On open government

On his first day in Office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, based on the following principles:

• The Administration is reducing the influence of special interests by writing new ethics rules that prevent lobbyists from coming to work in government or sitting on its advisory boards.
• The Administration is tracking how government uses the money with which the people have entrusted it with easy-to-understand websites like recovery.gov, USASpending.gov, and IT.usaspending.gov.
• The Administration is empowering the public – through greater openness and new technologies – to influence the decisions that affect their lives

Open government is now a worldwide trend that OCOPOMO is encouraging

How should governments improve their policy performance?

Working with citizens, civil society organisations, businesses and other stakeholders while delivering concrete improvements in policy outcomes and quality of public services are two fundamental and viable strategies. Are there others you could suggest?

Your input on current demands for Open Government in Policy Modelling

The OCOPOMO project partners believe transparency, accountability, openness and participation are key issues. What is your opinion on the matter?

What OCOPOMO can do

The OCOPOMO project may not turn antagonists into collaborators or make enemies into friends. But it will:

PROVIDE A COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK where cooperation and trust among policy-concerned parties can be maximised;
PIONEER AN “OFF THE MAINSTREAM” APPROACH to policy modelling, combined with e-government tools and advanced ICT technologies;
ENABLE YOU to bring precision and clarity to your arguments and to understand those of other stakeholder groups;
OFFER AN AGENT-BASED MODEL of macroeconomic relations encouraging stakeholders to take into account shocks and surprises from the wider policy environment.

What is the OCOPOMO project all about?

OCOPOMO - Open COllaboration for POlicy MOdelling aims at defining and demonstrating a new "off the mainstream" approach to policy modelling. The project will integrate lessons and techniques from complexity science, agent based social simulation, foresight scenario analysis and stakeholder participation in order to use models for exploring the effects of policies, so that understanding of alternative points of view can be achieved by all parties.

Policy operators and stakeholders collaborate in scenario development. Based on this, a macroeconomic agent-based simulation model will be developed, visualized and simulated through ICT and tested in pilot experiences. In a nutshell, we will develop a software supporting decision-makers in shaping policies with stakeholders.

Interest from Stakeholders

Here is a feedback we have received from a regional authority based in Cyprus

"Thank you for sending the ocopomo project. I find this project particularly interesting as I do work in regional government and in addition deal with European Programmes. I look forward to seeing more of the pilot policy modelling and scenario generation.
I have browsed through the website and the blogspot. I think there are some very good ideas in there especially on the side of forecasting best case scenarios in strategic planning as a means of ensuring policy impact. Some examples on the practical side on spatial planning are greatly anticipated!"

Reconnecting people and politics through policy modelling and scenario generation

If you have an example of a correct forecast of a policy impact, then you are very lucky. An extensive literature search and open discussions over the Internet with policy makers and policy modellers has failed to turn up a single example of such a correct forecast. Emotional words such as "vulnerability" and "quality of life" are as treacherous as they are useful. They mean different things to different people and, especially, to different interest groups concerned with almost any policy. It doesn't take much of a search of the academic or professional literature or newspapers and magazines to find differences of opinion on what effects any policy will have on these features of society. At the same time, there often seems to be a lack of agreement or even discussion on what these words mean.

4 questions to ask yourself if you’re a policy maker

1. Do you feel in discussions about policies that other interested groups simply do not understand your position, your concerns or even your objectives?

2. How often have you relied on formal models or theories that have been accurate guides to the impacts of any policy?

3. Do you speculate about the ways in which your policy proposals will lead to your policy objectives?

4. Do you find yourself using words like "trust“ and "sustainability“ in ways that convey your concerns but don't seem to be understood in the same way by others?

If you’re interested in the answers to these questions, then you may also be interested on the developments of the OCOPOMO project. Stay tuned!

On and around OCOPOMO: our second newsletter

The OCOPOMO consortium invites you to consult its second newsletter! It informs you about the project's activities and achievements in the second half of its first year.

Update on international OCOPOMO presentations: events & conferences

The annual Symposion on Legal Informatics has been organised in Salzburg for the German-speaking regions from February 24th-27th, to discuss advancements in e-government, e-participation and legal informatics. Maria Wimmer gave a presentation of OCOPOMO in the e-government track of the conference, aimed at researchers and practitioners from e-government and lawyers.

The 7th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technologies (ICDCIT) has become a platform for Computer Science researchers from India and all over the world to exchange research results and ideas on the foundations and applications of Distributed Computing and Internet Technologies. Increasingly, such technologies enable individuals and organizations to jointly engage in the production, processing and dissemination of knowledge. Maria Wimmer has been invited to give a presentation on OCOPOMO to researchers and practitioners from computer science. The conference took place in Bhubaneswar from February 9th-12th, 2011.

eParticipation Projects in Europe

The eParticipation Preparatory Action, promoted by the European Parliament, supported real-life pilot projects to demonstrate how state of the art ICT tools can make it easier for people to participate in decision-making and contribute to better legislation. The last funded projects from this action ended in 2011. Interesting lessons can be drawn for OCOPOMO e-participation policy and tools which need to enable non-specialists and citizens easier access to information abuot policy making and more opportunity to try to influence decisions that affect their lives through participation in policy modelling.