Fact Sheet

Version May 2012

PSI-Reuse and Participation

What is this fact sheet about? Amongst civil society actors and open data activists, increased citizen participation and engagement has from the outset been one of the aims of and main arguments for increased PSI-reuse. While economic factors have often been at the forefront of governmental interest in PSI re-use, its possibilities for decreasing perceived democracy deficits and creating new forms of citizen participation are being increasingly considered. This fact sheet considers the argument of increased citizen participation and engagement within the context of the EU. PSI re-use and participation Across the EU Member States, concerns have been raised consistently over the perceived democracy deficit, i.e. the perceived gap between citizens and the workings, decisions and legal documents of the EU, national governments and other Public Sector Bodies (PSBs). Through access to PSI and through its re-use, it is hoped that citizens would engage more with political and administrative processes, understanding of these would grow, there would be more co-operation between PSBs and the public, increase the legitimacy of decision-making processes and their public ownership, and can also lead to innovative and creative new uses of PSI, e.g. through crowd-sourcing. Some simple PSI re-use applications such as sites for tracking parties and individual candidates political positions have proven highly popular, yet are not very interactive. Increasingly complex tools allow for new forms of engagement of citizens with PSBs, increasing subsidiarity, allowing citizens to become pro-active and improve service delivery. New ICT also allow for citizens to engage directly and simply with PSBs at various levels and across borders, from the local over the national to the supra-national levels. These forms of participation can lead to new forms of European and global citizenship, e.g. when linked to political processes such as EU referenda and other cross-border EU dialogues. Increasingly complex and specialised tools or specialist political debates can however also lead to the concentration of PSI re-use participation in the hands of small activist communities. PSI and increased participation The open data community has been quick to embrace re-using the newly public information of PSBs within the EU and elsewhere. Increased citizen participation and adjunct benefits (e.g. legitimacy, civic education, creative problem-solving) are seen as being amongst the main political goals of these processes. The sentiment is by and large shared by the EU Commission and most EU Member State governments. Increased and simpler access to PSI through new applications and more widespread new ICT tools, and thus more active engagement with PSBs and their decision making processes, it is argued, will increase the understanding of these processes and the acceptance and ownership of them by citizens. Furthermore, it is hoped that the increased participation will open up creative synergies leading to innovative re-uses of PSI. Critics are however more cautious, noting that in spite of increased technological knowledge and access to tools by the citizenry, the numbers of those who actively engage in PSI re-use processes remains small, limited to a relatively small politically or civically engaged and technically savvy section of society. Examples of PSI re-use and Increased Participation Within the EU, some of the PSI re-use initiatives which have been successful in increasing citizen participation include Local level initiatives, such as the UK FixMyStreet site, www.fixmystreet.com Municipal level sites such as Frankfurt Gestalten, www.frankfurt-gestalten.de National level Open Government sites such as Enquete-Commission on Internet and digital society of the German Parliament www.enquetebeteiligung.de European-level sites www.itsyourparliament.eu Future developments One of the key questions of PSI re-use is how its promise of increased citizen participation and new forms of citizenship can be realised. Current tools which have proven popular tend to be relatively simple, but with the development of methodologies such as liquid democracy citizen participation can take on completely new forms. The challenge will be to ensure that this participation does not remain the specialised hobby of a small self-selected group but rather truly increases democratic participation in political and administrative processes.

ePSI Platform Fact Sheets provide short introductions to key concepts and developments, allowing new comers to the PSI re-use arena to get up to speed swiftly. Find ePSI Platform Fact Sheets at epsiplatform.eu.