Knowledge Engineering and Machine Learning Group. KEMLG

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Virtual European Parliament

 
VEP webpage
Engaging young EU citizens in the decission making process by using mobile and web 2.0 based technology

The VEP project aims as trial project at integrating young EU citizens from 3 different regions (Lulea, Barcelona, Flanders) in the decision making process of the European Parliament. As a trial project the Virtual EP activities will run in parallel to the actual agenda of the European Parliament. The young EU citizens will be able to access relevant information via the VEP portal, will be able to share thoughts with the other participants, will be able to collaboratively write reports on specific topics and will be asked to give their opinion via mobile voting and surveying. The process is moderated by an international support office looking after the quality of all Virtual EP activities.

 
The objective of the project is to successfully create a public room – the Virtual European Parliament - for debate between citizens and decision makers (i.c. MEP’s) in EC. The results of our project will contribute to the objective in i2010 to create a single European information space with increased knowledge about how to bring citizens and decision makers together in dialogue and debate. Our project will also contribute to an improved legislative process by successfully bringing citizens and decision makers together.
 
We intend to do this by:
  • Setting up a successful “Virtual European Parliament” for political debate in EC.
  • Creating motivation and engagement.
  • Creating knowledge about the social processes that take place in a public room.
  • Create knowledge about how to improve the legislation processes.
 
The novelties of this project are :
  • The use of “Innovation Jam” like software in political and decision related environments.
  • The use of MegaConferencing software (massive video-conferencing between 100-400 participants) in Virtual Parliament Sessions.
  • The use of Web 2.0 technology (blogging, wiki’s, tagging, …) to facilitate interaction and content gathering.
  • The use of Mobile technology linked to the rest of tools for voting, contributing and opinion gathering.
Activities in the Virtual European Parliament are synchronized with the activities in the real European parliament and follow the decision making.