Mar
11
Written by:
Momentum
3/11/2009 11:40 AM
The 2nd MOMENTUM Concertation Meeting took place on 5th March 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. More than thirty participants of projects funded under the eParticipation preparatory actions 2007 and 2008 reflected about the European eParticipation Day and discussed about joint issues to progress eParticipation through the individual activities of the projects, and where to join forces to streamline activities and exploit synergies.
The projects that just started in January 2009 had the opportunity to present their objectives and key concepts of their developments to the projects running since beginning of 2008. These new projects are: eMPOWER, EuroPetition, HuWY, U@MARENOSTRUM, VIDI, VoiceS, WAVE.
The meeting started with a reflection of the eParticipation day organised by the European Commission, which took place the day before. In presence of the Head of Unit for ICT for Government and Public Services, Mechthild Rohen, and the project officers Thanassis Chrissafis, Sally Taylor and Priit Ojamaa, the participants from the different projects gave their impressions of the event. The overall conclusion of the projects was that it was an excellent event, well organised and very useful for networking and community building. The projects were very satisfied with the opportunity to showcase their results at the booths, and with the discussions they had with the visitors. All project members thanked the European Commission and MOMENTUM for organizing such a valuable event. Also the speeches and discussions in the plenary sessions were perceived very informative. The European Commission highlighted that – although the participation of MEPs was not as high as expected by the projects – a number of representatives of the service units of the European Parliament and national/regional Parliaments or local governments were present in order to get informed about ongoing initiatives and possibilities which could be interesting for them.
After initial reflection of the previous day’s event, the meeting continued with presentations from the new projects. The presentations served the purpose to find common topics of interest, to identify opportunities for collaboration among the projects, and to exchange experiences especially with projects already half way through their project runtime.
Next, MOMENTUM members explained how the projects can benefit from the support action in order to achieve their own goals. First, Maria Wimmer (University of Koblenz) briefly presented the evaluation methodology conducted by MOMENTUM in order to assess the impact and outreach of the individual projects and the eParticipation preparatory action as a whole. One asset stressed was that MOMENTUM offers an end-user questionnaire, which can either be directly used or adopted by the new projects for their evaluation purposes.
Thereafter, three parallel cluster sessions were held to discuss topics of common interest thereby investigating:
- How can MOMENTUM support projects in respective themes and/or issues of common interest?
- What contributions can projects bring into joint endeavours?
These questions were discussed by participants in the following three clusters:
- Environment: This thematic cluster has been proposed by the MOMENTUM team, because a large number of projects have chosen such topics for public debate.
- Stakeholder engagement: A challenge of joint interest is the engagement of larger numbers of target groups. Although projects may address different target groups, it was perceived important to exchange experiences about how to overcome the lack of interest or lack of motivation of targeted stakeholder groups to actively participate.
- Technology: As eParticipation initiatives and projects try to deploy innovative technologies and tools, this cluster was initiated in order to support the exchange of experiences and lessons about specific technical questions and challenges.
In a final plenary round, participants reported back from each cluster. Some of the points discussed in the clusters are briefly described below:
- Clusters see a need for a joint collaboration space to continue discussions, sharing documents, informing about interesting events etc. MOMENTUM can offer such a joint space.
- Key information MOMENTUM collected about the projects such as what technologies are deployed, which pilots are carried out, which legislative process is addressed, what topics are discussed in the pilots, etc. should be made available for all projects in order that projects can find other projects with similar themes, technologies, etc. without burdensome navigation through individual project web pages.
- MOMENTUM should act as a mediator between MEPs and the projects in order to collectively address MEPs and promote eParticipation instead of individual – and redundant - endeavours.
- The need for further cluster meetings and dedicated workshops was stressed with the aim to exchange experiences and projects results. This was specifically demanded from the technical cluster. Themes to address were among others how to successfully deploy semantic web technologies, social networks, argument visualisation, how to develop scalable platforms, how to ensure interoperability among tools and technologies, etc. in eParticipation projects.
- The clusters stressed also the importance to use the MOMENTUM web portal for communicating among the projects.
Overall it can be said that the meeting was very successful. In this matter, MOMENTUM wants to thank all participants for their participation and valuable contributions.
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