The final conference for the European e-Voice conference has taken place in Norwich on May 22 and 23 at the Maid’s Head Hotel and the organisers – include Norfolk County Council.
The e-Voice project is a four year EU funded project developing best practice in e-Participation. It has been led from the Netherlands and Norfolk was the UK Partner.
The event was used to launch a promotional video which focused on myself and other councillors at Norfolk County Council called CivicSurf.
It was this project which got me into blogging. The event was well attended and succeeded in enhancing the European bond in e-governance. My summary was that Great Britain is well advanced in technology but low on trust for its elected leaders. We suffer considerable restrictions on our use of ICT as it is funded by the tax payer and currently that means no politics or reference to our blogs from our official bland County Council sites. However, I am grateful to the government who sponsored Norfolk County Council and to the authority in agreeing to participate and support me and colleagues to do so.
Other projects it funded, such as the Young People’s voting campaign and Bus Stop 39, have won national awards. It supported the ParishCouncilnvolve project which has helped more than 50 parish and town councils develop free websites, and the Norfolk Text Pals project recently won a finalists award from the International Centre of Excellence in e-Participation. e-Voice has been equally successful in our partner countries of Belgium, Germany and Sweden as well as Holland.
The emphasis was on how new channels of communication could run alongside and support existing ones to make sure everyone could participate in civic life in the best way for them. This has been particularly effective in engaging young people and e-Voice funded projects are part of the reason Norfolk and South Norfolk gained Beacon Status for this area of work.
The promo film of CivicSurf was produced by Napoleon Creative
You can see their coverage of the event and link to some video interviews by clicking here.
3 responses so far ↓
Stephen Hilton // 27 May, 2008 at 8:32 am |
I attended the conference and ran a workshop in the afternoon on Bristol’s experience in this area. I thought it was a very informative event, a good mix of people and a very nice city. Thank you for inviting me along. And keep up the blogging!
Gavin Ricketts // 27 May, 2008 at 12:48 pm |
That’s a great pic of you with Jenny and Fran, shame Tony wasn’t able to make it.
Dave Briggs // 28 May, 2008 at 4:07 pm |
Hi Peter!
There is more coverage of the event at http://evoice.conferencextra.org.uk including a mini interview with your good self here: http://evoice.conferencextra.org/2008/05/22/cllr-peter-harwood/
In other news, the CivicSurf blog has had a facelift – would be good to know your thoughts on it.