West: Welfare Society territory

Acronym of the case:

West

Web address of the case:

http://www.west-info.eu

Country of the case:

Italy , Pan european

Posting Date:

19 October 2007

Last Edited Date:

21 August 2008

Author:

Gloria Congedo (West: Welfare Society Territory)

Communication | journal | information

Type of initiative

Promotion/awareness campaign

Case Abstract

West is a journal containing free daily information on welfare policies at local, national and EU level, without opinions or comments. West is a limited company funded by private contributions. It uses the Internet as the fastest and widest ranging tool to disseminate information. It publishes real-time news, in Italian and English, accompanied by a short abstract as well as by all relevant documents relating to the decisions (directives, laws, judgments, investment plans, calls, programs, report, study) and events organized by NGOs and organizations from this sector. The expected impact is a strong improvement in performance for services to people through a wider knowledge of available tools as well as a remarkable development of them due to the possibility, for the first time, to compare the welfare actions and initiatives in Europe.

Description of the case

Domain

eInclusion

Topic

Other

Sector

Culture and Media

Start date - End date

August 2006 (Ongoing)

Target Users

Any citizen | SMEs, associations and intermediaries

Target Users Description

EU has 490 million people. Of these, 16.5% is made up of people over 60, who are at high risk of marginalization. The number of disabled has grown to 50 million, with 16% of the population at risk of marginalization. No less significant are migrants, 26 million people of whom 18 million non-EU citizens. This is the largest EU non unionized group and lives only by information. Global attention is focused on these numbers. In a society that always tries to establish balance in terms of opportunity and available tools, West's goal is to contribute to their leveling of knowledge.

Scope

International

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English | Italian

Policy Context and Legal Framework

With the adoption of the Riga declaration in June 2006, the key role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become central. They are recognized as being synonymous with information accessibility and social relations improvement. Particular attention has been paid to people at risk of marginalization and it is thinking of them and trying to reduce the lack of internet usage that we have created a system that gathers all the social information in one online daily journal that is fully accessible respecting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

We created West in August 2006 with the aim of enabling every person (or private and public organizations that work for groups of disadvantaged categories) who so wishes to get information on welfare policy and legislation all in one. Giving everybody the equal opportunities to get the same level of information seems to us necessary for social justice.

Welfare policies, along with health policies, today are structural components of production and of competitiveness differentials in the areas of global economy. Only few decades ago nobody would have ever thought, that demography, family, older people and immigrants could be so important as to cause, even partially, many European countries â€œpainâ€.

Social policy production, unlike that of other goods and manufactured products, cannot make use of outsourcing to improve its competitiveness and quality standards. Indeed it can only use information.

Today competition is curbed by a kind of information protectionism in the very rich, even if not accessible to many people, market of services and financing of social programmes. Information is needed to be competitive entrepreneurs.Information competition is possible only when all have access to detailed and timely news on procedures, deadlines and specifications to participate in projects, programmes, competitions and invitations to tenders for the achievement of investments in the welfare market.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Awareness-raising information

Overall Implementation approach

Private sector

Technology choice

Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA) | Not applicable/not available

Funding source

Private sector

Project size

Implementation: Not applicable/not available

Yearly cost:

€1-49,000

Implementation and Management Approach

West collects information through a network of correspondents selected from among persons who already work in the fields of interest but who are not journalists, this allows West to have the most up to date information and not to duplicate things already published. It concentrates all its efforts in the construction of abstracts which are comprehensible to everybody with no sensational effect, and respects chronological order.

Westâ€™s network in addiction to the European Institution level covers Italy, Slovakia, France, Slovenia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. We have had daily number zero editions from March 2007 to January 2008 and the journal was officially launched on February 2008.

The top management of West is made by person who have been working in the sector of social policies for 30 years at the maximum level in Italy and decided to develop this journal as a tool that everybody should use to orientate any decision in the social area. All the staff is professional and qualified.

Technology solution

West is powered by an innovative platform document and a multimedia digital library. The documentary platform, user-friendly and entirely based on Internet technologies, is able to describe, manage and communicate in an integrated manner different types of documents and information:
- It is an open and flexible solution, which uses the XML standard for storing data;
- It is based on â€œopen sourceâ€ software components;
- It is entirely built multilingual mode, both for editorial components and access and fruition.

The digital library enables safe, long-term storage and access to different types of multimedia attachments:
- ensure the immediate availability in standard formats for documents from different sources;
- allows an intensive multimedia content (photos, audio-video, etc.).

The platform document allows registered users high levels of interactivity:
- direct access to selected content providers (Public Authorities such as Ministries, Regions, Town Councils, NGOs and all the sources of information);
- personalized selection of thematic channels;
- access via RSS-Feed in multi-mode channels;
- management personnel and team agenda.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The macro welfare policy is normally set at central government level, but detailed decisions are taken at a peripheral level and these are normally unknown even within the same area of interest. Having the opportunity to know what happens in every European country is a winner at government and rural level. NGOs, non-profit making organizations and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will benefit from a series of calls that are normally run only at local level and in which all the EU countries' enterprises can participate.

Since the official launch of West, we have been considering our success in term of people who visit the journal and the result are overtaking expectations.

It is precisely the variety of language used in this field that makes universal knowledge difficult. For this reason West has created an information network based on common rules and codes that could be recognizable and understandable in the whole of Europe.

Thanks to the multilingual platform, it will be possible to duplicate this Italian-English edition creating as many bilingual editions as there are countries who join the project. This represents one of main objectives of Westâ€™s. Until such time as this will not be possible, the primary purpose of West is to disseminate its existence to the widest possible audience through organization of meetings with personalities, officials and business operators who can act as multipliers. Those are national and European Parliamentary, officials of the European Commission and national Ministries, officials from Regions and Town Councils, representatives from NGOs and other organizations who work in this environment.
An already established good relationship with the press has allowed disclosing information of the online availability of West in Italy and in the involved countries.

A number of private meetings with people in key roles have already been held. These meetings were aimed not only at the disclosure of the existence of West and the detection of interest by the end users, but also to conclude bilateral agreements with public and private sources of information. These agreements have resulted in the signing of protocols of mutual agreements.

Track record of sharing

West has signed memorandum of understandings with several regions in Italy and some international associations and NGOs.

West is not a data base, but news and documents are published respecting criteria of rationality in such a way that it would be thought of, in the long term, as the first organized archive exclusively on welfare news.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - The information language is completely different on the Internet than in print media;

Lesson 2 - Timing in information and its usability are decisive;

Lesson 3 - Quality of interactivity with the player is the key for the success of an online editorial.

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Zuzana Pargacova

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28 April 2008 | 1761 Visits | Rating: No votes

Wrong information appear in this section. There is information about Austria not Slovakia. Please retrieve this error. Thank you. Zuzana Pargacova, Ministry of Finance of Slovak Republic

Elina Jokisalo

SK Factsheet corrected

28 April 2008 | 0 Visit | Rating: No votes

Dear Mrs. Pargacova,

the SK factsheet (history) has been corrected. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Tiago Peixoto

WIKICRIME: the web 2.0 fighting crime

24 April 2008 | 1917 Visits | Rating: No votes

Victims of crime in Brazil and around the world can now log on to Wikicrimes and pinpoint the exact location where a crime was committed, as well as describing the nature and circumstances of the crime. Created by a Brazilian professor, Vasco Furtado, one of the drivers behind this initiative is the fact that crime data is often not accessible for the general public, and when it is, it may not be easy to understand, a phenomenon that is also identifiable in most EU member states.

This is an outstanding example of how user generated content can serve as a resource to empower citizens by informing them and giving victims a voice.

Such a tool could also be useful to public security forces, considering the problematic fact that many crimes are not reported to the police. For instance, European data studies support that, in average, only HALF OF THE CRIMES in Europeâ€™s capitals are reported to the police, and even less when it comes to violent crimes .

One might hypothesize that if people do not report crimes to the police they will not report them on the internet. However, among other factors such as a reduced sense of fear or shame, the transactional costs (e.g. walking to a police station) of using the internet are, obviously, much lower.

However, Wikicrimes clearly states that it is not linked to any public security institution, highlighting the fact that â€œregistering a criminal occurrence in WikiCrimes does not exempt the citizen from registering it with the suitable security institution.â€

A quick visit to the website shows that citizens from Europe and the United Sates (and even from Irak!) are gradually beginning to use Wikicrimes.

References:

wikicrimes: http://www.wikicrimes.org/
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7347101.stm
paper on European International Crime Survey:
http://www.europeansafetyobservatory.eu/doc/Crime%20and%20Security%20in%...

Peter Sonntagbauer

Federal Computing Center: Annual event 5th of June 2008 will foc

24 April 2008 | 1997 Visits | Rating: No votes

The Austrian Federal Computing Centre, the leading IT-service provider of the public administration, will focus on European topics this year.

Date and place:

Thursday 5 June 2008, starting at 13.30
Palladium Wien, Donau-City-StraÃŸe 15, 1220 Vienna, Austria

For registration send an e-mail to: event08@brz.gv.at

Austrian and European clients, partners and keynote speakers will present their projects and discuss E-Government and its technological backbone.

Approx. 400 guests from political institutions, public administration management and the IT-sector as well as representatives from Austrian and European IT organisations, scientists and researchers, media representatives and opinion leaders are expected to participate in the event.

Topics:

- Pan-European Collaboration â€žPEPPOL" (Pan European Public Procurement OnLine) as an
example
- The EU Service Directive in the internal market â€“ Efficient cross-organisational and
cross-national E-Government
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Portals â€“ How many portals does public administration need?
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The detailed program has been downloaded to shared documents

e-procurement | e-ID | PEPPOL | e-government

Anomymous

Useful WEST

16 April 2008 | 1617 Visits | Rating: No votes

I think WEST is an essential service for whoever operate in the Territorial Strategic Planning as me, such as in regional contexts and universities. WEST, in fact, it is both a profit tool to retrieve information around the European policies (environment, welfare, social inclusion, knowledge etc.), as to be updated on EU grants and National financings.