[open-government] Civil Society Workshop Before the Next Digital Assembly

[Javier Ruiz]

Dear friends

The following message has been circulated around several email lists for
European digital activists.Please forward to those you think may be
interested.

The first European Digital Assembly that took place in Brussels two weeks
ago showed that there is a wealth of activity in this field in Europe.
However, we felt that the effort could have been more productive and
engaging from the perspective of civil society. The assembly does provide an
interesting space to potentially make our voices heard, and the European
Commission clearly sees it as a space for accountability to their
stakeholders (this word was repeated around a hundred times!).

Although there was a semblance of balanced participation in many parallel
thematic workshops, it was unclear what were the key issues, what
recommendations would be made, and importantly how would these
be followed up. In the afternoons, most of the larger plenary panels were
dominated by politicians and businesses, culminating in
the appalling comments about the demise of privacy by the Belgian minister
for Economy and Innovation.

We think that if we are to participate again in this space, we need to be
better prepared to intervene in the assembly as civil society. In order to
do this Open Rights Group would like to propose a one day preparatory
workshop the day before the next Digital Assembly. This workshop would
dissect the programme for the assembly and allow civil society organisations
and interested individuals to examine the issues and enhance their
participation. Ideally, this workshop should include groups working on
privacy, data and the civil liberties end and those working on the cultural
aspects, but it could go beyond these networks and engage other participants
in the assembly. This could include groups working on disability, gender and
local democracy, to name a few of the themes of the assembly.

This is a very preliminary proposal to hear what you think. If enough people
believe this is a good idea Open Rights Group can help organise, run and
fundraise, but we will need other organisations to commit to make it happen
as well.

Best, Javier
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