Mr. Vladimir Radunovic, Director E-diplomacy Programmes at Diplofoundation, talked about e-Participation from the citizen's perspective: what competences we need to have and what tools we can use to engage more with governments.
5. Curate
• Find - Internet search, Wikipedia,
Google scholar, e-resources, image
textbook, etc
• Filter - RSS feeds,
• Collate/collect: social and personal
bookmarking, mind-mapping, online
storage
6. Create
• Make digital content including audio,
image, text, website, blog, video,
wikis
• Protect content through copyright,
privacy, digital footprint
7. Communicate
• Share /disseminate/ distribute - wiki,
blog, discussion forum, email, Google+,
twitter, online social networks
• Promote - twitter, blog, online social
networks, and email
• Engage, engage, engage
• Anticipate and react
8. Critique
• Monitor online media
• Assess the validity/authenticity of
sites/information
• Reflect on one’s own practice and
that of one's peers - blogs, forums etc
9. Collaborate
• Wikis
• Google tools
• Blogs
• Webinars
• Integrated portals (mobile accessible
websites)
• Social networks
Origins: complex policy issues, more knowledge among non-govs, better networking and discussions, more research capabilities
How can non-govs impact – and help – better, more responsible, evidence-based policy making process?
Take care – non-govs are champions of e-tools, bureaucrats are not! There is a different mindset.
Curate = pull together, select, organise content
“The Internet is a public access gallery or library of information about us and our work”, notes Pete Cranston (2012b) in his blog on online curation. It is thus important for institutions to carefully curate content about them, such as on websites, Facebook or Twitter profiles, or in Wikipedia articles. The abundance of information requires skills to find the information of interest (using tools like search engines, Wikipedia or Google scholar articles), but also to filter the useful and reliable ones (using information aggregators such as RSS). Not the least, professionals should know how to collate and collect the content of interest for easier review and sharing within the colleagues (such as through shared dashboards with organised sources of information, social book-marking or mind-mapping services).
Producing a “digital footprint” is essential for professionals and institutions in the Internet era. Even though textual form is most present (within published articles, website content, blogs, or social media posts), other forms can often be more appealing for the wider audience – illustrations and images (posted within personal online galleries like Flickr), audio materials (in form of “podcasts” for delayed listening) or video clips (playlists like YouTube, and shared through social networks or wikis). Appropriate intellectual property rights protection should also be applied – whether in conventional form of copyrights or in a modern and widely accepted form of Creative Commons licences [1]. Privacy protection should also be taken into account.
After curating and creating the content, it is even more important to find convenient forms and ways to share this information with professional networks: due to a “paradox of plenty” – “situation in which an information glut results in a scarcity of attention” (Scott, 2006) – winning the attention of the constituencies and then their trust is a much needed skills of today.
Often institutions focus on creating own content and neglect the importance of the engagement with content created by others. Monitoring the online media and sources of relevant information, assessing the validity of information and reflecting on it (though comments on others’ blog posts or websites, social media responds and interaction, or inputs into shared wikis) creates the communication patterns that are useful for both networking purposes and knowledge-sharing – sometimes also for own profiling. Reflecting on one’s own practice and that of one's peers can be beneficial for both; promotion, however, goes beyond simple broadcasting of information and must include space for critique, reflections and engagement – both by the content producer and by the audience. Most useful spaces for the online engagement are wiki platforms, blogs, discussion forum, email lists and online social networks.
Internet has enabled the “real-time” collaboration beyond a single office or building, and more importantly – beyond single institution. Knowledge-sharing across and among professional communities has become an important trend in non-governmental sector, mainly through shared documents (like Google documents), wiki platforms (Wikipedia being the most famous global knowledge repository) or blogs, but also through webinars (web-delivered seminars, lectures or discussions), integrated portals (including mobile accessible websites) and of course social networks. In creating their digital footprint, professionals should introduce space for collaboration within its community but also with non-government sector, academics, private sector and other constituencies.