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Francesco MolinariTHRILLED BY THE TOOLS, CHILLED BY THE FIGURES.HOW AN “E” CAN REALLY MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

IADIS International Conference

e‐Democracy, Equity and Social Justice 2010

Freiburg, Germany – 26 / 28 July 2010

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Rationale

• The broad research questions behind this presentation are thefollowing:

• How can we make eParticipation sustainable, i.e. replicable over time– or a permanent add‐on to the current setup of public decisionmaking process(es)?

• How can we ensure that the existing (scanty and not‐all‐successful)trials teach us lessons that can be reused to make soundimprovement, avoiding “reinventing the wheel” every time?

• How can we evaluate the comparative performance of availableeParticipation tools with respect to the above principles?

• As a contribution to these issues, I would like to focus on a casestudy that is handling with “the issue of (participants’) numbers”in a quite original way.

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Contents

• Advertisement : from IDEAL‐EU to PARTERRE projects

• Background• “Thrilled by the tools”

• “Chilled by the figures”

• Parallel research and vision of the future

• Presentation of our Case Study

• Advertisement : DEMO‐PART, the European Network of ParticipatoryRegions

• Discussion: evaluation criteria for eParticipation methods and tools

• Conclusions

• Q&A

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Advertisement

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How the EU Taxpayer’s

money is being spent

www.ideal‐eu.net

• Jan 2008 – Dec 2009

• EU policy making onclimate change (the20‐20‐20 agenda)

• Social NetworkingPlatform

• Electronic (Virtual) TownMeeting

parterre.ning.com

• July 2010 – June 2012

• Spatial planning andstrategic environmentalassessment

• Demos‐Plan for costeffective management of

mandatory participation

• Town Meeting ‐ Plan

The usual disclaimers apply wrt European Commission’s official position on the above issues5

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Background

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“Thrilled by the tools”

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“Chilled by the figures”

Source: Ferro and Molinari (2009, 2010) using data from www.ep‐momentum.eu8

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Two horns of a dilemma

More participants• eParticipation is a way to include

more/new people (particularlythe young) in the political

process.

• Most of the web tools aredesigned to rely on numbers for their results (wisdom of thecrowds).

• eParticipation is not like an

electronic consultation.

• Representation is important.

Fewer participants• eParticipation is a way to provide

meaningful and reusablefeedback to public decision

making.

• There are technical (as well aspolitical) reasons to avoid bignumbers which can’t be properlyhandled.

• eParticipation is not like an

electronic poll.

• Scale is important.

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So what?

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Yogi Berra (1925‐), US Baseball Catcher / Outfielder / Manager

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The ASCU Model

Source: Ferro and Molinari (2009, 2010) 11

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Expected evolution


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Policy implications


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Our Case Study

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Profiling the case

What A “virtual” Town Meeting

Where Simultaneously in Barcelona, Poitiers, Florence + additional venues

When 15th November 2008

Who The Regional Gov’ts of Catalonia, Poitou‐Charentes and Tuscany

Whom About 545 young people (aged 16‐30) from the three Regions

How 1. Discussing in tables of 10, both in the same and in distant rooms2. Forming virtual tables of max 6, with all participants connected

from remote

Why To contribute to the European Parliament’s agenda on climate

change and energy policy, then still in preparation (and soon tobecome the 20‐20‐20 targets)

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Pictures of the Florencevenue

16Courtesy: Michele D’Ottavio, Avventura Urbana s.r.l.

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The eTM workflow

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The vTM infrastructure

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User I/F (1/2)

“Real Table” Facilitator “Virtual Table” Facilitator

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User I/F (2/2)

“Theme Team” Member “Theme Team” Leader

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The Tuscany Region’strack record

1. November 2006, 500+ people discussing about the priorities of a Regional law

on the topic of Participation;

2. November 2007, 300+ people prioritising the funding alternatives of Regional

health policy in Tuscany;

3. November 2008, 545 young people aged 14‐18 simultaneously in three venues,

Barcelona (Spain), Florence (Italy) and Poitiers (France), and four more inTuscany;

4. April 2009, 360 people from Regione Toscana and the City of Turin (Italy), about

the priorities of a national law on the “living will”;

5. May 2009, restricted to 80 Regional staff members only, to evaluate the internal

organisational climate status;

6. December 2009, in 10+ Tuscan locations and with about 200 young citizens

discussing on the meaning of “lawfulness”, security and justice;

7. February 2010, 150+ citizens in 5 locations discussing on the priorities of the new

landscape plan adopted by the Regional Council.

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Advertisement

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www.demo‐part.org

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Membership value

• No fees, no constraints

• Knowledge sharing on a peer‐to‐peer basis

• Resource sharing (vTM infrastructure)

• A number of thematic events every year

• A 6‐language website

• Clustering with relevant research

•

Training opportunities

• Joint undertakings (e.g. EU funded projects)

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Discussion

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Comparison of eParticipation

methods and tools

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Conclusions

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Summing up

• At the moment, there is no perceived difference between offline andonline participatory practices, especially when it comes to evaluatingtheir impact on community life and on the quality of public decision‐making.

• This can be partly due to limited attention to social complexity and to animproper selection of tools and methods according to the context andpurposes of the participatory exercise.

• The case presented sheds some light on the Regional level as the mostappropriate dimension to let the electronic participation potentialemerge and consolidate in Europe.

• In the upcoming PARTERRE project, the experience of the Virtual Town

Meeting in the Region of Tuscany will be continued and implemented inthe specific domain of spatial planning and strategic environmentalassessment.

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Thanks for your attention

• Contact:

• Francesco Molinari, [email protected]

Any Questions?

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References

• Ferro, E. and Molinari, F. (2009, 2010): “MakingSense of Gov 2.0 Strategies: ‘No Citizens, NoParty’”. In: Proceedings of the eDEM09Conference in Vienna & JeDEM 2(1): 56‐68,available at http://www.jedem.org/

• Macintosh, A., Coleman, S. and Lalljee, M. (2005):“E‐methods for public engagement: helping localauthorities communicate with citizens”, The Locale‐Democracy National Project, Bristol City Council,available at: http://itc.napier.ac.uk/ITC/publications.asp

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