MOMENTUM Project

Home > Cases > MOMENTUM Project

Acronym of the case:

MOMENTUM

Web address of the case:

http://www.ep-momentum.eu

Country of the case:

Pan european

eParticipation | edemocracy | E-Democracy

Posting Date: 19 November 2009
Last Edited Date: 30 November 2009

834 Visits

Author:

Sotiris Koussouris (National Technical University of Athens)Greece

Sotiris Koussouris

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

Monitoring, Coordinating and Promoting the European Union eParticipation Projects and Initiatives - The MOMENTUM Project

As they mature and become widespread, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play an important role in helping to address new challenges in involving citizens in decision-making, democratic or legislative processes, while also improving legislation. ICT research on eParticipation and eDemocracy in the European Union has made a significant contribution over the past years through more than 30 major European projects and national initiatives. Hence, it has paved the way for significant advances, and is already starting to transform governments and their services towards citizen participation.

In parallel, there is a great technological progress taking place in research projects in Europe and in the rest of the world; we are witnessing the emergence of powerful new ICT applications that will transform the way citizens, businesses and administrations interact and participate. Furthermore, and as social networking technologies are emerging as a powerful way of connecting citizens and businesses, dissemination and exploitation of the best practices among the stakeholders, are issues of strategic importance.

MOMENTUM project aims to monitor the existing and on coming eParticipation projects co-funded by European Commission, to consolidate their results and provide feedback to them and to the respective EC bodies and other designated stakeholders, advancing the high-level political and institutional engagement. Furthermore, MOMENTUM will also:

Promote the output of European Union eParticipation projects and initiatives towards stakeholders in the various member states and internationally.
Process and disseminate the results and achievements of the projects in a way that citizens can understand - further strengthening the public participation in electronic decision-making applications.
Interact with the projects, utilising their already developed networking and knowledge management infrastructures.
Become a connecting network, towards ideas, innovations and state of the art / state of practice examples concerning eParticipation advancements in Europe.

The project consortium consists of 5 partners from 4 different EU member states, bringing together the innovative know-how of academic and research institutions, the deployment capabilities of the IT industry and the administrative experience of highly specialized consulting firms.

Furthermore, the MOMENTUM team is reinforced by the presence of an independent Experts group, comprising of high-caliber international eParticipation and eGovernment experts from Europe and US. These experts will participate in events organised by the project where they will serve as invited speakers and at the same time during the relevant discussion sessions provide feedback on the project developments and results. The interaction with these external experts will also bring valuable know-how and best practices in the field of eparticipation to the eparticipation projects.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Awareness-raising information

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Not applicable/not available

Funding source

Public funding EU

Implementation and Management Approach

MOMENTUM will monitor and support the following eParticipation projects co-funded by the European Commission:

eParticipation Projects 2006	eParticipation Projects 2007	eParticipation Projects 2008
DALOS	CitizenScape	EuroPetition
LEGESE	DEMOS@WORK	EMPOWER
LEX-IS	eCommittee	HUWY
LEXIPATION	FEED	U@MareNostrum
SEAL	Ideal-EU	VIDI
TID+	VEP	VOICES
	VOICE	WAVE

MOMENTUM expertise will cover all aspects of e-participation projects, along the axes of technology, participative processes and policy making. This will be achieved through a circle of tasks in its Workprogramme comprising of:

Continues Interaction with the eParticipation projects
Monitoring of projects’ physical progress
Consolidation of the results with the use of relevant technology and practice maps.
Identification of possible risks, overlaps or possible directions for the projects.
Provision of feedback to projects and EC stakeholders in a controlled way
Development and maintenance of the MOMENTUM portal and relevant corpus of material
Electronic and in-person dissemination of best practices and application examples based on the eparticipation projects’ work
Establishment of close co-operation with the relevant Commission Services involved in the monitoring of the projects active in the eparticipation area

The team of MOMENTUM comprises highly specialised partners and a powerful team of international experts that will be engaged in the scientific and policy deliverables.

MOMENTUM will address the following indicative list of results of the projects :

Methodologies & Processes,
Tools & technologies used
Evaluation results
Best practices
Barriers and constraints
Lessons learnt

The main intention will be to map and consolidate results along the following lines:

Domain / Participation Areas
Relevant Institutions and Actors
Participative methodologies & legislative processes
Tools & Technologies
Impact and potential opportunities

MOMENTUM will accomplish its aim by:

Co-ordinating and integrating the eParticipation projects activities
Achieving close and sustained co-operation between the eParticipation projects partners (governmental organisations, academia and industry), in order to monitor, collect, evaluate and consolidate their results
Assessing and comparing practices already applied on eParticipation as addressed in the relevant eparticipation projects
Providing the necessary technological infrastructure to facilitate discussion, co-operation and data exchange.
Ensuring growth and sustainability of the existing projects results by encouraging and motivating organisations and Kay stakeholders to take advantage of the MOMENTUM activities so as to expose their results to wider audiences, and exploit synergies. .
Mobilising relationships among the many stakeholders involved in the eparticipation projects and also those dependant on the results of these projects.
Ensuring dissemination of the outcomes of MOMENTUM to the widest possible audience for the benefit of all stakeholders including governmental institutions and citizens
Promoting the outputs of European Union eParticipation projects and initiatives towards stakeholders in the various member states and internationally
Ensuring that the knowledge and experience of eParticipation projects will be systematically exposed and shared across key stakeholders to the benefit of all
Providing a focal point for eParticipation innovation and the dissemination of best practices

Technology solution

Impact, innovation and results

Lessons learnt

After consolidating results coming directly from the monitored projects, from the finding of the Baseline Definition (D2.1), the Evaluation Reports (D2.8) and the Monitoring Reports (D2.7), MOMENTUM came up with recommendations which can assist future attempts in this field. At the present phase the main recommendations that spring out of the analyse are the following:

Systems should use and extend already established standards (XML-like formats and ontologies) during the first stages of legislation for the easiest comprehension, editing and exchange of legal documents
Increase citizens’ participation in online debates and discussions by actively engaging the decision makers, so that systems can fulfil the promise of making the citizen’s voice heard.
Minimize the amount of online discussed topics/themes and provide quality information on the selected topics, in order to avoid fragmenting participation and information overkill.
Constrain the topics discussed in local needs, as citizens tend to be more interested on what is going around in their neighborhood/country and not in an international wide domain.

A more up-to-date version of recommendations will be issued in early 2010 in the MOMENTUM portal http://www.ep-momentum.eu which also includes all other relevant material and white papers issued by the project.