OPEN DECLARATION ON PUBLIC SERVICES IN EUROPE

The learning journey continues...

Every two years, EU Ministers gather to agree on a Ministerial Declaration on e-government, which is the main European strategic document. This is usually accompanied by an Industry declaration.

In November 2009, I joined the such an Industry Declaration on Public Services in Europe and the group on Facebook supporting this declaration.


This is an open declaration, collaboratively built and endorsed by EU citizens who share the view that the web is transforming our society and our governments. We feel e-government policies in Europe could learn from the open, meritocratic, transparent and user-driven culture of the web. We also feel that current web citizens should engage more positively with government to help designing a strategy which is genuinely difficult to adopt in the traditional culture of public administration.

There is only 5% sign up from the UK so far, with the greatest support coming from Spain (23%) so far...

ES 100
DE 87
NL 78
IT 52
GR 49
UK 37
BE 20
FI 17
PT 15
DK 14
DK 14
OTH 13
FR 11
AT 10
IE 5
RO 3
SE 3
HU 1
LU 1

Grand Total 521 (as at 1 November)

Let's hope that the declaration and its supporters are given a voice that can be heard.

Józefa
The POL Group

FIVE COUNTRIES IN FIVE WEEKS!

The learning journey continues...

To say that I am exhausted is something of an understatement.

One of the reasons for not posting since September is that I have been on the road for weeks - the result? A wonderful range of travelling experiences from Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Germany and Belgium.

One of the things I enjoy the most about travel is the opportunity to meet exciting new people, and taking part in European Commission funded projects - this allows me to indulge my two great passions:

1. my overwhelming professional desire to improve the learning capability of those working in organisations (and the organisations themselves)
2. expanding my knowledge base about Europe and its culture

My latest marathon jaunt has been associated with two projects - VISIBLE focusing on validating informal learning and TI-SAETO which is looking at quality improvements for Education and Training Organisations using the EFQM model of excellence.

VISIBLE has been an overwhelming success, not just for the project but for the partners as well - after all, how often can you say that you want to continue working with the people you are thrust together with in a project? Hopefully there will be a follow up - VISIBLE2 to evaluate our findings and report on applications that help to improve the competency of project managers working in Regional Development Agencies across Europe.

TI-SAETO has started well and will take me to Turkey (twice) and Latvia next year, so more active blogging then.

Józefa
The POL Group