September 25th
Day 2: Interactive workshops
The first day of the conference provided an
introduction and welcome, especially on the
broad topics relevant for the community and from
different stakeholder perspectives. The second day
was dedicated to interactive discussions amongst
members and other professionals on two
topics: e-participation, on one side and
funding for telecentres, on the other.
The first morning session introduced
the new topic of e-participation to the
telecentre community and promoted the
results of the E-uropa project. The second
session was about providing a space for
participants to find partners and discuss
concrete project ideas.
16
Gabriel Rissola introduced the session and defined
the main concepts. He defined e-participation as
being about citizens’ participation in administration,
service delivery, decision making and policy
making. While e-governance consists of top-down
government initiatives,
e-participation
is
a
wider concept including
all stakeholders in the
democratic
decisionmaking
process.
E-participation tools are
the ICT solutions that
governments use to
provide public services
and that citizens use to engage in the policy making
process and contribute to it. These tools range from
1. Learning session and discussion: e-Participation voting and polling online, campaigning through web
in theory and in practice
surveys, online petitions and consultations, to civil
society forums and platforms to participate and
Speakers:
have a say in societal and political issues.
• Marija Kujacic (Serbian Ministry of Public
Administration and Local Self Government)
The first speaker, Marija Kujacic provided the
• Vukosava Crnjanski (CRTA- Serbian Centre for perspective of the Serbian government and policy
research, transparency and accountability)
makers. She explained the three-level model of
• Vladimir Radunovic (DiploFoundation, Serbia) measuring e-participation, introducing the concepts
of e-information, e-consultation and e-decision
The
European making. United Nations has developed an index
e-participation session was to measure countries on their e-participation level
organised by Telecentre and in the case of Serbia, in 2014 they only ranked
Europe, the leading partner 81st - so there is still a lot of room for improvement.
in the E-uropa project They were assessed on such criteria as presence
(euparticipation.org). TE’s of e-consultation mechanism, social networking
Managing Director Gabriel features on government sites and easy access
Rissola moderated the to datasets amongst other criteria. Netherlands
session. The purpose of was identified as the world leading country in
the session was to get the e-participation.
telecentre
community
interested in the broad
topics of e-participation and
active citizenship. This was
done through learning from
people already active in
the field (local practitioners
from Serbia) and then reflecting together on what
our organisations can do in their own countries
to boost e-participation, both in national and EU
decision processes.