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samosdialogos: DEVELOPMENT AND DISTRIBUTION OF APPLICATIONS FOR E-PARTICIPATION AND E-COMMUNICATION
Prefecture of Samos
Greece

The Problem

The emergence of eDemocracy and eParticipation theory and practice these past few years was accompanied by a rhetoric affirming the potential of ICTs to rejuvenate our old democracies, giving it the tools to redefine itself in its everyday functioning.
A lot of projects and research are carried out in this field. In most cases these are funded by governments or European Institutions, encouraged in turn by high expectations on the inherent capacity eDemocracy would have in reverting the increasingly worrying trend of massive citizen disengagement and mistrust towards politics and government in general.
Following the appearance of many reports (European Commission, U.N. etc) that documented this worrying disengagement trend in combination with the failure of the European Institutions and National Governments to properly communicate and convince European Citizens on the European Constitution Project, the need to find ways to re-engage with the citizens is pressing. The European Commissioner for Communication has recently launched the so called Plan-D, calling for a better understanding and adoption of a participatory approach in policy formulation and citizen engagement in the decision making processes.
Most European Countries have some eDemocracy or eParticipation Project going on; few even have integrated this spin in their own National Strategies. Local Authorities and Municipalities were seen as the ideal test-bed to experiment and develop eDemocracy initiatives and projects.
At the same time, Web 2.0 has revolutionized the way we interact in our modern knowledge-based societies and the way we make politics. This Digital Revolution driven by the grassroots is forcing classical policy-making stakeholders (decision-makers, media and citizens) to redefine their roles in policy-making processes, as well as to reinvent their relationships.
Last US presidential elections (2008) have seen the rise and success of using Web 2.0 technologies to empower, train, educate, activate and mobilize citizens around a campaign political programme. “YES WE CAN” (US President Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign’s slogan), embodied this shift from “topdown policy-making” to “collective policy-making” using the networking power of Internet and more specifically Web 2.0 technologies.
Web 2.0 technologies (social networking, blogs, wikis, and so on) offer powerful tools to co-create content and to mobilise communities of stakeholders around issues of interest. In the political and policy-making contexts, it paves the way for new forms of participation, shaking the grounds of classical policy-making processes.
Today, citizens empowered by Web 2.0 technologies have become “opinion-makers” and “citizen-journalists”, able with the power of the Internet to report events as they occur (e.g. the execution of Saddam Hussein (2006), the 2004 Tsunami, the 2009 Iranian Elections), to advocate causes (e.g. the French referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty (2005)) and to empower the 1st US African-American President (2008).
This bottom-up revolution in our ways of conducting public affairs represents a de-facto change in the balance of power inside our representative democracies, where people voice empowered by Web 2.0 technologies is no more just embodied in the electoral processes and through the expert glasses of traditional media, but through the use of social software.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The key benefit of the project is the development of a unique methodology and a fully operational platform that implements it. Essentially this can be summed up as a net gain in "know-how" with respect to e-democracy and e-participation models and best practices worldwide.
The benefit for the Prefecture of Samos, the owner of the project, is increased legitimacy and improved public image. Also, the establishment of a new mentality, since they accepted the need for increased engagement of citizens in the policy making process.
The benefit to the users, the citizens, is first and foremost the creation of a "culture of participation", especially in a country in which the dominant perception is one of "distant" politicians who do not listen or are interested enough for their constituents once they are elected. Also, society as a whole stands to benefit greatly from this project since the issue of deliberation has gained the attention of mainstream media and key opinion leaders who have embraced it. In this respect, it acts as an example, a "role model" for other projects to be developed especially in local authorities.
Finally, as a side benefit, the "Special Secretariat for Information Society" (Greece's government body in charge of coordinating the information society funds) stands to gain from the promotion of this example to other potential parties who are interested now to deploy similar projects, enriching thus the country's experience from e-democracy projects. In fact, experience gained from this project has already created plans for further uptake and expansion.
The project has just been deployed in November 2009 and is operating in beta still, so overall results will have to be assessed when the project will be concluded. However, there are already some early indicators on which we can judge performance. These are:
-Number of citizens who have registered at the platform: 70.
-Number of citizens who participated in the first agenda setting e-poll: 25.
-Number of citizens who posted to the e-forum: 20 with 33 posts.
-Number of e-surveys submitted: 4, taken a total of 44 times
-The monthly average site statistics are: 784 visits, 385 unique visitors, 6.469 page views.
These figures –although relatively small - exceeded expectations so far, considering that in the Prefecture of Samos (with a population of 44.114 people), there are between 5.000 and 8.000 internet users out of which only between 500 and 800 have broadband access (figures calculated and based on official data from the “Observatory for the Information Society” eEurope/i2010 July 08 report and the “Census 2001” population data of the “Greek National Statistics Office”). Assuming that broadband users are the ones most likely to use such a sophisticated platform, we can -very roughly - estimate that 25% of them became registered users and 15% participated. These numbers justify our claim that the project is already a success, especially considering the fact that it is still in beta operation and that it is a novel project for the Prefecture of Samos and Greece as a whole, with all the constraints and problems that this entails.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The project was incepted by the Prefecture of Samos, also the owner of the platform, that published the relevant RFP. Funding was secured by a combination of EU (80%) and national (20%) resources, as a partnerships of the Greek central government (case adopted by the Greek Ministry of Interior and Decentralization) and EU regional policies for ICT in local governance.
The solution was implemented in 2009 using external outsourcing for the technical and methodological development. The contractor was IMC Technologies SA, a company with strong background in eParticipation. The implementation team was multi-disciplinary, consisting of:
• Software architects, engineers and developers, responsible for the development of the platform. Agile methodologies were followed.
• Knowledge engineers, responsible for the development of the ontologies and semantic web applications
• eParticipation experts, who developed the methodology of samos dialogos and provided the functional and usability specifications of the platform.
• Political Scientists, who researched and organized the public deliberations; the facts, the knowledge and the structure of a deliberation. These scientists supported the moderators (local journalists) in maintaining a fair and open dialogue with the citizens.
• Political research scientists, responsible for the creation and analysis of the online surveys.
• Communication Strategy consultants, responsible for the design and overall implementation of communication strategy of the Prefecture of Samos with citizens, NGOs, businesses etc.
• Project management, responsible for the co-ordination of this heterogeneous team and the close collaboration with the Samos Prefecture team.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The project is inspired by the ”broadband as a public commodity” vision, having as its main goal to develop strategic frameworks which will assist policy makers, planners, and other stakeholders in the process of harnessing the potential of ICTs to meet socio-economic objectives and targets of local societies, citizens and enterprises in an efficient and effective way.
The project’s objectives include:
• The provision of free broadband access to the citizens as a means for the cultivation of a digital culture towards eGovernment and eDemocracy. Under this policy context, empowering active citizenship and participation through ICT infrastructures remains a milestone that has to be achieved in order to exploit Internet broadband access to enhance the quality of our democratic regime.
• Enhancing the direct participation of citizens and civil society in the debate and consultation cycles of the decision-making process itself in a multi-level governance context, while adapting the process to Web 2.0 realities and increasing citizen participation.
• Involving citizens in the policy-making processes by enhancing social networking capacities. Getting involved in politics is one of the earliest forms of “social networking” and supporting a cause is a critical way in which people connect with the world around them and express themselves. The relatively new “social technologies” show that individuals can not only easily connect to politics but directly affect their world as well.
• Using new intermediation models to create collaborative input to policy-making at central level and policy implementation at local level (data gathering, sharing collective knowledge and Web 2.0 technologies). Local Authorities, who are the closest level of governance to the citizens in many policy domains that have their origins at central level (e.g. employment, education, environment) benefit extensively from e-Participation in terms of legitimacy, transparency, accountability, trust and service provision efficiency.
• Enabling the provision of policy-making related services by citizens and media encouraging citizens to voice their opinions, provide input and get involved, while redefining policy-making stakeholders role and reinventing their relationships in Web 2.0 era.
These objectives have been shaped by both national and international strategic initiatives.
On the national level, the project falls under the “Politeia: Reinvention of Public Administration” Programme of the eGov Unit of the Greek Ministry of Interior and specifically its 5th sub-programme “Transparency & Values of sound Governance” and the specific action “Participation of Citizens and Businesses in decision-making”.
On the European level, samosdialogos is aligned to the i2010 strategy and the Lisbon strategy, in particular to the European Commission’s “i2010 eGovernment Action Plan: Accelerating eGovernment in Europe for the Benefit of All” and particularly its provisions for eParticipation, which is about reconnecting ordinary people with politics and policy-making and making the decision-making processes easier to understand and follow through the use of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
Finally, the project is also aligned to the European Commission’s principles as laid out in the “Plan-D” (Dialogue-Democracy-Debate) strategy put forward by Margot Wallström and stresses the need to “listen” to citizens through two-way communication as a means to enhance democracy and transparency.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The implementation of the project had two major phases: a) the development and operation of the Samos Dialogos methodology and platform, and b) the real-life application of the approach in public dialogues with the citizens. The former phase lasted 2 months whereas the latter phase is estimated to last for 3 months. It was a perception of all the project participants that in order for the approach to work a close co-operation of the expert team with the prefecture staff responsible for the operation of Samos Dialogos would be critical. During the 3 month period the experts will collaborate closely with the staff of the prefecture as well as other external participants (e.g. journalists who will act as moderators).
The samosdialogos toolkit, which was developed during the first phase of the project, was the basis for all the staff actions and a rich knowledge transfer took place between staff, external participants and IMC Technologies’ experts for the efficient operation of the samosdialogos approach. This knowledge was captured and formalized by developing an ontology that served as a shared conceptualization of the domain. In parallel, the Samos Prefecture Director’s commitment to promote the approach motivated employees to do their best and make the approach work.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Given the implementing partner’s, IMC Technologies, experience in the field of eParticipation as well as technical competence, the operating partner’s, Samos Prefecture, and the financing partner’s, the Ministry of Interior, commitment to the project, there were only two real obstacles that had to be dealt with:
The first obstacle was the tight deadline under which the project team had to operate. This was a result of administrative constraints imposed by the funding scheme used, which meant that the implementation of the platform had to be completed within an extremely limited timeframe. This was made possible by applying Agile techniques, both in terms of software engineering as well as project management.
The second obstacle had to do with the dissemination of the project and raising public awareness, as the nature of the project makes its success dependent on its uptake. This has been dealt with by incorporating a public awareness campaign in the project lifecycle.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The project has a total budget of 320.000 Euro, including development effort, hardware infrastructure and dissemination campaign. In terms of person-effort, the project required a total of 27,5 person-months, amounting to 209.000 Euro, while the rest of the budget was allocated to acquiring the server infrastructure required for the operation of the platform and running the dissemination campaign. No software acquisition cost was involved, as the entire software infrastructure used was open source.
Following the initial phase of the project, the Prefecture of Samos will maintain the staff that worked in the project to continue the management of the case. The following roles can be distinguished:
• Case manager, who has, apart from the obvious managerial role, to synchronize and implement the Prefecture’s guidelines and decisions (with respect to future deliberations, surveys, etc). S/he is the link between the Prefecture and the citizens.
• Content manager, responsible for the development and publication of the platform’s content. The content manager is responsible for the organization of public deliberations and thus has a strong political science background
• Communication Manager, responsible for the constant communication of the actions and events that take place in the samosdialogos platform, the promotion of the approach and the co-ordination of external participants, such as moderators, who are usually journalists.
• Political Research. This is specialized staff that has been trained in the development and analysis of online surveys.
• Technical Administration, responsible of the efficient operation of the platform, provided by IMC Technologies
As it becomes obvious, samosdialogos, like all eParticipation projects, requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Being a local case and having the Prefecture’s Director commitment and support helped in the direction that communication lines became short and the overall management effective. The rich, face-to-face knowledge transfer process that lasted for a six month period along with a detailed toolkit that demystified the eParticipation norms and processes ensures that no gap between technical, organizational and operation side will remain unresolved. Finally, a Communication Strategy Action Plan and the dedication by the authorities to promote the initiative boosted samosdialogos publicity and participation

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The project was funded by the Ministry of Interior to comply with policy priorities and as such, monetary ROI was completely outside the scope of the project.
In this respect, sustainability cannot and should not be quantified in terms of revenue streams created, but rather in terms of impact which means level of participation, citizen empowerment, public officials’ education, sustainability and replicability of the project, increase public awareness of e-participation etc. As such, the project has shown remarkable acceptance and the interest created within Greece and abroad is an indication of its usefulness and potential in the future. Moreover, the lessons learned from this unique project help create a benchmark for future projects and most importantly, it leverages the emergence of a brand new “paradigm” in public administration -particularly in the all too important local authorities’ level.
The project from its inception was designed with a view for scalability and replicability by other organizations and partners. All critical parts of the platform are designed to be adaptable for almost any organization wishing to deliberate widely with citizens or specific stakeholders. The methodology’s principles are largely independent of the initiating body. In this respect, there have been discussions with other stakeholders who have expressed a strong interest in adopting the project for their own use.
Naturally, the fist organizations who have expressed interest are of a similar nature, namely other local and regional government organizations. The novelty and success of the project has attracted strong interest and there is a specific plan under way to replicate and transfer the project to other local authorities, integrating all the necessary modifications and improvements which have been identified through this endeavour.

The medium term objective - as soon as the project concludes its present phase - is to adapt the platform and compile a report of findings which will help towards the goal set above. Other actors who could benefit from adapting this platform are Ministries or Parliaments for legislative related deliberation. Also, non-profit organizations of any nature or umbrella organizations of non-profits and international institutions can benefit from its adoption.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Impact lies mainly on the socio-political level, but nevertheless and despite the novelty of the project, there are some quantitative results already (mentioned in the key benefits section). Furthermore the measurement reference system.(source: Millard, ePractice Journal) no 4, 2008) developed for the purposes of the eGovMoNet project will be adopted for additional knowledge extraction and application design.
Beyond these quantitative measurements the platform itself is designed to facilitate further analysis when the project concludes its current cycle. In particular, the information drawn from the registrants (demographics, usage etc) will be weighted/matched against the official census population data so that we gain a clearer indication of how the socioeconomic composition of the participants rates against the general population mix. This will enable useful indications to be drawn about the impact of digital divide, of weak and strong points in the communication plan etc.
We could summarize the key lessons learned as follows:
The first lesson is the utmost need for “Legitimacy”, meaning the need for "pioneers" - in this case the Prefecture of Samos and its Director, as the coordinating body, that will embrace the project, inspire public servants and citizens and will provide assurance that citizens’ voices will be heard.
Second lesson is that there are no ready-made transferable solutions or one-size fits all platform or methodology. There are tailor-made solutions which must take into account the local needs and restrictions (cultural, political and technical) and need the input of a wide range of experts to collaborate as one team: Software developers, social scientists, opinion poll experts, communication experts, content managers, graphic designers etc.
Third lesson is the paramount need to combine offline with online methods especially with respect to communication and marketing of the project, a task that must "educate" the owners, the users, the management team and the stakeholders of the project, considering the novelty of the project.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Prefecture of Samos
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Manolis Karlas
Title:   Prefector  
Telephone/ Fax:   00302273350400
Institution's / Project's Website:   00302273025444
E-mail:   nomarxia@samos.gr  
Address:   Dervenakion & Alexi Alexi
Postal Code:   83100
City:   Samos
State/Province:   Samos
Country:   Greece

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