According to the researchers, “this evolution towards new communication patterns provided governments with an opportunity to function in a more innovative, engaging and cost-effective manner. In recent years, many businesses have integrated tools such as Facebook and Twitter in their marketing efforts to reach customers more directly. In a government context, such tools can be similarly used to engage with citizens with the goals of collecting their feedback and ideas, making them aware of public services at their disposal and reaching out to broader audiences through non-traditional channels.” Companies and goverments are not the only agents of thoses changes. “Social media has also returned power to citizens. By providing inexpensive and widely-available tools that make it easier to organize and voice challenge, new technologies have contributed to empower citizens while improving governments’ responsiveness and accountability. A new citizen is emerging.”

Still in the research, RedCut cites initiatives that were beginning their careers and could be exploited as cases in the future. And once again, we are on the list with the Movimento Minas.

The search result, the Citizen 2.0 – 17 exemples of social media and government innovation, you can download here.

The list of projects is as follows:
SeeClickFix Ushahidi Manorlabs Vancouver Greenest City New York Simplicity Idea Market GovLoop Yammer Experience Grand Rapids Tukayfe US Embassy Jakarta Zonability Culture Now YouTown Localocracy Votenaweb PopVox EveryBlock

Por Mari Fonseca

There, anyone can sign up a project and use social media and the power of the Internet to mobilize people and get your idea funded. Any contribution is welcome and generates in counterpart a reward or benefit.

One of the projects signed up for won our sympathy immediately for being aligned with the various concepts that Webcitizen itself works within Webcidadania: The hacker’s coach. An original idea of the Transparency Hackers, a group of activists who want to create new forms of political participation through the Internet. The group wants to travel around Brazil by bus, spreading ideas and creating projects along their way.

But no one better than themselves to defend their idea:

Ônibus Hacker, por Daniela B. Silva from Diego Casaes on Vimeo

They have just over a month to reach their budget of 40 thousand reais. They have already achieved 5 thousand. You can also contribute to this project so that they can spread open data ideas around Brazil.

When the United States was stuck in the mud of the terrible economic crisis of 1929, a judge inspired the country to adopt a series of reforms that would leave both the state and the economy more transparent and would also be fundamental to their recovery. His name was Louis Brandeis and his most famous saying was: “They say sunlight is the best disinfectant and electric light is the best policeman.”

It is from this phrase that the name of the Sunlight Foundation originated, perhaps the most important institution in the world to deal with transparency in politics and a strong inspiration for us at Webcitizen.

I spent the last four days in Washington participating in the Transparency Camp, a grand event organized by Sunlight to discuss transparency, open government, civic engagement, webdemocracy, government 2.0 and other issues changing the world. The Transparency Camp holds the event for three years now, but 2011 was the first with an international claim. Besides Americans, there were participants from Hungary, Argentina, Chile, Jamaica, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Mexico, Albania, India … and four representatives from the brave land of samba and tambourine.

We presented Votenaweb, which was very well received. And we enjoyed the opportunity to discuss Movimento Minas, a project that we recently launched in partnership with the government of Minas Gerais. The idea of taking on a project at its initial stage proved to be excellent. Instead of saying “look how great this is that we achieved”, our attitude was: “This is what we think, now how do you think we can make it better?” The debate session on the MeM was sensational, full of insights and ideas from people all around the world. I left Washington convinced that we are on the right track, creating things parallel to the most innovative projects in the world. I also left recharged with inspiration and contacts from the international community of transparency and open government.

I write this post sitting in a plane, a flight equipped with Wi Fi. In this day and age we are becoming increasingly connected. Meanwhile, Brazil is preparing to finally approve a law tomorrow that regulates the right to public information – Brazil was one of very few democracies in the world who didn’t have one. The world is changing, and fast. I’m excited. It seems that the sun is finally starting to shine on Brazilian politics.

Gordon Brown, ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain, defended in his TEDTalk that we, global citizens, should also be marching. Gordon’s talk of last year during TEDGlobal in Oxford in the UK is a current manifesto on civic mobilization and the power of information. The British politician presented examples of people and communities that were able to change the course of political history in their countries through Web 2.0 tools and mobile technology.

According to Gordon Brown, what’s new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world, and we can march together in great numbers in the non-linear direction towards the future we want and need as global citizens. This is makes this a unique age in human history, the creation of a truly global society.

With the internet we can organize ourselves internationally and take collective action together to deal with global problems, what means that we have in hand a real opportunity to fundamentally change the world.

Foreign relations are changing. They cannot be run exclusively by elites; they must now be guided by listening to the public opinions of peoples who are blogging, who are communicating and interacting with each other around the world through the internet and its several tools of connectivity and participation.

Civic mobilization through the Internet is capable of raising flags against illiteracy, denounce slavery, fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, amongst other forms of discrimination. There are no limits to the involvement, and the outcome of participation is always transformative.

André Blas

Governmental hierarchical structures are being criticized for holding the power and the information, and for making it difficult for citizens to take initiatives and seek solutions for themselves. With the help of the internet, the founding principles of transparency, participation and openness are coming closer and closer to the mainstream of our social and political lives, in which technology catalyzes and permits new and alternative models of behaviour.

Ivo Gormley, the director of the documentary that investigates the culture of participation

Us Now takes a look at how this type of participation can transform the way that countries are governed.  It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organizing structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever. The experiences presented on the film range from the fate of Ebbsfleet United, a football club owned and run by its fans, to Zopa, a bank in which everyone is the manager and Couch Surfing, a vast online network whose members share their homes with strangers. New technologies are fundamental parts of these transformations. However, it is important to understand that a revolution does not happen when a society adopts new tools, but when it adopts new behaviours.

One of the experts that participated in the documentary explains that “the great change that has been happening is the idea that everyone is available for group action. That does not mean that everyone will participate in the group action, but all can be involved.”

The more people participate in this new way to collaborate and share, the more fascinating the phenomenon of the culture of participation becomes.

Watch the documentary Us Now

André Blas

The virtual, writes Josh, is psychologically quite real. People exchange real emotions and real ideas, experience real interactions. While this is what makes all social media tick, Second Life’s immersive qualities make it a truly new frontier for diplomacy and cultural relations.

A scene of the Al Andalus community on Second Life

According to Josh, the more time that users invest in their Second Life experiences, the more they come to express high degrees of creativity and understanding of each other. In this and other ways, Second Life is more like the physical world than most people tend to believe.

Second Life is by far the largest of the on-line virtual worlds and, most importantly, and the most incredible thing is that it is created entirely by its users. Down to the details of flowers in bloom and fruiting trees, the gardens in the this virtual community, Josh beautifully describes as the gardens of Al Andalus have been created by its residents to virtually resemble those of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

The community of Al-Andalus occupies a group of virtual islands, and its virtual architecture and lush gardens are designed to resemble two of the great monuments of medieval Islamic architecture, the Alhambra in Granada and the Great Mosque in Córdoba, both in Spain. The virtual buildings were conceived and built to evoke a historical memory of convivencia, the Spanish term for the harmonious co-existence of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the southern Iberian Peninsula during the Islamic caliphate there.

Josh spent nearly four months with the Al Andalus residents, who in the physical world live in Canada, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil among many other countries. He attended various virtual events with the Second Life participating avatars at the parties, Flamenco concerts, Compline Prayer Services, and morning prayers at the Grand Mosque of Al Andalus.

In real life, some of the more active Al-Andalus members are accomplished professionals; they include a Russian ballerina, a Saudi accounting student, a retired British engineer and a Houston attorney. It would be practically impossible for such diverse group to meet in person, let alone set up a real-world socio-cultural experimental community.

Members of Al Andalus participate in religious events and gatherings

One of the residents, in a virtual interview with Josh at one of the lush and magnificent gardens of Al Andalus, says that “part of the pleasure and value of the experience is meeting people with other backgrounds and beliefs
Part history and part fantasy, Al-Andalus is, above all, a metaphor for the future, fostering a new and more tolerant form of human engagement, at the same time that it promotes greater understanding among religions, particularly about one of the most obscure and mystical in all humanity.

More details about the communityAl Andalus.

Josh Fouts is a Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and he blogs regularly about how technology can elevate the current paradigm of cultural diplomacy and relations, and how individuals around the world from different cultures are using virtual worlds to create better understanding between cultures.

André Blas

Some of the usual challenges to the most of the nations regard to growing suspicion in governmental institutions and the need to bypass the rhetoric about social responsibility to an actual efficient participation, which can bring actual results. Besides, it’s remarkable that the citizen demands more fair, efficient and participative services even more.

A consequence of the multiple crisis affecting all governments around the planet is the growing mistrust in public institutions, at the same time that citizens increasingly demand for a more just, efficient, participatory and citizen-centric services, and for a greater civic involvement in the legislatorial process.

Here is where we come into the stage: Webcitizen, through its ingenious and transformative civic activation and political inclusion tool Votenaweb, immediately after its lightning presence at the Gov 2.0 Showcase Expo event in Washington, D.C. in May, was invited by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), to participate in an important workshop and forum on civic engagement in Barcelona, Spain last week, organized in collaboration with the Government of Catalunya.

Webcitizen is aligned to one of the most influent and ranged global institutions on the planet, and for us, it meant a lot to gain the confidence and interest from UN, by including us in this so relevant dialogue. We believe that our confidence in the power of citizenship, the transparent dialogue, the intelligence and the collective well-being have taken us to such recognition. We are all subjects in this transformative and bold task in favor of a more fair society. And that is just the beginning

Read below some topics from the Barcelona Statement about the Critical Role of Public Service for the Accomplishment of the Millennium Development Goals, document disclosed in the end of the event in Spain:

* Reforms in public management should not have as purpose make governments more efficient, but also improve the quality of civic participation in laws politics, as part of the evolution of democracy.

* Legislative processes must be transparent, responsible and participative. Information regarding to governmental decisions on public questions for development must be clear and accessible to everyone.

* Civic engagement must exercise an essential role on laws in every step, including design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, especially in local level, by means of decentralization, offering a socioeconomic progress and larger participation in public business and services, as well as a feeling of co-responsibility.

* Governments must offer the development of electronic management practices centered on citizens and focused on people’s needs, and not only on the technology.

* All governments must encourage the engagement of its citizens, civilian societies and private sectors, to make all them together improve life conditions.

* Social responsibility must be emphasized, consolidating confidence and making civic engagement useful and solvent. Sharing of knowledge and positive experiences must be offered to make the spreading of efficient practices, methodologies, institutions and civic engagement mechanisms, adaptable to the specific context of each country, easy.

* To improve transparency and civic responsibility, governments must offer wider use and access to information, communication and technology, by the purpose to make costs of administrative processes simple and low. Sharing of information and use of ICT tools must be a priority in every government.

André Blas

In Washington, two of Webcitizen’s directors – Fernando Barreto and André Blas – were contacted by some UN folks that were there. They had really enjoyed Vote on the Web and were particularly impressed by its friendly design and its appeal for a younger audience. This conversation ended with an invitation: they wanted us to fly to New York in the following week to present Vote on the Web in the UN headquarters. Fernando and André did just that.

A group of over ten people, working for several different divisions of the UN, awaited them. They loved Vote on the web. So much so that they made a last minute invitation for us to present the project in Barcelona, between the 21st and the 23rd of June at an event called “Citizens in Development Management and Public Governance for the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals”. The schedule of the event was closed already, but they opened it again just to include Vote on the Web.

The meeting in New York was amazing. Not only it made the trip to Barcelona possible but we talked about several exciting possibilities of partnership with the UN – they want us to help them find innovative webcitizenship projects all over the world. We’ll write more about these possibilities when they become a little bit more concrete.

Now Webcitizen is packing for a trip to Barcelona, in close contact with the UN headquarters in New York while we process the demands we brought from Washington.

And here you can watch other presentations at Gov 2.0 Expo.

Nice to meet you, visitors from outside Brazil!

Exceptionally this post will be written in English (desculpa aí, amigos brasileiros!). Let me explain why:

This week, on May 26th, we’ll give a talk at the Gov 2.0 Conference in Washington DC, which is really really cool. We’ll be there introducing the American public to our project Votenaweb.com, which will soon be launched in other 4 countries! We’ll ask people there at the conference to visit our website. So we thought it would be polite to receive them with a post in English. Isn’t it cute?

Let me tell you then who we are. We’re a company created only a bit more than a year ago, to use technology to create civic engagement and – why not – make the world a better place. From then on we did so many things that it feels like we’ve been working for decades! We were among the people who brought TED to Brazil – we curated and organized the TEDxSP conference last November. We edit a cool magazine on values called Gotas – the first issue discusses transparency, the second one wants to make a concrete impact on a neighborhood. We are also about to launch a very cool and fun website called Duelo Tube, which lets youtube videos fight with each other! And we work for a state government (the state of Minas Gerais) providing information services to the public. Not to mention a hundred other projects we’ve been dreaming about.

Thanks for passing by. I hope you come back one day. If by any chance you need a hand from passionate people in Brazil, just let us know.

Por Denis Burgierman