Internet Governance Forum Begins Today; Participate Online for Free

The Internet Governance Forum begins today, and you can participate for free.  The theme for this year's event is "IGF 2010 – Developing the Future Together."

According to IGF, the "theme reflects the open and inclusive nature of the IGF with its multilateral, multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent approach to discussions of Internet-related public policy issues. The Vilnius meeting will help articulate a view of how we can use the Internet for the benefit of all humankind, and how we can further address the risks and challenges ahead. Internet governance should not be seen as an end in itself, but as a means of achieving development for all as expressed in internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.

In broad-based consultation with stakeholders, the Multistakeholder Advisory Group has prepared the following programme for the meeting:
• Managing critical Internet resources
• Security, openness and privacy
• Access and diversity
• Internet governance for development
• Taking stock of Internet governance and the way forward
• Emerging issues: cloud computing"

Learn more and participate via Webex, via webcast or read the meeting transcripts.

F2F and Online Consultation about African Millenium Dev Goals

From the Community Analytics blog (from correspondence shared on the blog by blogger Peter Burgess with David Barnard of SangoNet):

The "African Monitor (http://www.africanmonitor.org), a Pan-African organisation monitoring development funding commitments to Africa and facilitating the involvement of African voices in the development agenda, and various partners, including ONE and the Southern Africa Trust, are facilitating consultations around the continent to develop a citizen-driven agenda for Africa in the second decade of the 21st century.

The face-to-face consultations are complemented by an e-consultation process, referred to as #AfricanAgenda2010, to leverage mass input and collaboration. The target is to generate feedback and responses from 10,000 people. The e-consultation will be a useful tool to solicit people’s perspectives on what they think are the key emerging priorities for Africa. This exercise will identify trends and common issues or priorities in a timely manner along with the face-to-face consultations which explore emerging issues in greater depth.

Coordinated by SANGONeT, the #AfricanAgenda2010 e-consultation is open to all African citizens, including in the Diaspora.

Your participation is crucial to the success of the e-consultation process." Read more about how you can get involved by clicking here.

E-Participation and Government Transparency

Just wanted to share a wonderful post by Crispin Butteriss of Bang The Table about e-participation and government transparency. 

Crispin talks about these initiatives and provides links to several reports on the subject.  Check it out here.

Global E-Governance Survey 2007

If you are interested in the global aspects of e-governance and you're fluent in a language other than English, this is a great opportunity for you to contribute to the 2007 E-Governance Survey. Details for how to become involved are below:

Dear All,

The E-Governance Institute at Rutgers University-Newark is conducting its Third Global E-Governance Survey 2007 in collaboration with the SungKyunKwan University, South Korea. The Survey evaluates websites of municipalities worldwide and compares their rankings on a global e-governance scale. We are seeking to recruit volunteers who read the following languages and who would be willing to evaluate one or more city websites worldwide.

Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, Hebrew, Portuguese, Croatian, Greek, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Latvian, Moldovan, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Slovakian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish.

Surveyors will have the opportunity to learn about e-governance and related issues such as e-democracy, e-voting, e-bulletin boards, website usability and online citizen participation. Each evaluation can be done within two to three hours and surveyors will be credited in the published results.

If you are interested in volunteering for the survey, please email Aroon Manoharan at amano@rutgers.edu and he will send you further details. Please forward this message to your friends and colleagues.

Sincerely,
Dr. Marc Holzer Dean, School of Public Affairs and Administration
Director, E-Governance Institute
Rutgers University - Newark 360 Martin Luther King Blvd. Newark, NJ 07102