[ckan-discuss] A remark on the EU Hackaton

Wed Sep 14 12:39:05 BST 2011

Hi,

Interesting. I had heard of this EU Hackaton <http://www.euhackathon.eu/>, but then 
forgot about it again.

I don't want to spoil  the party, but I think it is relevant (and problematic) that 
the EU Hackaton is organised by N-SQUARE <http://www.n-square.eu/>, a lobbying 
consultancy that is specialising in telecoms, internet, new media and web 2.0 issues, 
lobbying on behalf of big players with a direct commercial interest in EU IT 
policies. *Those who participate in the EU Hackaton should at least be aware of these 
corporate links of the host organisation*.

In the EU lobby transparency register, N-Square declares the following clients: 
<http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/displaylobbyist.do?id=61008951870-83>

Total turnover: 	100000  EUR - 150000  EUR

*Clients generating a turnover of 10 % - 20 %.*

  * EIAA

  * Google

*Clients generating a turnover of 20 % - 30 %.*

  * VON Europe

*Clients generating a turnover of 30 % - 40 %.*

  * The Number

EIAA stands for the European Interactive Advertising Association. This association 
recently merged into IAB Europe <http://www.iabeurope.eu/About.aspx>, the EU office 
of the Interactive Advertising Bureau-- they write on their website 
<http://www.iabeurope.eu/public-affairs.aspx> they have one in house lobbyist in 
Brussels, but IAB Europe is not listed on the EU lobby transparency register.

VON Europe <http://www.voneurope.eu/category/mission/> is an industry coalition of 
the voice for the Internet-enabled communications (VoIP) industry. According to 
recent lobbying documents issued by VON Europe, the coalition includes companies like 
iBasis, Google, Microsoft, Rebtel, Skype and Voxbonehe coalition,which includes 
iBasis, Google, Microsoft, Rebtel, Skype and Voxbone,. The founder/owner of N-Square, 
Caroline de Cock (@linotherino <http://twitter.com/#%21/linotherhino>) is executive 
director of VON Europe. VON Europe is not listed on the EU lobby transparency register.

The Number Company is a commercial directory enquiries provider which is a subsidiary 
of the US-based directory enquiries provider Knowledge Generation Bureau (formerly 
InfoNXX). /As an amusing sidenote, the abbreviation for the parent firm of the Number 
Company is KGB./ According to lobbying documents issued by The Number Company, the 
company does have an "Executive Director, Government and Business Affairs -- Europe", 
but the firm is not listed in the voluntary EU lobby transparency register.

Since a few months, Caroline de Cock is executive director of the European Centre for 
Public Affairs (ECPA) <http://www.theecpa.eu/>, which over the past 6 years has been 
one of the organisations representing the interests of corporate lobbyists in 
Brussels, and which has systematically undermined the public interest campaign for EU 
lobbying transparency and ethics rules (see the website of ALTER-EU, the Alliance for 
Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation <http://www.alter-eu.org>). ECPA is not 
on the EU lobby transparency register.

Erik Wesselius
Corporate Europe Observatory

On 14/09/11 11:56, stef wrote:
> hey,
>
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 09:13:43AM +0200, Erik Wesselius wrote:
>> Thanks a lot for your help. I think the dataset
>> http://parltrack.euwiki.org/dumps/ is exactly what more-onion is
>> looking for and I have forwarded the information to Florian.
> great. altough we don't provide csv/spreadsheet formated dumps yet, we have
> started investigating this.
>
> btw have you looked into the apps themselves? http://www.parltrack.euwiki.org
> and http://memopol2.lqdn.fr
>
>> Quite exciting that this information is available as open data!
> there's quite a lot actually:
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parliamentary_informatics
> http://ckan.net/dataset?q=european+parliament
>
>> I think that many many people and public interest groups working on EU
>> issues would find this extremely useful.
> infact we are doing this for public interests groups, we're working with
> laquadrature du net, EFF and EDRi on these topics, other digital rights
> and journalist organizations might be also infected. ;)
>
>> Which makes me think that it might be a good idea to organise an open-data
>> "teach in" in Brussels for public interest groups working on EU issues.
> indeed. we do engage in these things. in october there'll be a hacks for
> transparency in the EP organized by N-squared.
>
> http://www.euhackathon.eu/
>
> where the european parliament free software user group is having a side event
> on exactly some tools we have for disinfecting eu politics. ;)
>
>> Let's start thinking about this :-)
> pls consider either the week of the ep hackaton for such events, i'm anyway in
> bxl then. or we should make up some other date so we can start working towards
> that.
>
>> Kind greetings on what may prove to be a crucial day for Europe and the euro,
> i guess the "crucial day for the euro" is unrelated to the parl-data we scrape,
> right?
>

-- 
email:   erik at corporateeurope.org

phone:   +31-(0)30-2364422
mobile:  +32-(0)476-901587 (only when I'm in Belgium)
skype:   zilverling
twitter: erikwesselius

website: http://www.corporateeurope.org

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