Net & Politics 2007 (Top 10)
The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics
PoliticsOnline and the World E-Gov Forum are proud to announce the list for nominations of the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. For the seventh year in a row, PoliticsOnline subscribers and visitors from around the world are invited to help select the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.
This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 20 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, international nominees.
The winners, those top 10 nominees who receive the most votes, will be invited as honored guests to the World E-Gov forum October 3-4, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France), where they'll take part in an awards ceremony and other special programs throughout the three-day forum.
The Nominees for 2007
Australian Council of Trade Unions
Rightsatwork.com.au
Rightsatwork.com.au is run by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, representing working families against the conservative Howard Government's radical workplace policies. Email campaigns educated people about the IR changes and encouraged them to take actions opposing them online. More than 85,000 Australians signed a petition, a record at the time. In three months, the email list grew from 4000 to 95,000, standing now at 170,000. Multiple small online donations from supporters allowed unions to roll out sophisticated advertising. The site's blog, RightsWatch, was a hub for people seeking help after being disadvantaged by the laws. Every query was answered by trained staff. Members of the public provided support. The web was used effectively to organize offline meetings nationwide to discuss the laws and encourage support of the unions' campaign. Vitally, with just weeks until the federal election, workplace laws are rated as a top factor that will sway Australians' votes.
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Brett Solomon / GetUp! Action for Australia
getup.org.au
GetUp! has more members than all the major political parties in Australia and has been effective in influencing policy at a Federal level. It is an organization which empowers Australians and which has particular appeal for people who communicate best, electronically!
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cafebabel.com
cafebabel.com
Cafebabel.com is a leading European media innovating in the field of citizen journalism and multilingualism. Created in 2001 by a group of Erasmus students, the concept was to create the first European transnational media, relying on contributions from citizen journalists from all over Europe. With a network of 1200 citizen journalists in more than 14 countries, it has become a leading Eruopean media targeting the 18/35 years old. Furthermore, cafebabel.com is entirely translated in 7 languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Polish) thanks to a unique network of voluntary translators in Europe. In June 2007, the first e-community of Europeans was launched, creating the first multilingual social network, bloging platform and forums for EUropean citizens. With over 300 000 visitors per month and 30 000 subscribers on its newsletter cafebabel.com has changed the perspective of European citizen on Europe. It is a revolution in the field of internet journalism.
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Carl Bildt, Foreign Minister, Sweden
bildt.blogspot.com
Carl Bildt, Prime Minister of Sweden 1991-1994 and Foreign Minister 2006-present, is one of the pioneers in online political communication. In the 90s, he was one of the first world leaders to use e-mail. In the last years, he has been a devout blogger, first as the UN Secretary General's special envoy to former Yugoslavia, and then as the Swedish Foreign Minister. He is, as far as I know, the highest ranked politician in the world who writes his own blog. By reading his entries it is possible to get a very good understanding of what's going on in Swedish and European foreign policy, and his personal remarks often make their way into mainstream media. Here are links to his blogs: carlbildt.wordpress.com (in Swedish), yukbog756.blogspot.com (photo blog), bildt.blogspot.com (in English), www.bildt.net (personal homepage, not updated for a year).
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Christian Rupp
Christian Rupp is the Austrian E-Government executive secretary and in charge of promoting and maintaining the best of e-government and e-democracy in Austria and Europe. At WSIS he organized the World E-Government Award and during the Austrian EU presidency he promoted several great efforts in the area of administrative and participative e-democracy efforts like the seidabei.at project where the youth of Austria was engaged to deliberate and e-participate for new political projects - a new form of e-engagement in Austria was born.
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Ciudad política
ciudadpolitica.com
Ciudad politica is the portal of political science in Spanish. The Ciudad politica aim is to transform knowledge into political action with the support of a network of international academics, professionals, students and the general public interacting in order to facilitate the diffusion, promotion and development of Political Science for everyone. The site is formally recognized by IPSA (International Political Science Association, via IPSAONLINE), and the following Universities: University of Salamanca in Spain, University Diego Portales in Chile, University of Valencia and the University of the Basque Country amongst others.
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CNN
cnn.com
CNN made history on July 23, when it teamed up with YouTube to give voters from around the world an opportunity to directly ask the Democratic presidential candidates for answers to the pressing issues of the day. CNN first approached YouTube about this groundbreaking partnership earlier in the year and the network convinced the Democratic National Committee to make this debate the first officially sanctioned event of the 2008 race for the White House. It was held in historic Charleston, S.C.
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Congressman Dr. Ron Paul
ronpaul2008.com
Ron Paul is considered to be the best friend of the internet by his supporters. Ron Paul is against federal intervention in the internet and against unwarranted net wiretapping of citizens. Ron Paul voted against the amendment for internet neutrality which forsakes the free market in favor of government price controls, would chill investment in broadband network and deployment of new broadband services, would reduce choice for internet users and disrupts experimentation and innovation of the internet. Ron Paul is a medical doctor and his experience in congress spans over the past 4 decades. Ron Paul is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation's capital. He has never voted to raise taxes. He has never voted for an unbalanced budget. He has never voted to raise congressional pay. He has never taken a government-paid junket. He voted against regulating the Internet. He voted against the Iraq war.
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Daily Kos
dailykos.com
DailyKos has been at the front lines of the blogospehere and challenging the MSM at every front. DailyKos has led the way for citizens to engage in serious discussion about the most challenging issues the world faces today.
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Daniel Bennett
citizencontact.com
I nominate Daniel Bennett for helping citizens communicate with Congress. For a year my company Care2 has worked with Daniel and Congress to test a new way for groups to send messages to lawmakers. This cooperative XML approach is already feasible among vendors serving 75% of all Hill offices. It will cut staff workloads, boost lawmaker knowledge of how citizens feel on major issues and reverse a bad trend by some lawmakers of blocking citizen emails to cope with the deluge of incoming messages. His work stretches back 15 years. He developed the XML system that Congress has used for 10 yrs. Daniel also won a Fed 100 award for creating the first federal electronic signing capability enabling govt agencies to post forms with e-signing. He co-drafted a law making electronic signatures legal for commerce. He introduced a CMS for members of Congress and added RSS feeds before others did. Daniel created Phonebank-in-a-Box. See the cover story in Campaign & Elections. A big impact on democracy.
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Derek Wyatt, MP
derekwyatt.co.uk
Derek Wyatt MP, of the UK, is one of a select group of technology savvy MPs in Westminster. He has been the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group since 1997. In that time under Derek's leadership the Group has informed and educated Parliament on a wide range of issues relating to the Internet including: Computer Misuse, Digital Rights Management, Web accessibility and Copyright. In addition, Derek and Parliamentary colleagues have visited Washington DC on several occasions over the last few years to create a constructive dialogue concerning legislation affecting the Internet with Congressmen and Senators of both Parties.
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George Papandreou
politicalforum.gr
George Papandeou is an innovator who has changed the landscape of Greek Politics. He was the first to utilize the internet & Youtube in campaigns in Greece and the first to use the internet in the development of his party's political program (PASOK).
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GopalaKrishnan Devanathan: Life Line to Business
ll2b.blogspot.com
Kris Dev, an e-Governance Consultant with 30 years hands-on experience in India and Latin America, has helped Local Governments in India, introduce transparency and accountability for poverty alleviation. "E-Administration" is a web enabled, platform neutral, paper less, communications and work flow management tool for G2C and G2G transactions. It helps to register citizens with unique identity and integrate the entire vertical and horizontal hierarchy of government from village to national level in a single e-Platform for e-Governance and e-Democracy. It's developed using open source tools, to make the total cost of ownership the lowest for maximum adoption, replication and scaling up, without budgetary constraints. Rightly, it was recognized for the Manthan Award 2006 as the best entry out of 25 states in India, for 'e-Inclusion and Livelihood' creation, and nominated for World Summit Award 2007.
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Gov2u
gov2u.com
Gov2u is a Greek NGO promoting e-democracy as an optimal medium for enabling a more participatory form of government. Gov2Demoss is an open source, generic but customizable, informative and collaborative e-participation platform awarded with the European Good Practice Label. In Spain with the cooperation of the private company SCYTL, 64 municipalities are implementing Gov2Demoss in the framework of the eConsensus project with the aim to foster public participation and consultation over the Internet; to improve the communication between councils and the citizens they serve; and to provide virtual forums to help citizens organize communities of interest and thus participate more effectively and constructively in public life. eRepresentative is a EU co-funded project investigating the potential impact of ICT to support the work of elected officials at the national, regional and local level by making legislative services more effective and tailored to their needs.
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Hansard Society
hansard.lse.ac.uk
The Hansard Society is an independent not-for-profit. Its eDemocracy Programme was established in 1997 and combines the roles of developer, commentator and analyst. Pioneering the use of online technology for the purposes of more efficient and inclusive policy-making, it has been pivotal in driving mainstream use of online engagement tools by Government and Parliament in the UK. This has been carried out primarily through the 'Digital Dialogues' and 'Parliament for the Future' initiatives. With the assistance and encouragement from the Society, today Ministers are running blogs, departments making regular use forums in their consultations, and select committees have used mobile phones to gather evidence. While its activity benefits political institutions, it is driven by a desire to promote the accessibility and transparency of politics in the interest of citizens.
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Hossein Derakhshan
hoder.com
Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan (hoder.com) is an Iranian-born blogger, journalist, and internet activist. Since mid-90s, he has been advocating the use of internet, particularly as a means for social and political reform in Iran. His award-winning weblog, Editor: Myself, which was started in Sep 2001, has been among the most influential blogs in Persian language and his step-by-step instruction to create blogs in Persian should take much of the credit for inspiring thousands of Iranians to start their own blogs. He also writes for a Washington Post and Newsweek blog, titled PostGlobal. After his unprecedented public trip to Israel in January 2006 and his multimedia coverage of the Iranians living there as a citizen journalist, he has recently launched a project called TehrAviv, with help from an Israeli friend, to promote peace and understanding between the two nations of Iran and Israel and disarm the radical establishment in both countries.
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John Edwards
johnedwards.com
John Edwards works hard to communicate directly and succinctly by speaking through the internet about actual and desperate problems faced by all of us as we try to maintain our standard of living. Those of us who are financially secure can easily see the fragility of such good fortune, especially in the face of a growing class of have-nots who have been expected to take the burden of our prosperity. Mr. Edwards has taken on their cause, bless him, even though it will certainly not get him elected. As a candidate he at least has a forum and is willing to use it. I have learned through past campaigns that the candidates who seem less likely to get elected are free to speak more honestly. This is an unexpected benefit of out system and the internet for which we are thankful. Mr. Edwards is my favorite Don Quixote in the midst of all the careful and empty rhetoric of typical campaigns. I wish he could prevail and succeed in bringing these things to pass.
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mySociety
mySociety.org
The biggest political internet story of the year in the UK was the launch of the No10 Downing Street ePetitions system. mySociety, a non-profit based in the UK built the petitions system for No. 10, delivering a system that over 5% of the UK population has now signed at least one petition on (5m signatures from 3.6m email addresses so far). Simultaniously, mySociety's independent projects like TheyWorkForYou.com have continued to shape the debate around new forms of accountability in Parliament, alerting tens of thousands of citizens per week about when their representatives speak in parliament, and what about. An open source project mySociety has also spread its projects further a field, with volunteers helping to translate the action-generating site PledgeBank.com to 13 different languages, delivering fund raising, political actions and even a whole new library in India.
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Nam-Joon Chung/Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs(MOGAHA)
On-nara system is a new work management system simultaneously run by 55 central administrative agencies in Korea since 2007. This system enables all the task lists, status, and other related information at the central levels to be registered, utilized, shared and recorded in an electronic manner. The most significant characteristic of the system is that it manages the entire government decision-making process from planning policies, up through reporting and securing approval while it records any proposed opinions and revised contents in the course of the process. Now 92% of all documents from central government agencies are being processed with the system. The system facilitates communication and information sharing, which leads to greater participation and democracy within an organization. All the materials produced with the system are preserved, utilized as national records, and provided to the public as policy information, contributing further to a transparent and open government.
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National Electoral Committee of Estonia
riigikogu.ee
This organization is noted for its determined and effective implementation of electronic voting machines through the Internet in local elections in 2005 and parliamentary elections in 2007. The process is carried out in a decisive manner; remains open to all people, and not case of a mere pilot test limited to a part of electoral census. It is open universally to those voters who are interested in this mechanism. The increase in the degree of participation via the Internet of the year 2007 in relation to 2005 involves a tacit approval of the system on the part of the population potentially interested in the new form of voting.
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National Democratic Institute
ndi.org
The National Democratic Institute is a pioneer in applying SMS-messaging to citizens' efforts to safeguards their elections. With NDI assistance, civic groups across three continents have utilized cell phones to quickly capture information on turnout, polling and results. Combining a SMS-based reporting system with NDI's rigorous observation methodology, these groups have achieved unprecedented levels of oversight of elections. Using these tools, monitoring groups can enhance the integrity of elections by alerting authorities to problems in time to be remedied, and by publicizing an assessment of the quality of polling and tabulation to expose problematic elections and increase public confidence in credible elections. In contentious and politically tense situations such as Montenegro's Referendum on Independence and recent elections in Sierra Leone, the ability to quickly comment on the conduct of elections contributed to stabilizing a potentially volatile post-election environment.
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Pambazuka News
pambazuka.org
Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 300 citizens and organizations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organizations, civil society organizations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa. With a readership approaching half a million, Pambazuka News publishes podcasts, videocasts and books; supports African women and marginalized groups to develop blogs, radio programs, and podcasts to enable them to give voice to their experiences; supports women's organizations to use mobile phone technologies to act on violence against women and illegal seizures of land; and developed civil society blogs for monitoring the African Union. The growth of Pambazuka News reflects a commitment to fostering a community of African citizens who hold their governments to account.
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Sociedad Civil - Clase Media
sociedadcivil.cl
Sociedad Civil has produced web based tools including innovative e-mail that help develop the middle class party in Peru and Andean Region. The groups sends effective messages for opinion leaders and instant e-mail response for liberty and democracy defense This has brought about a revolution in political ideas.
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Tomas Ohlin
telo.se
Tomas Ohlin (73, Professor in the Swedish Linkoping University) is an eDemocracy Pioneer. His first eDemocracy Publication was in 1971, stating that "the computer and the television could be united in the homes of citizens to provide the hardware for a true "computer assisted democracy"". Early analysis of French Minitel and TeleGuide Systems. Over the years, Tomas Ohlin participate in many trials with electronic voting and citizen deliberation, with emphasis on systems for citizen participation. Tomas Ohlin was member of several Public IT committees and commissions, among them Secretary General in the first swedish IT commission.
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Unity08
Unity08.com
Unity08 is a political reform movement comprised of concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds, both physical and political, who would like to regain their voice in American politics. Unity08 is the only movement that leverages online technology to give more Americans the power to influence and shape politics at the presidential level. Unity08 has the following goals. Enable Americans to rank America's most crucial issues. Empower Americans to draft or evaluate Unity08 candidates and actively engage them in debate about the crucial issues.
Empower Americans to nominate the Unity Ticket* via an online convention and secure voting process. Elect the Unity08 Presidential Ticket to national office. Unity08 is the only political movement that leverages online technology to give Americans the power to determine our country's crucial issues and nominate a bipartisan ticket to pursue them. With only a few million users, Unity08 can change politics forever.
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