SENSE4US

Dear readers,

During the previous months, SENSE4US project put lots of efforts on finalizing and implementing the SENSE4US toolkit. The coming period, the project’s consortium will proceed with the testing of the SENSE4US toolkit and will organize events to demonstrate it to potential users.

Moreover, the dissemination objectives of the project were mainly focused on enhancing the project’s visibility by establishing further synergies and intensifying the collaboration with other similar EU projects. An invitation for cross-dissemination of news and events has been sent to various projects and collaboration has been achieved so far with CONSENSUS project, PolicyCompass project, REVEAL project, STEP project and with the European Centre for Social Media (ECSM). Find below more projects that SENSE4US dissemination team approached and is waiting for further collaboration to be established.

Also, SENSE4US project deliverables recently approved have been published on our website and you can find them listed below; SENSE4US partner, Gov2u, attended the 1st European Celebration of Women in Computing, a major event which was held from the 25th to the 26th of April 2016 in Brussels; and finally, interesting papers written by SENSE4US partners were published and you can check them out in this issue!

If you have any comments or suggestions, we will be more than glad to receive them, so please feel free to contact us at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Enjoy the reading!

The SENSE4US Dissemination and Communication Team

SENSE4US new project deliverables are available online!

New public deliverables have been uploaded on our Reports section covering the 2nd year of the project.

You can see these deliverables listed below:

• D2.2 Tracking technologies and social attitudes (Update)
• D6.1 Decision Support Framework for Policy Formulation
• D2.4 Initial evaluation and report of updated requirements
• D3.3 Second Functional Requirements Description
• D4.2.1 Initial Investigation into Tools & Techniques for Semantic Linking & Consolidation of Heterogeneous Open Data
• D5.2 Models and Tools to Analyse and Predict Discussion Dynamics and Sentiment towards Policy
• D5.3 Tools for evidence extraction from open data sources
• D6.2 Policy Modelling and Simulation Tool
• D6.3 Common Policy Appraisal Format
• D8.6 Report on Dissemination activities

Check them out and learn more about the project's developments!

“Electric cars in Germany – a gap between vision and reality”: an article written by GESIS partner

An interesting article on electric cars that will appear in Germany's road by 2020 and the issue of e-Mobility has been written by SENSE4US partner, Ulf Roßegger, and published on European Energy Justice Network.

The article mentions that "Roughly seven years ago, in August 2009, Germany has put forward the aim of bringing one million electric vehicles on its roads by 2020 and to evolve Germany to the lead market in E-mobility. Currently, it can be noted that the stated objectives represented in the “National Development Plan Electromobility” (NEP) are unrealistic. Read more

SENSE4US paper accepted at the 15th IFIP Electronic Government (EGOV) and 8th Electronic Participation (ePart) Conference 2016

A paper with the title “Multi-Stakeholder Preference Analysis in Ex-ante Evaluation of Policy Options - Use Case: Ultra Low Emission Vehicles in UK” and written by SENSE4US partners from SU, namely Anton Talantsev, Osama Ibrahim, Aron Larsson, has been accepted for presentation at the 15th IFIP Electronic Government (EGOV) and 8th Electronic Participation (ePart) Conference 2016 which will be held from the 5th to the 8th of September 2016 in Guimaraes, Portugal. Read more about the conference

SENSE4US collaboration and cross dissemination with other EU projects

SENSE4US project for enhancing its visibility established synergies for collaboration and cross dissemination with similar EU projects listed below:

• CONSENSUS project: is a project co-funded by the EU under the 7th Framework Programme. The project will strive to model existing real world user cases and deliver the tools that can, in an easy and comprehensive manner, provide policy makers with optimal choices based on a number of relevant criteria.
  www.consensus-project.eu
• Policy Compass project: is a research project co-funded by the EU under the 7th Framework Programme in the domain of ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling. The main goal of Policy Compass is to develop a research prototype of an easy-to-use, highly visual and intuitive tool for social networks and eParticipation platforms, enabling citizens and public officials to easily create, apply, share, embed, annotate and discuss causal models, charts and graphs of historical data from trusted open data sources.
  policycompass.eu/the-project
• REVEAL project: is a FP7 project and it is aimed to develop tools and services that aid in Social Media verification. The core of its work is to reveal hidden modalities for the benefit of a better understanding and utilization of the Social Media world.
  revealproject.eu
• STEP project: is an EU funded project that aims to promote the societal and political participation of young people in decision making procedures on environmental issues.
  step4youth.eu
• European Centre for Social Media (ECSM): ECSM is a forum supporting the organisation of social media technologic and marketing activities, training and dissemination venues.
  www.socialmediacentre.eu

Moreover, SENSE4US invited for collaboration and cross dissemination the following projects and awaits for their response:

• INSIGHT project
• SIMPOL project
• SYMPHONY project
• GROWTHCOM project
• PHEME project
• SAM project
• EUMSSI project
• USEMP project
• HUMANE project
• InVID project
• SocialSensor
• Newsreader

SENSE4US workshop in Stockholm, 18-19 February 2016

On the 18th-19th of Feb 2016, eGovlab hosted an exciting workshop for WP2 and WP6 consortium members. The goal of this workshop was to map policy processes as experienced by the end user engagement partners.

PROCESSES IN POLICY-MAKING We visualized main activities and main outputs delivered, comparing the differences in the details of different processes

Building upon the layers of understanding we mapped tool design and value. The tangible outcomes of the workshop were:

1. Common understanding of policy processes, stakeholder needs and priorities
2. Tangible, explicit value derived from engagement with the tools – from an end user perspective
3. Validation, testing of tool – creating a common template for dialogue between end user engagement partners and technology research partners
4. Co-creation/ co-design principles for future engagement workshops
5. Identification of gaps and areas that need further development, both from a technical, interface and engagement methodology perspective.

Attending the workshop were members from the consortium - Ruth Fox and Luke Boga Mitchell from Hansard Society, Ulf Roßegger from GESIS. From Stockholm University, Somya Joshi, Aron Larson and Osama Ibrahim attended. We were also joined by two external consultants from KTH and KI who provided us with valuable feedback on improvements to our methodology

Source article and Memory Traces

SENSE4US project presented during the study visit of the Bosnian government delegation to eGovlab, Stockholm University

An 8-member delegation from the Bosnian government has concluded its study visit to eGovlab, DSV, Stockholm University. During the three-day visit, the delegation was briefed on open innovation, co-creation and Sweden’s Digital Strategy. A series of presentations, as well as a hands-on workshop, took place at eGovlab, where the participants identified challenges within their public sector in local context.

Dr. Somya Joshi, SENSE4US partner, was one of the speakers during the visit and she explained to the delegation the policy modeling case of SENSE4US.

More on this event

SENSE4US presented at the Open Data “Next Steps” workshop, 10-11 March 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden

SENSE4US partner, Dr. Somya Joshi presented the project during the Day 2 of the Open Data “Next Steps” workshop during the “Perspectives on data-driven innovation and visualization” session and her speech on “How can Social Sensors shape Policy?” along with Gunnar Wettergren, Deputy Director of eGovlab.

Agenda of the workshop

SENSE4US partner from Gov2u, Rasa Uzdavinyte, participated in the 1st European Celebration of Women in Computing, 25-26 April 2016, Brussels

After the first five years of start-up during the financial crisis, the European Centre for Women and Technology (ECWT) is now scaling up its activities and with the support of strategic partners takes the lead on celebrating European Excellence of Women in Computing! This with the goal to provide a new strategy, a leading community and tools to European girls to become global e-Leaders of the 21st century!

ECWC 2016 was organised based on the model of the highly successful Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in the US and was supported by Anita Borg Institute, home of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in the US and India, and the GHC/1.

The event was organised by ECWT under the patronage of the European Commission's DG GROWTH, DG CONNECT and DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, hosted by Proximus, Belgium's leading mobile telecoms company. The European Celebration of Women in Computing (ECWC) took place from 25 to 26 of April 2016 in Brussels, Belgium.

Our Gov2u partner, Rasa Uzdavinyte was invited to celebrate with more 514 registered participants from 37 participating countries. Our congratulations to the 1st Winners of the ECWC Awards: Marija Herceg, Nino Nanitashvili & Valentina Dagiene

 SENSE4US partner from Gov2u, Rasa Uzdavinyte (second from the left) participating in the 1st European Celebration of Women in Computing (ECWC)

The Guardian: "We are making the wrong energy choices for future generations"

Our children’s children will not thank us for investing so heavily in technologies like nuclear at the expense of safer, low-carbon options. Which energy technologies will future generations thank us for?

Once hyped as providing electricity that would be too cheap to meter, the next, increasingly troubled nuclear power installation proposed for Britain, Hinkley Point C, stands at more than £24bn to be the most expensive building on Earth. Given the current economic climate with its emphasis on austerity, and the range of other energy options on offer, why is the government so keen to give the nuclear industry a second life?

The then energy secretary, Ed Davey, speaking in late 2013 when the government agreed the deal with French energy company, EDF, said that investing in new nuclear capacity was needed because without it, “we’re going to see the lights going out.”

Read the full article in The Guardian

Open source essential to government modernisation

Using open source has set the city of Limerick (Ireland) free to modernise its organisation. The city merged several isolated department front-desks into one modern customer centre, with the customer relations management system and other open source solutions greatly improving service levels.

Not encumbered by the limitations of proprietary licences, Limerick could customise applications to fit the city’s needs as many times as needed, explains Mihai Bilauca, head of Limerick’s Digital Strategy and Customer Service department: “It gave us the confidence to aim high, as we were not incurring major IT costs.”

Read more at the original source

EC and EP use open source for software development

The European Commission and the European Parliament generally use open source tools and methods for software development, concludes the EU-FOSSA project, following a review of 15 ongoing projects. The institutions’ project management tools make room for agile, collaborative development cycles.

Commonly-used open source tools include solutions for continuous integration and deployment of software, Jenkins and CruiseControl. These solutions let software developers manage updates of their code, which in turn helps to prevent errors.

Read more in the original article

Commission publishes reports on eGovernment and Standards public consultations

The consultation on the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 collected EU citizens' and businesses' needs and expectations from eGovernment services in the EU, and what public administrative bodies can or plan to deliver. The responses support the approach taken in the roadmap for the new eGovernment Action Plan.

The majority of the respondents to the consultation on standardisation in the Digital Single Market supported the Commission’s initial problem analysis on ICT standardisation, in particular the need to define clearer priorities for core ICT related technologies. These recommendations to the Commission, along with the advice of the European Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT standardisation will form the basis for the Communication setting up priorities on ICT standardisation for the Digital Single Market.

Building on the results of the public consultations, the Commission proposed measures on the digitisation of European industry on the 19 April.

Source