This document provides an overview of the EU Project WeGov, which aims to enrich two-way dialogue between citizens and politics through social networking sites. The project extracts functionality from social networks to build a toolbox that supports policymakers' work and allows for citizen-politics dialogue through use cases. An initial prototype was demonstrated to the German Parliament and the toolbox is being evaluated before a final version is released in December 2011.

1. EU Project WeGov – Where eGovernment meets the eSociety-- Overview -- Timo Wandhoefer GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences @ IFIP e-government conference 2011, EGOV2011, Delft August 28 – September 2, 2011

2. Research Project http://www.wegov-project.eu Funded with support from the European Commission (01/2010 – 06/2012) SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME THEME ICT 2009.7.3 ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling Consortium 2

3. Overall Objective “Enrich the two-way dialogue between citizens and politics throughout the internet” “Instead of developing a new eParticipation platform, WeGov is build-up on the capability of Social Networking Sites” 3

4. Approach 4 Nuclear phase-out Climate friendly Bridging-technology

7. Progress Use cases for citizen  politicsdialogue [1] Legal and ethical analysis [2] Basic functionality extracted [3] First prototype running a basic scenario [4] Presentation German Parliament [5] Scenario modification – ‘citations’ [6] Initial toolbox evaluation  support policy maker’s everyday workflow 7

8. Future Works Workshop eChallenges conference (Oct ‘11) Final toolbox (Dec ‘11) Evaluation of final toolbox (June ‘12) 8

9. References [1] M. Addis, S. Taylor, R. Fletcher, C. Wilson, F. Fallon, H. Alani, T. Wandhoefer, und P. Mutschke, “New ways for policy makers to interact with citizens through open social network sites - a report on initial results,” Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: an impact assessment (IPP2010), 16-17 September 2010, Oxford, UK. URL: http://goo.gl/4Pqsf [2] S. Joshi, E. Karamagioli, T. Wandhoefer, F. Fallon, R. Fletcher, C. Wilson, und B.I. Nasser, D5.1 Scenario definition, advisory board and legal/ethical review. URL: http://goo.gl/8H41r [3] Wandhoefer, Timo; Thamm, Mark; Mutschke, Peter (2011): Extracting a basic use case to let policy makers interact with citizens on Social Networking Sites: a report on initial results. In: Parycek, Peter; Kripp, Manuel J.; Edelmann, Noella (Hrsg.): CeDEM11 : proceedings of the international conference on e-democracy and open government ; 5-6 May 2011, Danube University Krems, Austria, Krems: Ed. Donau-Univ. Krems, S. 355-358. URL: http://goo.gl/0FssB [4] A. Claes, S. Sizov, S. Angeletou, J. Reynolds, S. Taylor, und T. Wandhoefer, D4.2 Initial WeGov toolbox, 2010. URL: http://goo.gl/22oGi [5] Wandhoefer, Timo; Thamm, Mark (2011): WeGov Projektvorstellung und Live Demo des Prototypen. DiskussionaktuellerAnwendungsfälle. Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin, 31.03.2011. URL: http://goo.gl/7fKCb [6] Joshi, Wandhoefer, Thamm, Mathiak, Van Eeckhaute, „Rethinking Governance via Social Networking: The case of direct vs. indirect stakeholder injection“, International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2011), 26-28 September 2011, Tallinn, Estonia. URL: coming soon... 9