Mick Davies Chair LASSeO, based at

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ePetitioning for the Regional Conference on
eDemocracy and eParticipation The province of
Flevoland 12 September 2007

• Mick Davies - Chair LASSeO, based at
• the European Centre for Smartmedia and
• eInclusion, Sheffield

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Agenda

• A little background
• The choice of application
• Implementation issues
• Impact on the organisation
• politicians and
• back-office
• Changes in the ways of engaging with the
  citizens of Sheffield

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Background The European Centre for Smartmedia
and e-Inclusion
This is situated in Sheffield and is helping to
build the market, establishing supply chains, and
providing incubator services for a range of
smartmedia technologies. It will house the
Sheffield card scheme in the near future and
currently provides a home for LASSeO who are an
organisation providing advice and guidance on
Standards, Best Practice Interoperable
solutions to local government. It is involved
in a number of European projects including
e-participation.
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Our starting point wasHow could we improve the
democratic process?

• We already had experience of eVoting
• From home
• From public kiosks

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So we looked at the Good Practice Framework
Assessment Criteriaand current best practice

• We looked particularly at quality, benefits and
  transferability.
• We analysed Best Practice, selecting Service
  delivery and how can it be improved, but were
  very aware of the difficulties in engaging
  hard-to-reach groups.
• We selected the Scottish Assemblys and the
  German Parliaments ePetitioning system, a Best
  Practice from the Manchester Ministerial
  Conference and set out to enhance this by
  including new channels such as internet- kiosks,
  SMS and digital TV from the E_at_SY Best Practice.
• We also set out to add Best Practice from another
  Interreg Project relating to helping citizens
  create visual content and added this to improve
  accessibility.

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ePetitioning demonstrated successful and
value-for-money use of ICT

• It was innovative, providing new ways of
  delivering public services at a local or regional
  level.
• Is highly transferable, and can be easily adapted
  and adopted by other administrations
• Involves management of change for staff, users
  and organisations
• real potential public and administrative impact
• Is already a prize-winning project where users
  are the prime focus
• Offered a way to improve the functioning of an
  existing petition process
• Is a highly visible service
• Tested how engage citizens through participation
  processes and through the introduction of
  eDemocracy
• We anticipated that it would become an effective
  tool for politicians and others wishing to see
  change.

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ePetitioning meant getting better Citizen
engagement
Easy access - using the web and kiosks Modern
methods - making it easy to start or join a
petition Inclusive approach - making it good for
all of our citizens Local publicity - building
on the Bristol experience of what works and
selecting some trial topics that local people
were really interested in
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ePetitioning meant moving from paper to
electronics to allow many more people to make
their views known.
All these messages helped to sell the idea
internally
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Once ePetitioning was selected

• We set about the detailed work to ensure that the
  software chosen could be easily adapted for use
  in other countries.
• We identified enhanced features and got
  development underway at Napier University
• We got local groups to create the first petitions
  without the additional features to show local
  politicians etc
• ePetitioning will become a mainstream tool in
  future initiatives led by the Council, but it was
  important not to confuse the citizens with
  competing initiatives.
• So we delayed while other major critical
  Sheffield City Council-led consultations were
  completed but took the opportunity to introduce
  improvements and additions before the South
  Yorkshire deployment.
• The first enhanced petitions are now live in
  South Yorkshire and these cover
• the problems of traffic in South Yorkshire
  relating to a by-pass and
• the proposed future uses of two landmark cooling
  towers near to the motorway.
• The trials in The Netherlands and Latvia are now
  in a position to proceed with the modifications
  having been carried out by the university
  department.

"Innovations such as the e-petitioning system
used by the Scottish Parliament suggests that
political institutions can rise to the new
challenges of the twenty-first century - Bill
Gates
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Some of the issues that arose

• Breaking down the silos
• ePetitioning involves breaking down internal
  silos and this is a continuing challenge for UK
  local government
• There was some confusion between Consultation
  processes (driven by the Council) and Petitions
  (driven by the citizens).
• Until this was resolved, not all officers thought
  that ePetitioning would provide improvements
• Such initiatives need the support of key officers
  and elected members.
• This was forthcoming in Sheffield with the Chief
  Executive being a pivotal figure.
• Leading members also saw the benefits for the
  citizen
• The need for a moderation role was crucial
• To ensure that frivolous or malicious petitions
  were not generated or posted to
• All officers agreed that this was a good thing
  but no one felt they had the resources to do it.
• Departments were functioning under controlled
  budgets and the size of this function was unknown
  as the volume of activity was expected to grow.
• The way forward we are now discussing with
  Sheffield City Council is to use Planning as a
  major pilot area as this generates most petitions
  and would link well to the Sheffield Planning
  portal.

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Finding local initiatives that fit

• In Sheffield the project is fully in tune with
  policies such as
• Strategies for Community Engagement
• Which investigated the Council strategies for
  engaging with the public on Council Services so
  as to promote successful neighbourhoods.
• The Sheffield Scrutiny Board exercise which
  examined ways in which the Council engage the
  public on how services were provided. It asked
  the question-
• Are we as a Council doing enough to interact
  with service users at a local level so as to
  inform the Council on any changes it needed to
  make in the way services are provided in order to
  establish and sustain successful neighbourhoods.
• The Board received a report of the Executive
  Director, Neighbourhoods, providing a historical
  local perspective on how the Council interacted
  with the public and giving examples of good
  practice in terms of community engagement and
  which operated at a range of levels which
  included informing, consulting, involving and
  empowering local communities.
• ePetitioning adds considerably to this policy.

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Informing the citizen through the local press
and the web site

• Do you want to support or comment on a petition
  online?
• e-Petitioner allows you to support a petition by
  adding your name and address online. Information
  about the subject is also provided, to put the
  petition in context and help you decide whether
  to sign.
• You can also see who else has supported the
  petition (name and area only) or join in a
  discussion about it online.
• Do you want to use the Internet to petition the
  Council?
• e-Petitioner allows you to have your petition
  live on the Internet, rather than just on paper.
  This way, your petition and supporting
  information can be made available to a
  potentially much wider audience, giving you the
  opportunity to gather more names to support the
  petition.
• A petition may gather names and addresses in both
  forms - you can have a paper version and an
  online version, although repeat names should be
  removed by the Principal Petitioner.
• Each e-petition also has its own discussion
  forum, where supporters and others can discuss
  the petition and surrounding issues online. There
  is also space for supporting information, so that
  you can add any background necessary and put your
  petition in context. Supporting video clips
  utilising a simple to use online community film
  creation software can be added.
• How to raise an e-petition
• To raise an e-petition, simply check the
  Councils Petitions web page. This provides
  information on the kind of issues that can be
  raised in petitions, what you should do before
  starting a petition, the form and content of the
  petition, how the council will consider the
  petition and who to contact for further
  information.
• Security measures
• Entries are checked for duplications and unlikely
  names. These will be removed.
• Privacy policy
• Only your name and area will appear on the
  website. The other details you give us are needed
  by the Council to validate your support. This is
  the same information required for a paper
  petition.
• After a petition is closed online, you can no
  longer make comments in the discussion forum.
  However, these will still be available for the
  public to read.

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Output from this project has been targeted

• This project is unique in the sense that it has a
  real product to sell
• We envisage every Hanse region and as many others
  as possible, adopting this eDemocracy tool, with
  its added value improvements arising from our
  current activities.
• Provisional agreements have now been reached
  whereby the consortium can work alongside the
  original owner of the software to ensure both its
  maintenance and its widespread deployment by
  adopting non-commercial goals of maximising
  take-up rather than profit.
• The Budapest eDemocracy event resulted in
  Sheffield being accepted as a pilot for a large
  UK eDemocracy initiative in the Spring, which
  will provide further opportunities.
• The project has been brought to the attention of
  the leading cities in eGovernment in China under
  the umbrella of the EU-China IST programme.
• The main push is now happening with up to three
  systems up and running to encourage the other
  Hanse regions to join in.

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Good practices transferred

• This project has succeeded in consolidating three
  best practices into one with the opportunity of
  enhancing a fourth by adding our work to an
  existing youth participation initiative.
• The essential Best Practice is the core
  ePetitioning system.
• This has been improved by adding the EASY Connect
  application, so that additional channels may be
  added.
• Concentrating on SMS for wider take-up because of
  the eInclusion aspects of using mobile phones.
• Finally we have added a facility for giving
  citizens with no IT skills, the tools to create
  audio visual content of their own, to enhance the
  arguments they propose in favour of the petition
  they are creating online.

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Take-up and sustainability

• Effectively, we are now providing three
  demonstration sites which will be used in making
  the real marketing effort prior to becoming a
  self-sustaining initiative as others from the
  Hanse Passage regions and elsewhere join in this
  interesting process.
• Given that a major aim was to make the project
  sustainable and not just a paper exercise,
  dissemination and efforts to promote take-up will
  continue after the project ends, with further
  support being sought to carry the project through
  into a real exploitation stage.
• For a small project, we will have attracted
  enormous additional resources to aid its
  dissemination and this high profile activity can
  only enhance the reputation of the Hanse Passage
  Interreg Project as a whole, with a stand being
  established at the Lisbon Conference covering
  Hanse Passage as well as eParticipation.

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The project fell into four very clear stages

• Stage One
• to establish and study as wide a range of
  examples of good practice in eParticipation and
  eDemocracy as possible, given the limited
  resources.
• To produce an Analysis of existing Best Practice
  in the Hanse Regions.
• Stage Two
• to evaluate this material and come to a choice,
  based on an evaluation process, as to which of
  these examples of best practice, taken from
  within the Hanse Passage Regions and from across
  the EU, might be best suited for replication in
  the partners own administrations.
• Stage Three
• to test the chosen application on a real
  consultation.
• to enhance it by introducing SMS signing as well
  as online, and giving petition-raisers, the
  ability to make supporting films to add to their
  arguments.
• Stage Four
• to analyse and evaluate the results and to
  disseminate the findings widely, hoping that
  other Hanse Passage regions in particular, will
  take up this application.

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Taking it to another level

• Our approach is to collaborate with other
  interested parties rather than passing it on from
  those possessing it to those who would like to
  receive it.
• We believe that co-operation as equal partners,
  rather than one advanced partner aspiring to
  teach, will bring the best results.
• With such a successful project, there is a need
  to offer further support beyond the initial small
  budgets to ensure that the opportunities for a
  much wider take-up can be realised.
• Additional resources at this stage would ensure a
  very wide take-up and a pathway to further
  progress in this important area.

We would like to take the best practice to
another higher level.
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In summary, e-democracy depends upon engagement
Making getting involved easy and immediate and
exciting Providing a range of user-friendly
means of access to reduce the divide between
those that can do and those that cannot Being
sure of who we are dealing with, so that we can
respond properly Having appropriate back office
support arrangements to support new ways of
working Delivering services that provide a good
customer experience in a modern predictable way
so that citizens know what to expect and see
results
Thank you for listening