*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** A must attend event if you are in DC. - SLC ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 10:42:04 -0500 From: Ari Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Steven Clift <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: A Brown Bag Forum with the International Teledemocracy Centre at CDT 3/12/2001 Next week, Ann Macintosh -- Director of the International Teledemocracy Centre at Napier University in Scotland -- will be visiting Washington, DC. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) will be hosting an informal brown bag lunch on Monday March 12 at 1PM for those interested in e- democracy; e-voting; and online advocacy to meet with Ann. Details: Brown Bag Lunch Monday March 12 1 - 2:30PM CDT Conference Room 1634 I St., NW Suite 1100 Washington, DC RSVP - Danielle Kolb - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bio Ann Macintosh is Director of the International Teledemocracy Centre at Napier University. She is actively involved with governmental, business and voluntary organisations concerned with the research and development of e- democracy systems in the UK, Europe and the Commonwealth. She was a member of the Scottish Executiveís Ministerial Task Force on "Digital Scotland", and also a member of the UK-Online working group to specify e-democracy services for this government portal. She is on the Advisory Council for the Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance. She is a recognized authority on Knowledge Management and E-Democracy. Her research is underpinned by UK and European funded research projects and a number of industry and government funded projects. She joined Napier University in August 1999 to establish the Centre. Prior to this she was with the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute at the University of Edinburgh as Knowledge Systems Director where she was responsible for the knowledge engineering and knowledge management research. She is interested in researching good practical approaches to electronic governance problems. She serves on a number of program committees for international conferences and is a Chartered Engineer and a Member of British Computer Society. Summary of the ITCís work The International Teledemocracy Centre aims to research and develop innovative ICT-based applications that will strengthen public understanding and participation in government. It is a multidisciplinary centre based in the School of Computing. The Centre researches and develops e-democracy systems to support rather than constrict the types of interaction needed to underpin democratic participation. Research is aimed developing technology to: * make information more accessible and understandable to non-experts * facilitate more open and accessible government * enable the public to participate in democratic decision-making. As part of the research agenda, the ITC is developing a suite of ICT-based tools - the E-Democracy Toolkit - to realise interactive democracy. Collaborations with government and industry have enabled the Centre to deploy the toolkit and evaluate its effectiveness to strengthen public understanding and participation in government. Current projects are based around e-lobbying, e-consultation, e-voting and e-democracy evaluation. E-Lobbying This is concerned with the use of technology to encourage public participation in governance, demonstrating how people can effectively use technology to lobby government and parliament. The Centre has designed e- petitioner, a Web-based electronic petitioning tool, which lets users create, view, sign, add background information to, and submit petitions. The tool hosts valid petitions and submits them to the relevant authority. The Centre is working with the Scottish Parliament to ensure that the requirements of citizens petitioning Parliament electronically are met and that Parliament has confidence in the electronic petitioning systemís integrity. The first electronic petition, which related to the environment, was submitted to the Scottish Parliament on 14 March 2000. As a result, Parliament agreed to take citizen input via e-petitioner for a trial period. E-petitioner has demonstrated that straightforward computing techniques can enhance public participation in the new Scottish Parliament. In addition e- petitioner now hosts the first ever e-petition to the Prime Minister at No.10 Downing St. E-Consultation The e-consultant tool allows us to demonstrate, through live electronic consultations, how governments, parliaments and other democratically constituted organisations can effectively use technology to gather the opinions of the people they represent. An interesting and atypical consultation was with the Scottish Executive. >From 2nd May to 4th June, we asked young people to give their opinion on a range of hot topics, and vote on which key issues they think are the most important facing young people in Scotland today. We received over 500 comments, which for an electronic consultation is very high and the figure suggests that young people are comfortable with this mode of communication. It was also encouraging to see roughly equal male and female participation. E-voting The last tool in our e-democracy toolkit allows us to educate, through live electronic elections, how elections are carried out. This e-voter tool was used successfully to elect young people to a Highland youth council - the representatives met for the first time this weekend. The intention was to support the education of young people on the purpose of elections, the voting process and arrangements for the counting of the votes. E-Democracy Evaluation The European Commission funded project ñ EDEN - seeks to improve communication between Public Administrations and citizens in decision-making processes. Project started 1st February 2001. EDEN is allowing the Centre to identify what government officials and the public require and to evaluate and quantify the impact of the developed e-democracy systems on the democratic decision-making processes. ---------------------------------- CDT Update Subscription Information E-mail questions, comments, or requests to subscribe or unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call (202) 637-9800. Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/ ----------------------------------- Ari Schwartz Policy Analyst Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20006 202 637 9800 fax 202 637 0968 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cdt.org ----------------------------------- -- ------------------------------------ Ari Schwartz Senior Policy Analyst Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20006 202 637 9800 fax 202 637 0968 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cdt.org ------------------------------------ *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
