On May 7 Cibernarium of Barcelona hosted the e-Participation Day which saw 120 participants (half of them by connecting via live streaming). The Director General of Telecommunications and Information Society, Jordi Puigneró, was in charge of welcoming the conference and presented the Mobile Coverage project.
Then Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi, professor of communication teaching at various universities, political consultant and director of Ideograma, together with Ismael Peña, professor of Information Society, EGOV at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and director of Innovation in the Bofill Foundation, spoke about techno-politics.
After the theoretical part, it was time to learn about real experiences with participatory tools. We presented 3 Catalan tools:
- Apps4citizens
- ElTeuParlament.cat
- ValoraBcn: a project that won the Hackathon contest organized by the city government of Barcelona in April 2015. The challenge was to develop applications that contribute to improve the city government, and especially its transparency.
Four main European e-Participation tools were also introduced. We asked a non-expert citizen to devote a couple of evenings to work under the guidance of the project and explore the possibilities of these European tools. Once this phase of experimentation was done, Ms Laura Rodriguez was able to present these tools, its functions and its utilities to the audience, who turned out to be very satisfied with this original presentation idea.
The event was closed by Carlos Agustin, Commissioner of Participation and Associations, project Open Government of the City of Barcelona.
Please have a look at the event PHOTOS or watch a recap video (with English subtitles).
e-uropa 