Wyner on Workshop on FP7 eGovernance and Policy Modelling Projects

Dr. Adam Wyner of the University of Leeds Centre for Digital Citizenship has posted Note on Workshop on FP7 eGovernance and Policy Modelling Projects, on his blog, Language Logic Law Software.

The EU-funded Project IMPACT : Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis, was featured at the Workshop. Click here for more information about Project IMPACT.

Here is introductory information about the post:

On January 27th, 2012, I attended a workshop in Sheffield, United Kingdom on current FP7 eGovernance and Policy Modelling projects. This was an opportunity to hear from and meet participants in other projects, largely based in the United Kingdom. The information (somewhat augmented) about the workshop is below. My colleagues in the IMPACT Project, Professor Ann Macintosh and Neil Benn, presented our side of the story.

Aims

• To close the gap between the availability of cutting edge R & D in eGovernance and Policy Modelling and its take-up in local and central government. It will bring the new governance projects and those about to exploit their results into a collaborative environment.
• To link the projects currently creating the best practice of the future with initiatives seeking to share current best practice, thus assisting with “exploitation” of the new initiatives.
• To briefly assess how these initiatives may be of global benefit by examining how China may be encouraged to take a short cut to sustainable development and looking at joint approaches to China.

For more information, please see the complete post.

Gastil et al. Win NCA Book Award for The Jury and Democracy

Professor Dr. John Gastil of the Penn State University Department of Communication Arts and Sciences; Dr. E. Pierre Deess of the New Jersey Institute of Technology; Dean Philip J. Weiser of the University of Colorado School of Law; and Cindy Simmons, Esq., M.A., of the Penn State University College of Communications, have been awarded the National Communication Association Group Communication Division Ernest Bormann Research Award for the Outstanding Book for 2011, for The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Project IMPACT: Two New Reports

Two new reports were issued in June 2011 by the EU-funded Project IMPACT: Integrated Method for Policy Making Using Argument Modelling and Computer Assisted Text Analysis:

• A report on the Argument Analysis, Tracking and Visualisation tool (AVT) (specifically, a report “describ[ing] the requirements analysis and specification, as well as the construction plan” for this tool); and
• A report describing the Argument Reconstruction tool (specifically, a report “formulat[ing] the requirements, review[ing] the applicability of currently available computational linguistics techniques, discuss[ing] the functionality of comparable existing tools and provid[ing] a specification of the first version of the tool with a walk-through of an example”).

In addition, the Project IMPACT Website now includes pages listing the publications and presentations produced in connection with the project.

Gastil et al. on The Jury and Democracy

Professor Dr. John Gastil of the University of Washington Department of Communication; Dr. E. Pierre Deess of the New Jersey Institute of Technology; Professor Philip J. Weiser of the University of Colorado School of Law; and Cindy Simmons, Esq., M.A., of the University of Washington Department of Communication, have published The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation (2010). Here is a summary:

Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and the U.S. Supreme Court have all alleged that jury service promotes civic and political engagement, yet none could prove it. Finally, The Jury and Democracy provides compelling systematic evidence to support this view.

Drawing from in-depth interviews, thousands of juror surveys, and court and voting records from across the United States, the authors show that serving on a jury can trigger changes in how citizens view themselves, their peers, and their government–and can even significantly increase electoral turnout among infrequent voters. Jury service also sparks long-term shifts in media use, political action, and community involvement.

In an era when involved Americans are searching for ways to inspire their fellow citizens, The Jury and Democracy offers a plausible and realistic path for turning passive spectators into active political participants.

The book includes reports of research produced by The Jury and Democracy Project, based at the University of Washington.

Crowdsourcing Ballot Initiative Voters’ Guides: Living Voters’ Guides

[NOTE: As of 11 July 2012 the original Living Voters Guide Website appears to be down. Click here for an archived version of the Living Voters Guide.]

A new platform — called Living Voters’ Guides – for crowdsourcing the development of voters’ guides that inform voters about referenda and other ballot initiatives, has been launched by a team including:

• CityClub of Seattle;
• The Design, Use, Build group @ the University of Washington, including Professor Dr. Alan Borning; Travis Kriplean, creator of the Reflect eParticipation system; and Jonathan Morgan;
• The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement @ the University of Washington, including Professor Dr. Lance Bennett and Deen Freelon; and
• Reinspire Me LLC.

The project is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Click here for Professor Dr. David Domke’s post about the platform.

Stromer-Galley et al. on Deliberative e-Rulemaking Decision Facilitation: Challenges to Enacting Real World Deliberation

Professor Dr. Jennifer Stromer-Galley of the University of Albany Department of Communication, Professor Dr. Peter Muhlberger of the Texas Tech University Center of Communications Research, and Nick Webb of the University at Albany Institute for Informatics, Logics and Security Studies, presented a paper entitled Deliberative e-Rulemaking Decision Facilitation: Challenges to Enacting Real World Deliberation, at OD 2010: The Fourth International Conference on Online Deliberation, held 30 June-2 July 2010, at the Leeds University Business School, in Leeds, England, UK.

Here is the abstract:

This paper describes the challenges facing a federal government funded initiative [DeER - Deliberative E-Rule Making Decision Facilitation Project] to promote deliberation to improve the public comment process by federal and state government agencies in the U.S. The three year project has met several difficulties. Some have been technical, such as the challenge of producing quality summaries. But our primary obstacle has been in securing partnerships with government agencies. Due to institutional, legal, and organizational challenges many government agencies are resistant to opening up the public comment process to a deliberative structure. The paper describes the objectives of the original research project and details the challenges faced.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the authors.

Thanks to Professor Dr. Stromer-Galley for providing the abstract.

Law-Related Papers at OD 2010

Here are the law-related papers (as best I can identify them), with links to slides where available, presented at OD 2010: The Fourth International Conference on Online Deliberation, held 30 June-2 July 2010, at the Leeds University Business School, in Leeds, England, UK:

• Euripidis Loukis and Maria Wimmer, Analysing different models of structured electronic consultation on legislation under formation;
• Lisa Blomgren Bingham, Online deliberation and the United States open government initiative;
• Melanie Bicking and Maria Wimmer, Tools and technologies in eParticipation: Insights from project evaluation;
• Nicolas Desquinabo and Nils Ferrand, Online deliberation and impact on decision: A local planning case;
• Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Peter Muhlberger and Nick Webb, Deliberative e-rulemaking decision facilitation: Challenges to enacting real world deliberation;
• Cyril Velikanov, Facilitation procedures for written online deliberation: A research and development project in the field of Deliberative Democracy.

If you know of other law-related papers given at OD 2010, please feel free to identify them in the comments.

Loukis & Wimmer on Analysing Different Models of Structured Electronic Consultation on Legislation Under Formation

Professor Dr. Euripidis Loukis of the University of the Aegean Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, and Professor Maria Wimmer of Universität Koblenz-Landau Institut für Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsinformatik, presented a paper entitled Analysing Different Models of Structured Electronic Consultation on Legislation Under Formation, at OD 2010: The Fourth International Conference on Online Deliberation, held 30 June-2 July 2010, at the Leeds University Business School, in Leeds, England, UK.

Click here for the presentation slides.

Here is the abstract:

Electronic consultation through the Internet has become an important means of e-participation in order to enable interaction and discussion among government agencies and citizens on public policies and decisions. Tools that enhance the quality of electronic consultations need therefore to be designed in a way that better opinions and arguments are produced. Well designed ICT tools can contribute to better, more informed and socially rooted public policies and decisions. This paper analyses two different models of structured electronic consultation in the area of formation of legislation, a highly complex and controversial category of government decisions. The first model is a highly structured e-consultation model based on the Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) framework, having as basic elements issues, alternatives, pro-arguments, contra-arguments and comments. The second model is simpler and less structured, having as basic elements questions, answers and comments. Our analysis was based on two pilot cases concerning legislation under formation in Greece and Austria. Evaluation took place using discussion tree analysis and quantitative and qualitative methods.

Here is a summary of the presentation:

Conducted as part of the EU’s LEX-IS project, this research compared “two different models of structured e-consultation on the formation of legislation”: one — more complex and structured, taking the form of “issues-alternatives-arguments-comments” — “based on [the] IBIS framework”; the other “simpler and less structured,” in the form of “questions – answers – comments.” The research was conducted on eConsultations respecting proposed legislation in the parliaments of Austria and Greece.

The authors drew the following conclusions from the research data:

Less sophisticated users with lower levels of education and [fewer] skills and experiences in structured discussions [found] the more structured e-forum[s] … more difficult and demanding and [made] a suboptimal use of them. [The] [m]ain difficulties result[ed] from mental efforts needed in thinking in the highly structured way that such tools impose, in annotating correctly the postings[,] [c]onnecting them to others’ postings and in general using efficiently the ‘discussion language’[.] However, [the more structured e-forums] can facilitate higher quality discussions[.] Highly structured e-consultations require adequate skills, capacities and training of the users. Hence, such highly structured tools may not be the best solution for wider citizen participation, but very good for more sophisticated and knowledgeable citizens. Parliaments are therefore recommended [to] organize e-consultations with a wider public by using simple e-forums, while at the same time they may exploit structured e-forum tools to consult with expert groups relevant for the bills under discussion[.]

For the full text of the paper, please contact the authors.

Thanks to Professor Dr. Loukis for providing the abstract.

Call for Papers: ECEG 2011: European Conference on eGovernment

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 25 November 2010 — has been issued for ECEG 2011: The 11th European Conference on e-Government, to be held 16-17 June 2011 in Ljubljani, Slovenia.

Here are the legal-informatics topics, from the topics about which papers are invited:

• Challenges to e-Government:
• Interoperability;
• Language issues;
• Identity Management – including Authentication, Trust and Privacy;
• Semantics of transactions in e-Government, definitions and implementations
• e-Voting
• e-Democracy:
• ICT and the case of deliberative democracy;
• Using Blogs and Wikis to enhance participation;
• Citizen trust in online participation and dialogue;
• The design of audience-specific consultative processes;
• Deciding the correct balance between online and offline citizen/government, citizen/citizen interactions;
• Exploiting the learning and communicative potential of emerging online tools and new media forms (games, blogs, wiki, G3 mobile communications)
• Measuring e-Government/Economics of e-Government
• Legal, agency, trust and governance issues in e-Government
• Additional topics:
• Interoperability Frameworks (National, Transnational);
• Knowledge Management/Intellectual capital in local/national government;
• e-I: Intelligent use of systems in government;
• Information management strategies within the public sector;
• Decision support systems;
• Single European information space;
• Document management systems;
• Open Access and e-Government;
• Mobile Government;
• e-Procurement

For a complete list of topics, or for more information, please see the call for papers.

Ellison & Munro on Examining Juror’s Deliberative Processes in a Mock Rape Trial

Dr. Louise Ellison of the University of Leeds School of Law and Professor Vanessa Munro of the University of Nottingham School of Law presented a paper entitled Examining Juror’s Deliberative Processes in a Mock Rape Trial, at Jury Research Symposium 2010, held 25-26 March 2010 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Here is the abstract:

Reforms under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 notwithstanding, the jury continues to play a pivotal role in determining criminal liability in rape trials. Research with ‘real’ juries is prohibited, and previous simulation studies often lack verisimilitude ‐ either by relying on minimalist stimuli, neglecting the appropriate legal tests, or omitting any collective discursive component. Without trivialising the complexities involved in extrapolating from the experimental to the ‘real’ trial context, this paper outlines the findings of a mock jury study in which members of the public were asked to deliberate towards a unanimous verdict, having observed an abbreviated rape trial reconstruction, which was enacted in real‐time by actors and barristers, with instruction provided in line with the JSB Specimen Direction. It will reflect on the structural processes (including the presence of a foreperson, inter‐personal dynamics, and the deployment of various persuasive strategies) that framed the tone and direction of collective discussion. In so doing, it generates further insight into what may go on behind the closed doors of the jury room in rape cases, and sheds light on the ways in which differently composed juries faced with the same stimulus may not only reach divergent verdicts but may embark upon radically different routes to reach the same destination.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the authors.