Rialtas.net - Government 2.0

Harry McGee Reports in the Irish Times today that John Gormley, the Minister for the Environment, last night unveiled some of the key components of the Green Party Paper on local government which will be published in 10 days’ time.

Speaking at the opening of the Green Party’s annual convention in Dundalk, Co Louth, Mr Gormley said it would deliver the biggest reform of local administration since 1898.

Some excerpts..

Mr Gormley said the new measures, when implemented, would allow citizens to be centrally-involved in decisions taken at local level. “I want to see citizens given a say in budgetary decisions. There is no reason why the people should not decide what the spending priorities should be in their communities. I will be examining the increased use of plebiscites which would allow people shape major decisions to be taken by town, city and county councils.”

Turning to his plans for a petition system, he said it would allow people gather signatures on pressing local issues and present them to the local council. The council would then be compelled to debate and decide the issue.

 Link to Irish Times Article

(Requires paid subscription)

See also some of my earlier posts:

E-Democracy , E-Petitioning and Local Government

MySociety.org E-Petitioning System

Communities of Practice Website for Local Government Employees.

I was hoping to have had a chance to finish reading this report before I posted it but decided to post it now in case anyone find it useful. It a report commissioned by the Australian QLD government entitled, ‘Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life’. The report was created by researchers Jessica Coates, Nic Suzor and Dr Anne Fitzgerald.

As Web 2.0 technologies proliferate, an increasing number of Australians, especially young Australians, are relying
primarily on information and communication technologies to engage and interact with each other and the world. If governments are to have meaningful interaction with young people, it is therefore important for them to explore
the potential of these communication platforms. But legal considerations must be taken into account when strategising how best to make use of emerging technologies.

The report identifies the practical legal risks associated with activities conducted in online participatory spaces. Encompassing Copyright, Privacy, Defamation, Breach of Confidence and other areas of law, the report outlines the main considerations that arise when engaging in the online environment. It also examines the popular social networking platforms YouTube, MySpace and Second Life in detail, analysing legal issues specific to their Terms of Use and functionality.

Link to report

A report carried out by sustainability consultancy Best Foot Forward shows that online council services in the UK can contribute to big cuts in CO2 emissions.

People who use the internet to contact their local authority, instead of writing or driving to council offices, could help save the equivalent of millions of air miles in carbon emissions, according to research commissioned by Communities and Local Government.

The research was based on real life data supplied by Sunderland City Council which showed that increasing the number of online applications for five key local authority services - planning, schools admissions, registrar’s certificates, environmental services enquiries and council tax payments.

The results revealed the city council could save 80,000 kg of CO2 each year. Rolled out nationally this is the equivalent of over 14,000 tonnes of CO2 or 5,362 return air flights from Heathrow to Malaga each year.

Parmjit Dhanda, e-Government minister said:

“We know that driving to the Town Hall to carry out a transaction uses 20 times more energy than doing it online. That’s why it’s so important that we encourage people to talk to their local authority through the web.

“The Best Foot Forward study supports Government plans for a low carbon economy and debunks the received wisdom that increases in IT server capacity negate any CO2 savings arising from the Internet economy.Communities and Local Government News Release

Download the report here:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/carbonefficiencies

Here is the foreword and a link to one of the Governments key strategy documents, Towards 2016.

Foreword
I acknowledge the amount of time and effort that has gone into the making of this agreement. This reflects both the importance of the issues under discussion and the central importance attached by all sides to maintaining our system of social partnership.

Social Partnership has helped to maintain a strategic focus on key national priorities, and has created and sustained the conditions for remarkable employment growth, fiscal stability, restructuring of the economy to respond to new challenges and opportunities, a dramatic improvement in living standards, through both lower taxation and lower inflation, and a culture of dialogue, which has served the social partners, but more importantly, the people of this country, very well.

Obviously, the challenges of today are different from those of the dark days of 1987, but they are no less complex, and meeting them together is no less important. Now, as then, partnership, as a problem solving mechanism, offers the best way forward.

Towards 2016 offers the best way forward by providing an important and strategic framework for meeting the economic and social challenges ahead. Each of the previous social partnership agreements has had a particular focus and has contained significant innovations. In this respect Towards 2016 develops a new framework to address key social challenges, which the individual faces at each stage of life. This means a focus on the needs of children, young adults, people of working age, older people and people with disabilities.

This ambitious approach will pose a major challenge – public services will need to be designed around individuals and their requirements, rather than based on different administrative boundaries. This approach will take time to deliver and the agreement sets out how we propose to measure and review progress over a ten-year framework agreement.

I commend the parties on all sides for the sustained commitment and leadership they have shown throughout the long and protracted negotiating process. We in Government look forward to working closely with the Social Partners to realise the ambitions we share by the historically significant date highlighted by the title, Towards 2016.

Bertie Ahern, T.D.,

Taoiseach

Link

Shane Ross blog entry and Sunday Independent Article 13/14thJan 2008

Senator Shane Ross writes in the Sunday Independent (13th January 2008) and on his blog of the desperate need to roll out cheaper and faster broadband across Ireland and of how in addition to this ‘e-government’ in Ireland is stillborn he also highlights that John Purcell reveals that there has been no official egovernment strategy at all since 2006. The full report is available online here. Purcell states that

“The momentum towards developing eGovernment that existed in the early years of the decade appears to have faded somewhat more recently. This is evident in the absence of a formal eGovernment strategy since the beginning of 2006. However, the Department of the Taoiseach is currently working with other departments and agencies on the development of a new strategy.”

The report goes on to say “In some areas of the public service – for instance Revenue, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, and the Department of Agriculture and Food, as well as in smaller agencies such as the Property Registration Authority and Ordnance Survey Ireland – the opportunities offered by the new technology for business transformation and for meeting consumer demand were well recognised and largely addressed. In some other public service providers, it was not clear that the opportunities were as well recognised.”

I am not sure I would totally agree with this as in my experience the Ordnance survey lags behind some of the local authorities in providing services and opportunities to business, they also seem to have a very restrictive licensing model and as a result of this a lot of other mapping providers are now entering the market and providing a platform to business that it could be argued should have been provided by the OSI for free as a public infrastructural service.

In my opinion one of the functions of government and state organisations in the Web 2.0 era is to serve as a platform for the development of business and industry by providing services and information to business which will allow them to effectively grow and deliver new services and products to the marketplace.

Steps are being taken in this direction for example the new Reuse of Public Sector Information (PSI) directive from the EU. There are a number of opportunities now for state organisations to utilise some emerging technologies to provide additional support and resources to businesses, opportunities for government organisations to serve as platforms for the development of business. This website will largely be about suggesting and highlighting these technologies and hoping that some organisations might consider the opportunities for enhancing government services which could be provided by these technologies.