SENSE4US

SENSE4US Conference - Policy Making in a Complex World: can technology restore trust in European decision-making?

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Created on Friday, 25 November 2016 12:33

SENSE4US Conference

Policy Making in a Complex World

Can technology restore trust in European decision-making?

At a turbulent time in global and European politics, can new technologies help to better support our democracy?

At this one day conference we will be discussing with parliamentarians, policy makers, academics and civil society how digital tools and technologies might help us better understand, engage and build the trust of the public when considering the policies that affect their lives.

Date and Time: 
Thursday 8 December 2016
09:00 – 17:00 CET

Location:
Hotel Sofitel Brussels Europe
1 Place Jourdan
1040 Bruxelles, Belgium

Register to attend now!

(https://sense4usconferencebrussels.eventbrite.co.uk)

The conference will explore the following questions:

• What factors matter most in terms of building trust in the policy-making process? This is a particularly pertinent question at the moment as EU institutions grapple with how best to effectively identify and respond to citizen concerns in light of Brexit.
• Can developments in big, open and linked data (BOLD) improve policy-making, for example in relation to policy modelling and simulation, and what are the challenges in a democratic context?
• Can new models of co-creation help build trust in the policy and legislative process through participatory design?
• Do new developments and innovations in the technology field mean we are on the verge of a new era of ‘anticipatory governance’?

Speakers will include:

• Kaja Kallas, MEP, Estonia
• Cat Drew, Uscreates, former Policy Lab UK, Cabinet Office
• Miriam Fernandez, Research Fellow, Knowledge Management Institute, Open University
• Dr Ruth Fox, Director, Hansard Society
• Steven Ginnis, Head of Digital Research at the Social Research Institute, Ipsos Mori
• Somya Joshi, Director of Research, E-Gov Lab, University of Stockholm
• Stefan Klauser, Project Leader "Digital Society", Computational Social Science, COSS
• Alex Krasodomski-Jones, Researcher, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM), DEMOS
• Vasilis Koulolias, Director, Acting Head of Open Data Innovation, E-Gov Lab, University of Stockholm
• Dr Aron Larsson, Researcher, E-Gov Lab, University of Stockholm
• Frank Leyman, Manager of International Relations, FEDICT
• Francisco García Morán, Chief IT Advisor, European Commission
• Paul Walland, IT Innovation, Southampton University and Project Co-ordinator, Sense4us Project
• Professor Maria Wimmer, Institute for Information Systems Research, University of Koblenz

During the conference there will be an opportunity for delegates to explore the Sense4us information discovery toolbox. Sense4us is a technology research and development project, funded by the European Commission, which is developing tools for decision-makers to better find, organise, analyse and interpret information to support the development and scrutiny of policy and legislation in the future.

The Sense4us toolbox is in its infancy but it brings together tools that have the potential to help policy-makers and legislators to gain insights through open data, social media sentiment, text analysis and policy simulation. Innovations in these fields potentially offer new opportunities for Parliaments and Governments to engage and learn more about what really matters to the public, collect and analyse greater amounts of data more quickly than ever, find and reach out to stakeholders beyond the ‘usual suspects’, and evaluate policy options by simulating a range of potential outcomes through dynamic policy models.