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

Tue Jun 28 10:35:15 UTC 2011

when is the next digital assembly?

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Javier Ruiz <javier at openrightsgroup.org>wrote:

> 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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>
>

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