EC carried out in the last 10 years were... rather unsuccessful. There is no eParticipation approach that is undisputed and considered reliable. But FUPOL seems to consider eParticipation as something available: the project aims not only to make electronic civic engagement, but also integrate it with a radically new approach based on policy simulation. My impression is that... this will prove difficult to achieve.

- This kind of "technical naivety" towards "politics" and "governance" processes permeates through all project information. I doubt most of the researchers will know the difference between policy, polity and politics, for example. The general assumption of FUPOL is that the problem of policy-making is a question of knowledge. By making simulations politicians, public officials and society will have more information... and will make better policies.

But more often than not, knowledge is not the critical factor. More often than not policies are affected by interest, institutional limitations, lobbying, power... Thus, even if FUPOL simulations would work, it will probably be rejected. It is very doubtful that policy makers will be willing to "trust" and take decisions based on what a machine (actually: some kind of "lemmings' game" in the eyes of politicians) is saying.

 - Finally: you explain that consortia' members wouldn't invest money and human resources if it wasn't because you expected successful outcomes. This is again misleading. The monetary "contributions" that partners do to EC's research projects are not always real contributions: "fixed" costs that some of the partners would have to invest anyway, and "in kind" contributions are counted as paid by the partner. In many cases, actually, this part is also financed with public money (eg: universities and public research centers). It has to be said, also, that a big share of EC's funding will also be used to pay for "fixed costs" of the institutions (pay for attendance at congresses, etc.).

- I have no doubt that most of the partners are, as you said, willing to "get something out of the project". But it is normally related to the part of the work they will do, and not to the "whole project". For example: one of the partners that helps the project by improving a "simulation framework" they have been working on for years... will no doubt keep valuable developments. But this doesn't mean this partner is interested (or cares much) for the result of the project as a whole. By definition, when the project finishes and no more money is being received by the EC, the "consortium" as such dissolves.

Peter, this is the reasoning behind my claims. As you see, they do not apply only to FUPOL, but in general to most huge EC projects. If you have experience running this kind of projects, you know that what I've hinted is mostly truth.

This situation needs to change. The EC is aware of it and is trying to improve, by developing Horizont 2020, its simplified and improved Framework for Innovation. Let's hope it will really achieve its objectives and mean real change. 

Since you claim to be "quite confident to achieve the projects objectives", should I consider you take on the challenge? Fine!! I have to say the odds are, nevertheless, clearly in favour of you winning the 4 euros. Let's see what happens!

Kind regards,

Pedro

A few comments as the coordinator of the FUPOL consortium concerning the post of Pedro Pietro Martin: 

The remarks clearly indicate that you did not understand the nature of research in general and the FUPOL project in particular.

Research means a desire to be "2 - steps ahead" -that is why we have chosen this sentence for the FUPOL project. Research means also that sometimes things work - sometimes they do not.The fact that sometimes they do not work should not stop the desire to go beyond current technologies and methods. So the term "overambitious" in any case is wrong for a research project - any R&D project must have ambitions to go beyond the current state of the art.

The FUPOL consortium is quite confident that it can achieve the research objectives since there is a good balance of multinational corporations, SME´s research institutes and pilot cities as well as a good track record of many implemented R&D projects.

As a consortium we have a strong intention to move forward and to get something out of this project otherwise we would not invest money and even more important valuable human resources into it. 

The diversity of participants and countries reflects European reality and is a strength rather than a weakness.

BTW: We will meet earlier than 2015 - on the 8 December 2011 on the transparency-and-openness-event

Hope to hear some innovative ideas and suggestions from your side, specifically on how the FUPOL project can be improved.  Unfortunately so far we could not detect any in the text above, but they may exist and we would like to know them.

This project seems to be quite ambitious, aiming to "generate a huge impact in Europe and beyond". Its wide-ranging promised results go from "creating a new Governance Model" and a "comprehensive Urban Policy Knowledge Database" to developing an "innovative cloud computing based ICT Framework", piloting it, disseminating the results and "initiating its sustainable exploitation". All this in 48 months, with pilots not starting till the last year of the project (is this at all compatible with any of your web 3.0 claims?).

Knowing about the poor track of record of the EC in this area (see HERE), I feel a little bit worried. And I keep asking myself: there will be more than good intentions, buzzwords and wishful thinking in this project?, or will this be just one of the typical EU projects implemented by a huge consortium (17 partners from 9 countries), costing a huge amount of money (6.54 million euro from the EU plus -supposedly- 3,57 million euro coming from the partners), producing a lot of self-flattering papers that are presented in congresses all over the world, hastily executing  several badly reflected pilots, in a lot of incomparable countries (5, including China),... and ending up in "NOTHING"??

I wish you all the best, sincerely. But I feel obliged to tell you that, based on our humble experience as an NGO dedicated to (e)Participation research during the last 6 years, we feel that some critical -essential- elements seem to be missing in this project. And this will make very very difficult for you to attain your objectives.

What is more: I am sure that, if instead of using PRINCE2 and P3O to try to coordinate such a horrible consortium of technocratic and academic institutions, the EU would invest half of that money, or even a fourth (1,5 millions) stimulating digital and social innovation around governance, by challenging hackers and citizen organizations to "prototype" and make reality some hundreds of little proposals, with a direct application... we would all learn more, innovate more, and create a bigger impact on European Governance models. Additionally: all this would happen faster. Much faster.

Actually, our organization is determined to create, in the next four years, a system that aims to provide "Inteligent tools for policy design" too. We are direct competition for you.

Well, we currently have no financial support from any public institution. And even in the case we get it... I'm sure we will not be wasting more than 40K euros of public money, till we end our pilots and initiate the "sustainable expansion" of the system.

Thus, we want to make a bet with you and the whole EC: let's meet again here in 4 years. We will then see which of the two projects had a larger "impact in Europe and beyond".

Since in the area of digital innovation projects do not need to be expensive to be worth (remember, the first Facebook's beta was built with less than 1000 dollars)... let's agree that the loser will have to pay the winner four (4) Euros.

Challenge accepted?

I hope this will motivate you in your future work. As I am sure it will, no doubt, motivate us. See you, then, on the 22nd of November, 2015.

Asociación Ciudades Kyosei