Open government policies are spreading across Europe — but what are the expected benefits?
Open government policies are spreading across Europe, challenging previous models of the public sector, and defining new forms of relationship between government, citizens, and digital technologies. In their Policy & Internet article “Why Choose Open Government? Motivations for the Adoption of Open Government Policies in Four European Countries,” Emiliana De Blasio and Donatella Selva present […]
Community-based approaches are widely employed in programmes that monitor and promote socioeconomic development. And building the “capacity” of a community — i.e. the ability of people to act individually or collectively to benefit the community — is key to these approaches. The various definitions of community capacity all agree that it comprises a number of […]
Continue reading …Why does the Open Government Data agenda face such barriers?
26 January 2015The transformative social and economic impacts claimed by advocates of open government data still seem a rather distant possibility; and even the more modest goal of integrating the creation and use of OGD into the mainstream practices of government, businesses and citizens remains to be achieved. The Open University’s Chris Martin discusses why this might be, discussing the main findings of his article Barriers to the Open Government Data Agenda: Taking a Multi-Level Perspective, published in Policy & Internet (2014: 6,3).
Continue reading …Online crowd-sourcing of scientific data could document the worldwide loss of glaciers to climate change
14 May 2013
There are about 300,000 glaciers worldwide, representing 69% of the world’s fresh water, and a dependable water supply to more than a billion people. Glaciers also provide a key (and very visible) indicator for climate change. Klaus Thymann, a director at Project Pressure — the world’s first crowdsourced archive of glacier images — discusses how photography can provide a unique and important online data resource for climate scientists studying glacial retreat. Launching in 2014, the project’s partners include NASA and the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
Continue reading …Online collective action and policy change: new special issue from Policy and Internet
18 March 2013
Digital communication technologies are altering the interface between policy makers and social movements. Anastasia Kavada, Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, and Guest Editor (with Andrea Calderaro from the European University Institute) of the Special issue on “Online Collective action and Policy Change”, provides an introduction to the papers published in this issue, noting that the internet constitutes both a tool and an object of activism and policymaking.
Continue reading …Preserving the digital record of major natural disasters: the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive project
29 June 2012
We talk to Paul Millar, project leader of the CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive project about the role of digital humanities in preserving the digital record of the impact of the earthquake that struck Canterbury, NZ, in February 2011. Huge amounts of important information are lost in the chaos following a major disaster: Paul is leading efforts to record and preserve it as a unique resource for future scholarship.
Continue reading …ABOUT THIS BLOG
This blog investigates the relationship between the Internet and public policy. It covers work by the Oxford Internet Institute, and work published in its journal Policy & Internet (Wiley-Blackwell).
Policy & Internet calls for papers that present genuinely new approaches to policy questions or problems relating to the Internet and related ICTs. Ed-in-Chief: Helen Margetts. Submit your paper.
