E-Participation and development – a better Internet for digitally active citizens 3.0 – WS 02 2011
30 May 2011 | 15:00-16:30
Programme overview 2011
Social media provides innovative tools for dynamic forms of communication, altering the way information is circulated and shared, and affording more agency to users and citizens. Social media sites and services (microblogs – Twitter, social network sites – Facebook, user content sites – YouTube, etc.) have recently been recognized as important tools for distributed reporting.
People
Key Participants
- Marco Pancini, Google
- Peter Matjasić, European Youth Forum
- Matthias Traimer, Austrian Federal Chancellery
- Jean Jacques Sahel, EMEA Skype
Co-moderators
- Letizia Gambini, European Youth Forum
- George Kipouros, JEF-European Youth Forum
Session report
Online and offline participation are interlinked and should not be seen as separate events. Internet technology lowers the threshold for participation. Some obstacles still however need to be removed: access to the technology as well access to the content are essential for digitally active citizens.
In this connection, three types of improvement to access to content were raised: (i) more multilingual content, (ii) more education, including non-formal and formal education as well as peer-to-peer education, and also inter-generational links and sharing of best practice; (iii) more inclusion, in particular those who are not connected or disconnected from the Internet, and by considering the responsibilities of on-line users vis-à-vis those offline as delegates or representative.
Overall, there was consensus that the culture of participation, including the roles of governments and citizens, need to be redefined.
Transcript
Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-719-481-9835, www.captionfirst.com
This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: You are free to come as close as possible to the lecture. Thank you.
>> Welcome to e-participation and development.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Hello, everybody, my name is Letizia Gambini. The first thing that I will – unfortunately we couldn’t move the tables, but we would like to keep this sort of round table open. So please come and take any seat that is available here. We will then also move you after, but for now, we would like to have you as close as possible to the discussion.
Meanwhile, we will introduce you to the methodology of the session, which is very simple. We will have a short introduction with the three speakers, but really not even speakers, more participants, me and you and they will need your help to find out what are the key issues that are at stake in the debate on e-participation. And after this, and actually during their interventions, I will try to note down this fantastic screen key words that we will use for the discussion afterward.
Why key words? Afterward, we would like to divide into smaller round tables, but we will have the opportunities to debate, to go more into detail in the different topics. So you are very much invited to also take your own notes on the key words that you think are relevant, the ones that I might miss or our speakers might miss, and I want to have a little bit understanding of what is the example of the technique on open space.
Can you raise your hand, has anybody ever done open space? Great. Slight minority, so I would say maybe six around these key words and we will divide you or you can divide yourself actually into the topic you are more interested in. We will group the different topics in the different corners of the room so this will become like speaking corners, like the one –
In the corner everyone is allowed to speak. There is no moderator, leader, and you are always allowed to use your two legs to walk out of the corner and go to another corner or leave the room. But hopefully you will not leave the room. So after this we will come back into this plenary round table as it is now, and have a short summary on – not on the conclusions because we are not aiming at any conclusions, but at the key points we have been raising. If the corner stays empty, probably this is a question that is not relevant to us. So now I will leave the rest who I will introduce the rest.
>> It is interesting to get properly information. So – what we thought about putting this together is leave this an open space for you, and a space where everyone gets to speak. People have not had the time or possibility to say what they really felt on the topic, so this is more about governing, key opinions of those in the room and sharing them with the rest of the audience here at EuroDIG.
Why are we doing this? Why do we see the need for – to propose works on e-participation? Simply because there is a massive issue with participation. There is a big issue of citizenship going on for awhile. So we thought that it’s high time we finally started thinking about how internet affects participation. Not only online participation, but the real world. The real world is actually the online world. What we would like to – is what is e-participation? What is e-democracy? We also might want you to come up with Pictionary style definition. We want you to site incidents that are happening now. There are events going on now around the planet that have shown that the citizens are actually a lot more active than what we think, and the Internet can be a vehicle for participation in public life.
These are the questions I want you to tackle, but feel free to – we will not stop anyone from participating. I will start with a quick round of interventions with Marco Pancini from Google. Many of us participate through Google on many things, so it’s very nice to hear from you what you think is e-participation.
>> MARCO PANCINI: Yes. Actually, sorry to be brief, because I will be also involved in the other panel about ethics. The point of e-participation for Google is in the core of our mission of providing access to information to users around the world in an easy and effective way. If our culture can be summarized, it’s finding logical ways in improving participation of citizens online. This can be done very easily on You Tube, for example, as you have seen during – and you can see every day. We are getting examples of cities in Germany, people taking videos of the realities for them and posting them on You Tube to say something positive, to say something negative about their life. Sometimes we focus our thoughts on the example, but I would really like when we think about participation really to take in consideration the user of the internet and the tools of the internet. There are more things available for the inclusion of everybody in the debate.
But another example, during the uprising in Nigeria when the communication were taken down, especially the internet was took down, in – during the week which later it was – was not able to participate. We got together with our engineers and the user would like to post the feed but was not able to access the internet could call a number, call a message and the message would be repeated. These rules are not to be Tweeted and these rules are not forced in revolution or being revolutionary. Empowering user, if they want expressive line in the critical situation could be a way in which technological companies can fulfill their role of implementing that participation.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you very much, Marco that’s an interesting perspective by saying that the internet is actually the revolution itself, but it’s actually the tool that will help the revolution that will in my understanding facilitate participation, whether it is in the online world or in the real world. Before I move, we would like to give the floor to Matthias Traimer, a great supporter of youth participation for a few years now. Thanks for being with us. What is your opinion? What is the role of the internet in fostering participation?
>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Thank you, George. I think when we are talking e-democracy and participation, we should be clear – during this workshop because usually the key words of e-democracy and participation, and well traditioned issues that we find in any ICT discussions. So if you have a meeting like this, it will always be a workshop in e-participation and e-democracy. When you see it from the state side, I know representative of a government in a former position here because I work for information society in my administration.
The key words are to question how, for example, citizen contributing to the law making process, how can they make their ideas popular as regards certain projects, or as you may know, e-democracy and e-participation discussions started in the environment, in the convention in 1998. These are typical settings where e-democracy and e-participation is already meanwhile seen as something that has to exist. You have, for example, you on your rights, every European citizen can contribute to any legal – European Commission is proposing there are various initiatives of governments where they want to involve older citizens.
So wonderful world! Everything okay? What do we then discuss about e-participation? The question, and I want to be a little bit provocative, here we talk about we want to participate. We want our environment. We want every voice, everybody’s voice, everybody’s voice heard, but what I claim and what I want to say is we are here privileged circle. We are a closed circle. And why some appear at this conference for the first time, many have been here before, and you will see this when you are here the third time, and 500 times everybody will not really use these terms. So this is the problem.
People outside – when you ask them participate, give your contribution in the law making process, the result often is very frustrating and poor. For example, in Austria, I am very much involved in drafting laws. I’m responsible for our media legislation, for example. We have any draft law bill in the Internet where there is an open invitation to citizens, but we don’t get any replies.
So my message or my consideration to the whole talk is it’s good we discuss participation in e-democracy in the context, but the more I go to conferences I see what is costing ICT for its own sake. We do not discuss about basic problems where do people learn about democracy? Where are they educated? What the European Union is? What the council is? I’m sure many will write the European Union has contributed or whatever that’s often the frustration for the Council of Europe people there. So I will stop there, but that’s just the one thing, because that’s what you were asking about was you said in the last contribution, this is, of course, something completely different.
It’s not this moderated formalized e-participation, e-democracy, but it’s a human desire, a human right to express in a not summarized way one’s opinion. This is a new term but maybe we shouldn’t use e-democracy for it. I also like to think – somebody said in the morning we shouldn’t maybe use Internet Governance because Internet Governance was really an originated term that was used in the context. Maybe we should use the term information society or whatever. It’s about life and not about I-commerce.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: We need to start asking why even inviting people to this. But we know the number one thing that people are interested in democracy are casting a vote. When you are opening up the procedures why are people not interested in that? Why are people not responding to invitations? Is it a problem with how the invitation is communicated? Is it a problem with the fact that the governments don’t release and do this, pure legislative reasons? This is another question I could ask. Because we very often see the youth saying that we are only given the possibility to contribute for information. But when it comes to the legislative procedure, we are insulted. We are not really taken into account.
So this is an organisation that furthers the opinion that participation is something that the government’s desire, but not really. So this is why I would like to pass the floor on to the president of the European forum. It is a person who presents the federalists where participation is a very, very, key point in what the organisation claims. So, Peter, what is your opinion about this? Why are they not participating? How are they participating?
>> PETER MATJASIC: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Many things have been said, so I will construct a few points what I think is important. When it comes to e-participation and e-democracy, let’s think about the E first. We need to focus on what the terms actually mean, and we all use the term participation a lot, we use the term democracy a lot. We have very different interpretations of how this is done and what it means to people.
Democracy for the organisation I used to represent and for the organisation I represent now is not about going to vote every four or five years. Democracy is in line with the values you have and it goes along with certain conditions you have. So you cannot have democracy if you don’t have rule of law, if you don’t have respect for human rights and transparency for how the system works. In order to have that you have to have education so you can empower people to have a say.
Otherwise, it’s consultation with young people, it’s just there because it’s hip and important to have it. So we have to go back to the basics and see, as it was mentioned before, who are providers of this knowledge and information about this. And this is where we have a big challenge when we come to the online world because we haven’t solved the problem in the offline world.
So as long as we are not properly addressing the offline world and here we have youth organizations and young people who are there because they want to get information. I can only speak from my personal experience. When I went through my education, I didn’t get a lot of things that I have now in terms of skills, but I did get them through engagement in organizations.
They play an important complimentary role to allow people to learn about what is mentioned. What is the difference between European Unions? This is something I have learned. Then when it comes to other skills that is needed like how you use the tools that are available to you, be it in real life or in the virtual life, this is also something you don’t get through formal education, at least not yet. So there is a real need to address that, how to get that. Then this opens up in the online world also the possibilities of educating and giving media literacy to young people and all age groups, not just young people, but I have a mandate here to speak for young people. These are important things.
When it comes to participation and the lack of online and offline, it’s exactly because the young people and the feeling that they are not taking into account because of the ways they are allowed to participate. So it’s a bit castrated too in that sense. So who we need to look at in terms of what we have. We have from the European Union context an article that says we need to promote participation in democratic life in Europe. So how do we do that? There is no clear answer yet, but we have certain tools that enable us to do that.
We have certain programs that foster youth as providers as some of these skills and tools, so when we talk about Internet Governance we need to see how e-participation is affecting young people, how participation as such is important to be involving young people and this EuroDIG has been improving elements of that by having young people present in a bigger number but giving them the voice to be here. That’s a start.
We still haven’t addressed all of the other parts about participation, when you consult and we have this process called – and we are going to talk for 18 months about youth participation. I’m worried that we will not succeed because we will be using words and we will not be implementing them. What do I mean by this? This is a typical thing.
We like to talk about participation, but we forget that when we talk about participation, we need to address the question of how we participate. Here we are using Twitter and all of these things in this setting, but outside of this we are not doing that. So how can we make the online and offline world in order for them to be more in sync? That is an important question to be asked. I know I have been too long, as always, but one important thing where we do use the Internet as a tool and it has helped youth organizations and more people to bring together from different parts of Europe, that has been a very positive effect.
By using Skype or other tools, regardless of what the name is, but the tools have enabled us to communicate with your peers and in daily context with whoever national or whatever, color of the skin doesn’t matter, sexual orientation doesn’t matter. We all can be collective online and have our friends through that. That’s foreign that we think of it only as a tool but as a tool it has contributed to young people being more engaged in the societies they live in.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you very much, and I think for young people and youth organizations, but for the whole society. I think the various examples were made of all of the different, they will go to blog or Twitter or whatever you call it, have contributed to settings and platforms for organising the society. So I have a thousand questions in my mind to ask you, but I will not, because this is the time for you to ask questions. Unfortunately, Marco had to leave because he is going to defend Google, so we have to allow him to do that, but if you have any questions to him, please feel free to – he has committed personally to all of them.
You have the floor, your questions, your thoughts on the topics that have been put on the table or if you would like to make any statements also, please feel free.
Yes.
>> There was a lot of talk about education, and rightly so, and learning e-participation. And what intrigues me is that the education sector is not part of this debate. Is there a teacher, a practicing teacher in the room? No. There is one. This troubles me because what I see time and again in classrooms – I should say Jess Richardson, senior advisor at European school net and coordinator. The very way that young people are taught does not encourage e-participation, and until we come to grips with this and get the educational sector to look at what is e-participation and how do you do it because it’s not something that you can show. It’s something that you have to live just like democracy.
And you rightly said, it’s values, you have to live them. The other point I wanted to raise is that there are a whole lot of us vying for a very small space in the school curriculum, and this is the civics or educational, whatever, and we have to save for Internet and we have all sorts of things vying for it. And perhaps we need to come together, these various movements, and present an integrated sort of learning programme, because a lot are fighting for this small spot in school curriculum. No one is really going to get any mileage.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you for the question. Any further questions? Yes?
>> Hi, my name is Sara – I share the same frustration with Letizia, so I’m more a question for Peter. Do you think it also could be – people perceive it as this space that’s not going to be taken into account so much. I wonder if you have experiences like young organisations.
>> PETER MATJASIC: You definitely have to take into account your young people contributions. Other experience, like you share economics with all around consultation that was the result.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Anymore questions? This is your chance. No?
>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: My first contribution is not a question, but it is a contribution and a statement which I fully agree, and it’s the question of education and literacy that we were talking about here. The experience, even though I am not a teacher, but I have to do a lot with young people or with teachers, the experience is always the same. When you go to children, and, for example, ask them what do you think could be important in democracy or something like that, normally they just repeat something they learned in one of their school books, but it’s not seen as a living matter that you can also use in your family and so on.
It’s school children or children from maybe so-called under soicialized groups, it’s the students I teach at university and I have one of the lectures with the fundamentals of state, and when you ask what is the role of parliament, what is the role of government, so on, sometimes it’s very shocking what I would say what goes as answers. Also I like to be a little bit provocative because we are in this nice setting, and, yes, I was talking very much to youth organisations that participate, but isn’t also the problem that you are also professional youth. And the youth, young people out there, they should be holding remote participation, they should be in classes and maybe this class at EuroDIG. Where are the mainstream teachers outside in the schools? The youth forums? So on. They are very nice people and some very good friends of mine, but it all becomes too much for the professionalized community.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you, Matthias. I am passing the floor to Peter and that’s why for the first time we have had a youth presentation, real youth that are not professional like we are. I will have to say I now know all government officials working in Internet Governance. It’s also quite boring. But in this sense, we are opening that. That’s why we are having more participation and we are using the Internet to add participation. It’s a group example of how we can use tools in favor of promoting multistakeholders internationally especially. And we have an e-participator who has no internet. So she is a participator that is trying to get that to work.
>> PETER MATJASIC: Thank you. I usually make them myself. I have to say for the record that I’m not a professional youth because, A, I don’t get paid for what I do. B, I don’t have a regular job. I don’t have a regular participation. I’m in a – participation. I’m in a precarious job situation. So I’m just youth, a person in the world who tries to survive in his or her way, but thanks to the volunteering I do, I get to come to places like this and speak on behalf of young people.
On the education side, to stress one more point, I think it’s very valuable what you said. We should join arms in the way that making sure that first when we talk about education, we need to look at it from a wholistic point of view. For us, education means formal education and informal, and those three elements need to be included because only having this you will have the desired effects that we want. So we need to insure that all three of those, including basic elements which for me are important, not just for the internet, but in general in life, and this is something that nowadays the education system lacks critical thinking, teaching young people and every person on how to assess information, how to process information critically.
This is what is missing and this is what for me is an important element of literacy. Oh, I can use Twitter, but the idea that once you write something on Twitter it’s there forever and ever and ever. And what you say and how you say it, the information that you read, that you diversify sources and all of these things are important. And we are generally behind, all of us, in making sure everybody gets that education when it comes to online presentation. We have experience, not always good ones when it comes to this. But for me it’s a question of the – how you manage to include, be it young people in our case, but it’s also a lot of times saturation of information.
Young people, youth organisations that we reach out to directly are sometimes simply overloaded and overburdened with the things so we don’t always get the amount of responses that we would like. What is a basic premise that needs to be stressed and is important is that everybody has the equal right and equal opportunity to participate. That’s what we need to focus on first! Once we have that, then we can evaluate how that is working, and this is the same as voting. We want everyone to follow the law in Austria where the voting age is 16. Does it have results? The critics can say yes.
The first point is giving them the right to speak, then you need to give – address the second point which is enabling them with sufficient information and critical information. And just giving information is not enough. We need to properly assess that. So in terms of online presentations within our organisations, of course, it’s a very heavy process, sometimes because young people sometimes they think they participate just by liking something on Facebook.
I see this as an important element, but it’s not the element. For me that person is not participating. It’s watching a good for our soul, like, oh, I like that. I like the campaign against the – so now my conscience is clear. No, that’s not sufficient. But it’s a first step. So if you have someone liking that, then you might know who to reach out to, and you might address him with interesting other things that this person then might read and then might be active.
It’s always a thin line of what you can do and what you can’t do. This is a big lesson I learned through my nine years of involvement in youth organisations. There is only so much you can do to influence people. You can offer them the possibilities, and make sure they have equal possibilities and be inclusive in that, but then at one point you know that there is a wall that you cannot, you know, go through. It’s up to them from then on, and this is fine.
You just need to make sure that you can manage to bring everyone towards this wall and then let them jump or not.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you for bringing a different kind of view than I one I have been discussing this morning. We have to find a way also to – so Letizia, I think –
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: There is first a question, and then maybe I can –
>> Hello, this is first time I’m participating in conference like this in real world. I used to participate remotely mostly, but this is excellent that it’s in Belgrade and I’m from Belgrade originally. I am not affiliated with any group or organisation. I don’t even work. So I want to stress a couple of points because I’m on Internet for last 25 years, and we are now in the process of changing society with technology basically.
I expected for this forum to be a bit wider than a youth problem because e-participation is not only youth problem. It’s a problem of whole society. Between youth and working people and professionals, and my view this discussion should be a bit wider than that.
Second, I would apologize, but I have to confront your statement that the critical thinking is not taught. My wife is in the garden – kindergarten teacher, preschool teacher and they have problem with critical thinking. This is a fairly new development in Serbia, and it’s participated among the different kindergartens. And there are new experiences with that and it’s very interesting, and I believe this should be extended to whole educational process, not only in kindergarten.
Unfortunately, all educational processes is limiting making it a part of society, not to be creative, but to be obedient. And that is in my view the major reason why people are not participating, because they are not taught to participate.
And when we talk about that, it comes back to education, and what organisation, what can they do is to educate teachers to teach about participation, critical thinking. I read today this brochure about Council of Europe. I’m aware of the Council of Europe for the last 20, 30 years, and I don’t know exactly what it does, but today I read a brochure and I learned what are the major guidelines or major consultation of Council of Europe.
And I believe since I don’t know – even though I know about it, I believe children doesn’t know. So we have to teach them. And this is – this can be done only through the existing, I would say influence on teachings, people who are teaching children, they should do it. And you as organisation must lobby for teachers, not directly youth. And I’m sure you will have a much bigger response to what you are trying to achieve.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Thank you very much. Nobody is focusing on youth, by the way, it is an example. The youth of tomorrow are the citizens, the youth today are citizens of tomorrow. And this is also because young people are the number one users of the Internet statistically. So obviously the discussion does quite often come on the level of youth involvement and participation. And one more question, and then I will ask you if the rest of the panel will make a very quick statement before we divide into working groups.
>> This is a question from Hungarian freelancer. The question is not only do we have the same discussion of the change, the – better Internet for digitally active citizens. We have the same discussion if there are better active citizens for digital protection Internet. So do we have the same question, because active citizen is not something coming from the sky. We all know we are talking about citizenship education. We are talking engagement, we are talking involvement, we are talking many things. You cannot teach democracy only in the school.
You are teaching democracy in the environment of the school is not good for democracy, then that’s the major problem in the education system that we – education than the teachers holding the knowledge, and, therefore, it’s a possibility and we are talking about democracy which is media, which is learning by practice, which is these things. And this is a problem. If you are talking this, I really feel using this online and offline participation.
Social, political participation or – but this online/offline is a completely different way for the Internet – They have the same discussion, but it is different because we are talking active citizenship and not talking about active Internet user.
And the last sentence, and this is very interesting – the person is 28 years old Egyptian builder who was killed in Alexandria, and, therefore, very concrete, very sad human action – it’s global. And if somebody knows his name it would be very nice for him, because the Google just came later, and then the political analysts starting to think that whether the Google is a new country – Google will create a new policy next to the – policy or international organisations, because this action was –
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you for your statement and questions, and then a very final question before I leave the floor.
>> I wanted to ask a question about – as you said. Some people think they are participating by social affairs just by signing a petition or liking some items on Facebook. I personally think it has many negative consequences. What do you think? How do you evaluate that? And just want to – are the active participating in obviously pointless opportunities as an alternative experience to fixing a problem? So how do you see it? Is it more about e-participation culture?
>> PETER MATJASIC: I’m very happy to hear that there is critical thinking to be done at such a level as kindergarten. My observation was made by the fact of what I see in terms of also the debates we are having, also by the young people themselves. I see, and this is more of a personal remark, there is no scientific proof of that, but seeing that young people are easily content with just participating and just – while producing their own content.
It’s a personal observation, but not sufficient critical thinking is being done. This is really a different level. So I think Peter also – I thank Peter for wanting to bring us down on this topic because I think his expertise in terms of scholar is important to us to bring to mind the way we use words and the kind of effects they have. And maybe we should focus on the effects on the community about social policy and businesses rather than offline/online. It’s more about illustrating and following up with what we said before. When it comes to e-participation online, I mean, e-participation in thinking and kind of results that has, my thoughts are varied. Sometimes I think it’s very important that you have the – especially when I was in China where I didn’t have the opportunity to be on Facebook to see certain things, and I felt deprived in my right to participate in something.
At the same time, it’s not sufficient, so it needs to be more than that. So I see it as you need to have that possibility, but then I don’t want to force anyone to do more if they are not willing to. So it’s like a thing that you do in youth organisation when you are an active citizen or when you try to activate people to become active citizens. You need to be aware of you try to encourage, and if someone wants to do that, that’s fine.
>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Briefly, it’s an entire social question that we have to discuss, and it’s a little bit question we start to really speak about the lack of active citizen and lack of active Internet users. Once again, 150 million between the age of 19 and 59 who have never been on the Internet, and you can say, well, maybe there are some social disadvantages, but I’m convinced that many say I don’t need it. I’m not interested. I don’t want to.
I think this is one of the parts we also should discuss, why is this passive reluctance of so many, not only young people, but also teachers, there are also teachers who are not really looking a little bit further and saying I’m not just teaching the subject. Today I’m really also looking into the matters of what’s – ICT in the context of the subject. Has it changed, for example, the language and so on?
So we are on in the midst of an education debate, but not only for young people. It’s a social thing and maybe in ten years we don’t have any ICT conferences like this but have a general social conference based on the Internet, not the Internet is the focus, but maybe society again. Thank you.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you very much, Matthias. We do have something coming from our remote participants.
We would wish remote participation, unfortunately, we are facing technical difficulties and the technician promises to be back soon, so those remote participants are lost in cyberspace. We have an interesting question coming from a person called Piantine from Sri Lanka asking how to insure that political bias is eliminated in e-democracy platforms. And we have a second question from someone who is Twittering, and she is asking about the world of governmental transparency and accountability in e-democracy and how essential that is for e-democracy.
Those are two questions, but I think you could keep these questions in mind when we go to the small groups where we will be working, using key words to trigger the discussion. It has triggered discussion in very many directions obviously. And we cannot discuss in realistic, nor can we discuss and come up with concrete solutions, but I believe that the dialogue that we are about to start now should be of interest to all participants here.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Right now we are going to band together with key words that are here. If any of you has key words that are not written in the slide, please shout them out. If this is not the case, then we will proceed to just grouping. So I will suggest that we have a class on ICT tools, and technology, a class on the issue of education, including active citizenship and the – participation education, and one instead on media and digital literacy, which is still education and one that addresses issues around human rights, from the right to be free, the access to information, and so on. And then I would like to keep one group to discuss about what the relationship between online and offline participation. So we have one group that will discuss technology, one group that will discuss – yes.
>> We have one ICT tools and technology. Second one on education, the third one would be on specific aspects of education, meaning literacy. The third would be in human rights, how people are connected, how – participation. And the last one will be examining the relationship online and offline participation. So five different teams discussing different aspects of what we have been talking about now.
Great.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Yes, please.
>> The answer to the question of participants from Sri Lanka, for example, I didn’t get it.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: This is a question of human rights.
>> Just a suggestion, I think this is an issue. We get questions from a distance, what part of the world and we are not actually replying to them. I’m quite positive that next time they will not be online. I would not. So maybe could she answer the, you know, the person get actually answer from this debate. Otherwise, I think e-participation as such is almost meaningless.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Do you want to answer?
>> I’m asking the former question – working groups, so the question is when we will eventually give the answer to e-participants.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Yes, thank you.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: When do we give answers to all of the questions here? It is a very good question. Who gives the answers, and who is responsible for giving them?
>> If I understand this gentleman’s point, there was one key question of this one remote participant, how is it secured that, let’s say, online participants are whatever contributors from society are really acknowledging positions in the law making process. The answer is we as lawyers like to say, it depends on the person or the politician or the policy group because I have been working for about 50 years with various politicians and was involved in various political processes how we, for example, drafts laws. Sometimes such an online consultation, public consultation can be something very, let’s say – as politicians claim they have consulted the public, and when it comes to the final decision, it doesn’t matter at all what you say.
But you could say we are transparent. I have also had other processes and it really depended very much on the – made by the press. So it’s very important that when you have online consultations that they are not only on the web sites somewhere empowerment, but also they are especially press people, watchdogs as they are called by the European human rights, and look what is society saying on a draft bill, for example. And journalists should be some kind of mediators taking the questions or the wishes from society because you just give society the possibility to do their consultation, then it very much depends on concrete politician. And this could be a danger.
I will just end that I think on the remote participation, it’s a key question for the future, but it touches on fundamentals. It touches on how we perceive things, how we perceive a conference, how we perceive who is a stakeholder in the conference, how we perceive our input and importance of us in comparison to those who are not. It touches upon these basic things, also in terms of how technologically sound the conference is in terms of offering remote participation.
This is something that we don’t necessarily always have answers to yet, and it’s something that we don’t address properly. Ideally, we believe that – is a value and we provide translation. This should be following the same logic and same pattern. When we have people who have hard of hearing problems, we try to facilitate participation through certain means. Following the same lines, we should do that for remote participation in all future events, not only those linked to EuroDIG. This is something that I can say we ourselves – because we don’t necessarily have sufficient means, so this is something to address in the future.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Unfortunately, we don’t have a good connection so we cannot send response at this time, but we will send it later on.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: There is a comment on the side. Is it a question?
>> It is a question.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: If it is a question, we will agree that we are not going into working groups because the time we have is only a half hour. So if you feel comfortable having a discussion in the plenary, then I think we keep going with this methodology, but I would like to encourage you to be active participants.
>> You are finished before asking the question. My name is Triton. I have been reading a lot of it earlier, but even now. My question especially for the people who are having varying experience, is there any maturity for organisations to become, let’s say, participant active or including participation as a concept. It’s not only, it’s not only the access to Internet, but it’s a maturity of the organisations that takes into consideration every comment or everything that the people literally do out there.
What about those societies where they shake hands or, like, person to persons count much more. You know that every verbal, you know, written – and I have my own business that is Internet based, so I know somehow a little bit about it. And sometimes especially it seems to me like we are talking really for some advanced societies where the people are pretty sure that their concerns that go via Internet, they may be taken into consideration on the other side, and somehow what is – I mean, what is a follow-up of all of those questions that are being sent via Internet?
Is it any time when it is any way of sorting or sending out the document of those participants, which are the key issues and sometimes addressing those source and sending them out to people – so on. So in a few words, my question is it any maturity in terms of organisations but in the country, is it any follow-up of those comments or remarks or questions that are done by e-mail? This is in a few words, it’s not only a question. It’s more of a comment, you know, it seems to me. Because I tried myself, but it seems at the end of the day they want to see you. They seem more secure like they take into consideration when they see your face.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Thank you very much. I think that this introduces us to the question of trust, trust and to the fact that the remote participants are being heard. They are not being – any other question or intervention? Yes. One there and one there.
>> Hi, my name is Haloman, the new media school. I think when it all comes down to it that it’s really difficult to note stakeholderrism for all voices heard, because I can only speak on my own behalf as a Dutch young person. There are so many other Dutch young ones that aren’t here now. So it’s like practically impossible to have all of these voices heard. So how can we take into consideration that voice as well, their interest without actually knowing like what they want?
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Thank you. A question from the corner. Yes?
>> I’m – I’m not sure that we have very – when young people try to participate in the comment there what we usually end up hearing is, well, this is already handled. Why don’t they talk about this? Now, it’s too late or our former prime minister, for example, said there is no point in discussing things that are kind of – there are people so many things and later he says, well it’s already been decided. So it’s very hard to get positive feedback on trying to participate.
>> Yes, I wanted to linger too a bit, because three were talking a very important question how to take into consideration without knowing what they actually want. We come down to a fundamental question of what kind of democracy we have and what type of democracy we want. We have majority in Europe participatory, representative of democracy, not participatory is that we have in citizen, for example, but those are kind of old system. You can have participation in society and democracy, but not necessarily having it influence the political decision making the way it does in a condition where you have referendum. So you need to take that into account when you deal with things.
Is my voice from a remote area and not having me physically be there having my say take into account? I think it really depends on the person, as I have mentioned before, but it depends also if you manage to know who to address it to. That’s the key in the sense of we have stakeholders for a reason. Not every young person is a stakeholder. A young person should and has the right to participate and have his or her opinion, but he or she is not necessarily stakeholder.
Stakeholder is a young person who define the interest. I can legitimately speak on behalf of my organisation because I have democratic – in my organisation and at the same time we representative enough to speak on some people that don’t even know about it. That’s because the system is the way it is.
Is it perfect? No. But we haven’t invented a better one, and maybe we will. What is important is the sense of feedback is that if you address it to someone, the person who you address it to manages to reply to you. That’s a common decency, I would call it, but it doesn’t translate into automatically being a part of decision making. This is a huge issue. I’m sorry to bring it back to young people, but I have the example where young people have been spending a lot of time crying out, we want to be heard. Well, we have achieved that step.
You are being heard. Now, we need to say things, and have something to say that will be very concrete and will make a difference. But this is not always very easy. Why? Because sometimes it’s easier to just shout that you want to be heard than actually have something to say.
When we have the consultation with young people, young people have ideas, but when we are taking participate in potentially policy making at e-level which is something we do have the – that we have, they are, you know, we don’t get the kind of influence we would want. We don’t get young people participating sufficiently with content. This is a big dilemma we are facing.
And I would bring it back to the politician setting in terms of politicians are saying, yes, you can participate now, but it’s too late. And that’s the false way of doing it. What is important task when we come back to education is to empower young people or empower all citizens to be aware of those things, what you can do and how. This is, again, not for everyone.
Not everybody is interested. Not everybody has time. People have to work, raise children and other things. But some people do all of that and still have time and interest, and for those it has to be possible to do it. I would focus on those aspects, how we can make that possible, how we can make our governments accountable to get your feedback. This is regardless if it’s online/offline, it’s regarding you as a citizen.
>> We are talking now about how multistakeholderism works and how it should work, and in fact I would like all of us to consider that it is a new thing that is not going to come up with policy proposal. It’s not going to come out with – and I will guarantee you that no one on the planet will have a multistakeholder process – you will not be invited to consider European rule. So we are actually, we are very likely that we will have a chance to, let’s start with that, contribute at this level. But we are not really likely, because, in fact, what is the difference or what is the wake of our opinion?
>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: I just very briefly want to continue what you said in brief. I think that within the last years or maybe the last ten years we were just passing and fighting for a new model of cooperation called multistakeholder approach. I think we should here in the next stage when everybody is really doubting that the Internet can only be discussed with a kind of setting where it also includes – society and other stakeholders. The next step now should be since governments can take such a certain transparency in this process, the next step must be that they need to state how this among themselves start being critical with themselves among themselves, and say, well, we get a chance, we get a chance that we are at conferences, how can we optimize what we want to say?
Because still the problem, and when you say, and you are one representative, a representative among students from the Netherlands, but many others don’t have the chance. Always have in mind do they want to have the chance? We also must be very critical when we always go from this idealistic field of let’s say people all want to participate, all want to contribute and they only don’t get a chance, and sometimes I hear from the youth representatives, we are not taken serious.
There is a big mass who says I note from our politicians, and they should do their job, and after four years or five years, I will vote, and I will want to vote again. So we have some kind of democratic system of representation and we shouldn’t overestimate that everybody in the world wants to contribute everywhere. So let’s be realistic, and I would really invite all of us including me that we maybe start a debate within the next time and how to optimize also the multistakeholders as, let’s say, the various – and circles and so on and they should be self-critical, the stakeholders.
I don’t say that because I’m from the government, but sometimes it’s a little bit disturbing for me and it’s always stakeholders versus powerful governments. It’s also important that the stakeholders have more critical a – among their results.
>> Thank you, Matthias. You mentioned something that I think needs to be clarified that regardless if this doesn’t have a concrete outcome, it can have outcomes. Personally I work in a way that when I get feedback from people, be it those that I want to directly consult with or just generally, you get that intake. You get information, you get ideas that you then use for it. And I think that’s also one of the ins of being aware and which set of the process you are. So your ideas and the ideas of a remote participant can have an influence on something. It may not be the way that he or she envisioned that, but me personally I can go back to my organisation, I can work on policy paper for our organisation with the participation of those that are here and those that have contributed online. And that will be a very small thing.
It’s not going to change the world, but it has contributed to the way we will work and get covered with this topic. And this is also something that means that I am not – but also I keep it open enough for everyone. So I think you need to be aware of where you are in the process.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Thank you. Any further questions? Yes?
>> Hi, my name is – and I would like to make a comment because there is no distinction between participation and consultation, but there is. Consultation is not participation because you consult people to have better informed policies, legislations, but with participation, you can actually influence the outcome.
Regarding e-participation, I think it’s is maximum to overcome challenges of participation especially in conferences or events where people are actually not able to participate due to financial resources, whatever. Thank you.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Very interesting, indeed – participation many of you might have heard of Einstein’s famous letter. I think when you are talking about participation, you need a new letter, because when you know something on Facebook, maybe that’s some sort of participation, but to have meaningful or full participation, whatever you want to call it, you have to do more than that. And maybe we would like to hear another question before you take the floor again. Yes?
>> Yes, again, we were talking about the young participation, and how to, how it’s possible to participate. With citizens that aren’t – to use the internet to participate or even can’t e-participate. We are always talking about the future and e-government, but these people have to, have to have the chance to participate, and also – and to get back to education, we have to bridge the gap. We also have to learn e-government or e-participation from people who aren’t digital natives, but are immigrants. So how to learn from someone who didn’t learn it that way himself.
So I think that’s a main problem.
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Yes?
>> Yes. Thank you for this question, but I just can answer you that – I just can answer you that especially what you are questioning is digital inclusion agenda, which is isn’t exactly dealing with this question, how do we get groups of society and narrowing the gap of these digital problems of the European Commission, especially in the digital agenda programme, but also the Council of Europe is dealing a lot with various activities, be it for the older age groups, be it for those groups with special problems, be it physically, mentally and so on.
And its agenda – there is a special directory or e-inclusion in the European Union, and we invite you to have a look at all of these activities. I think inclusion is one of the real challenging agendas, but I think Europe is quite active.
>> I will bring in a term intergenerational solidarity because I think it’s needed in the digital world. When we talked this morning and we were mentioning peer to peer education among young people, it’s also then they can be educators towards other age groups. I know that my niece that is 10 years old is on Facebook, uses a phone regularly and does all of these things. She could probably teach me about some things or her parents better than I can.
It’s not a solution, of course, and that cannot be the only way to bridging that gap. It has to be addressed properly as it was set, but you are right, I don’t have answers to that. I thank you for bringing up the floor. I think you have a lot of experts here and you have opinions among people sitting here. So they feel much more comfortable if you would be speaking more than we do, because that was the same as the discussion of having a participatory way of doing it. Thank you.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: So, thank you, and are you willing to answer some of the questions? Does anybody feel that they have a particular take on the issue of digital natives, education, digital literacy? Yes? One hand. She might have all of the answers.
>> No, my name is – and I’m from Belgrade, Core Centre for Research, Information Technology. And indeed some researches and now the millennium generation, those born with Internet and use it, and how can they go to school with teachers of offline. We have some conclusions that in general they are – and on the other hand, we have digital – they read a lot and they use internet and text in a different way.
What is really important is what you have also been talking about the teachers. It’s a concept that the answer is the learning. So teachers need to learn whole life also and not to be afraid of learning something new, and to become serious citizens as a teacher. And education should be driven by the children. So they need to be more involved in it.
And they can feel that they are active participation in that way so acting and the results of education will be much better and bigger. So I do believe where the teachers can teach children and the digital natives is critical thinking, and there is also some – in the game that can also have that. And also participation in general, and it’s mentioned about how to make them to participate. The question is that you need to be heard, and after that, they need content, what to be heard on. And that is also the question in education.
So in general we are talking about children or whoever is going to get education process, formal, informal, whatever, needs to be taught how to express and not just to say – but say something more about it. I take too much time, so thank you for listening.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Thanks. Is there any other final question, remark?
>> MATTHIAS TRAIMER: Just one, information because it was discussed about digital literacy and inclusion. In the digital agenda of the European Union, there are so-called six big ideas which were launched by the European Commission coming from stakeholders. One of the six big ideas which is now actively the platform for literacy and inclusion. All of the activities which are happening within the European Union, actually, to collect in a new way, on a new platform.
So maybe it may be the easiest thing because they don’t have a smart way digital agenda and multistakeholder platform for digital literacy and inclusion you find a lot of new information on that and that’s an interesting new way of calculation. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel from the beginning, but you should actively contribute. Thank you.
>> LETIZIA GAMBINI: Thank you, Matthias. So I’m giving you another, a last opportunity to click on the bottom of the microphone. Okay. Then we have six minutes left. I will very briefly try to sum up some of the key points if Peter and Matthias want to give closing remarks, okay. Great. So I noted down some things. It might be my perception, but I think that we really tackled a lot of links that internet and Internet governance has to our life which is something very often we are afraid of saying, maybe, or we are not aware when we leave our decisions to bodies that are not at all participatory.
E-participation is about forgetting the E. It is about forgetting the tools, question mark. E-participation is probably about really understanding the way that all people, so not only young people, but all people participate in society. And it is probably tackling issues of what kind of civic education, what kind of democratic education we want to have. And not only talking about schools, but I’m talking about long life learning experiences.
And it is about the connection that has to happen between off line and online participation to our room here in that way and the person that interviewed from Sri Lanka as well as the ones that sent in through Twitter and so on, so forth. So e-participation is a concept that goes a bit beyond the technical issues, but has to do a lot with values and human rights and access to technology, and I hope that we will be able to bring all of the questions and reflections that we have made in this workshop also into the plenaries that we have, both today, now we will go back to the plenary at 5:00. So we have a half an hour break, but at 5:00 we will go back to the plenary, and we will discuss again in the plenary. I hope there will be questions. The plenary is entitled, wait a second, new and emerging Internet services and business models. So I think that the e-participation is actually forming also into what kind of emerging services are happening in the new media.
So please do come back at 5:00 in the plenary, and we thank you, we thank Peter and Matthias, and Marco that is not here very much for input. We thank all of you for your input. Before I close, I have –
>> GEORGE KIPOUROS: Many are wondering so now what, that’s it, bye-bye until next year? The whole concept of this is – we have been working since last year so that we are continuing throughout the year on these subjects and that there is actually a possibility for those who cannot travel to Stockholm next year to contribute in the next year. Still, the – is limited. Those that don’t speak English, but they will have to hear from someone who EuroDIG does. And they will be using technology to send feedback because that’s the only means we have right now. Second thing, just a couple of plans that are in place to expand coverage, and the audience base of what’s happening, there will be an online portal set up in place of what we have on EuroDIG, hopefully more than one language, where people will be able to anonymously without signing credibility to discussions, that is including the discussion on e-participation governance.
That will be included next year in the summary. Discussions taking place throughout the year will be presented among the decision makers next year, but also discussed at whatever plenary or workshop participation in Stockholm. So we are trying, the organizers are trying to establish that this is not a once a year thing, and I invite you to be all involved in the process. Spread the word to your peers and friends, those that are not involved in and who are not professional youth or professional anything, and I invite you to be back next year, and I hope you have enjoyed it. Thank you also for being here.
(Applause).