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This is what the study trip will be about
The south-western Land of
Baden-Württemberg is at the top of the league in Germany in terms
of citizen engagement. The GI study visit will take participants to a number of very impressive
organisations, including an award-winning local authority, a private
sector company which has won acclaim for involving staff in social
responsibility programmes and several other governance champions in the
region.
The issues explored on this study trip will be:
- How to develop a community of active citizens
- How to make local councillors part of participatory
processes
- How to get local companies and the press engaged in
supporting citizen engagement
- How to sustain citizen engagement
- How to develop and implement a strategy of citizen
engagement, not just a set of separate initiatives
This is what two of our participants thought of the
past study trip:
Valerie Smith, Senior Policy Officer at the
Commission for Rural Communities: "So many interesting governance
initiatives are happening in Europe. We need to learn from each other.
This intensive trip not only informed us about southern German
experiences of participation, but the international atmosphere enabled
us to hear about countries such as Belgium, Norway, Catalonia, Scotland
and other parts of England too. Extremely valuable!"
Jordi Pacheco i Canals,
Coordinador de Programas de
Participación, Gobierno de Catalunya: "It is important to
learn what kind of approaches other agencies use to address similiar
issues. The programme allowed us to become familiar with the German
approach and, during our informal discussions, to get to hear other
points of view from participants working in other parts of Europe."
Do you want to know more about the study trip? Please contact elke.loeffler@govint.org to obtain the reports of our 2006 and 2008 study trip.
Study trip to Finland
on E-governance,
25-26 September 2008
According to the OECD, Finland is No.1 in
e-government. The visit will our participants why and focuss on the
latest developments in Finland. The Study Trip will start with a visit to
the Prime Minister’s Office to explore the Finnish programme on
information society and continue with site-visits to an Internet bus
and a cyber-library in Tampere, which is the “e-government city” in
Finland. Apart from discussions with Finnish government officials with
hands-on experience participants will have the chance to meet 77 years-old
Maija-Liisa Ström who provides internet training for the elderly
and Emma Littunen, manager of the private company E-Tupa which helps
citizens to choose and use different ICT-equipment.
The issues to be explored include:
- How to prepare for the information society
- How to overcome the digital divide
- How to join-up public service delivery with
e-government
- How to develop and implement a strategy for
e-government, not just a set of separate initiatives
This is what one of our participants thought of the
past study trip:
Rob Kuipers, Director General of the Civil Service
in the Netherlands: "Our trip to Finland contributed to our
understanding of their leading position in regard to e-Government
issues. But it also made us more aware of the strong and weak sides of
our own national (Dutch) e-Government policies. The international
comparison is often a very helpful instrument, and trips like these, by
Government International, are, for that reason, very useful."
Study trip to the Paris
region on participative budgeting,
4-5 December 2008
The high level of interest in citizen participation in budget issues in the UK and elsewhere in Europe suggests that participative budgeting is no longer just a fancy theory, even though developed examples of it are still rare in practice, even in France. Governance International staff have been following the participatory budgeting practices of three local government champions in the Paris region for a number of years and used their experience to put together a programme which allowed participants to compare three very different ways of transferring the Porto Alegre model into a European context.
The issues to be explored on this trip include:
- Three different approaches to running participative
budgets
- Giving citizens a role in holding the local council
to account
- Involving young people and other ´hard-to-reach´groups
- Different ways of organising neighbourhood councils.
This is what two of our participants thought of the
past study trip:
Katju Holkeri, Counsellor, Ministry of Finance, Finland: "The programme of the study trip on participatory budgeting to Paris in December 2006 was really well balanced. The three cases were different but all of equally high standard and complemented each other well. Through their demonstrated results they provided me with new ideas and contributed to our work on citizen participation".
Gordon C Frith, Principal Administrative Officer, Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar, Scotland: "I live and work on the Isle of Lewis, which is at the edge of Europe. The Study Trip provided an opportunity to exchange ideas and develop networks with a diverse and well informed group of individuals. I was struck by the deep and sincere wish of those giving presentations to improve services to their communities. The Study Trip was of almost immediate benefit, as I was able to integrate the information gained in Paris into a Report aimed at building community engagement into the Council's constitutional framework."
Do you want to know what our participants learnt from the Study Trip? Please read the 15-page report prepared by Governance International in .pdf format. You can also read a brief summary in .pdf format. You can also ask for the printed brochure by writing to elke.loeffler@govint.org.
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