What problem are you solving?:

a) Lack of independent and reliable sources of information about political, professional and business career/activities of Czech politicians and their advisors that would be involved under one “roof” of free accessible non-profit informational internet portal.

b) Non transparent political environment in the Czech Republic which is often burdened by incorrect lobbying, clientelism and corruption.

c) Making of new informational quality via linking many various freely accessible information that are normally “atomized” .

d) Need of independent information portal that would be functioning like internet – interactive guidepost into Czech politics.

e) Reliable independent information in English about Czech politicians for foreigners and compatriots who are living abroad – especially information about Government members, President, leaders of political parties, fraction leaders in Czech Parliament and other “key players” in Czech politics.

Describe your idea:

Among the main goals of this project belongs pursuit of activities and development of a qualitatively new informational internet portal www.nasipolitici.cz, the aim of which is mainly functioning and activity of Czech politicians who are (elected) members of key executive and legislative institutions in the Czech Republic and EU – Czech Parliament – both chambers, Government, President, Czech regional authorities and municipal governments; European Parliament and Czech EU Commissioner.

We plan to focus on making of new system of functionality in search connections among politicians, private firms, state enterprises, NGO and other organizations and institutions in which is/was politician engaged.

We will realise a translation of the profiles and structured CVs of key Czech politicians into English.

What country will this operate in?: Czech Republic

Who are you?:

The civic association “Our Politicians” is voluntary, independent and non-profit. The aim of the civic association “Our Politicians” is to create an independent informational source which would provide the public with unbiased relevant information on people who participate in the politics of the Czech Republic. This basic aim is realised by foundation and operation of the internet portal www.nasipolitici.cz.
We closely cooperate with: civic association “kohovolit.eu”, analytic server www.jakhlasovali.cz and a number of prominent Czech politologists.
We have gained International Standard Serial Number (ISSN 1804-123X) which identifies periodical publications. Our internet portal is also included in the project of The National Library of the Czech Republic called “WebArchiv”.
The project management is ensured by PhDr. Jiří Fiala, M.A. – Vice-Chairman of Our politicians, civic association.

What problem are you solving?:

In Serbia, there is no possibility for citizens to communicate with MPs who represent them in the legislative process. Besides 3 recently established constituency offices, there are no other channels of communication between citizens and the MPs. However these offices cannot provide enough space for citizens to talk to elected politicians, having in mind the 250 MPs and population of over 7 million people. There are no internet based tools for effective and transparent democratic discussions between citizens and elected politicians as e-democracy solutions have not been used or developed in Serbia. Parliament has the official web site, but do not offer e-mail addresses of MPs for citizens’ inquiries. Introduction of internet failed to bring more interactivity for the Parliament, focusing more on information transfer and less on the dialogue with the citizens. Such practice erodes citizens’ confidence and trust in the Parliament.

Describe your idea:

The Zajecar Initiative (ZI) will create website at www.e-parliament.rs which will serve as a bridge to ensure two-way communication between citizens and their representatives. Email addresses of MPs will be gathered in cooperation with Deputies’ Groups and National Parliament Support Service. Website will include user-friendly interface that will allow users to easily search and browse MPs database and to generate and send messages. It will be also possible to use spam filters to eliminate unsolicited and offending emails as well as email templates to clearly indicate reply-to address. Website will be extensively promoted via media. ZI will regularly assess responsiveness of MPs using following indicators: the reply rate, the interval for reply and answer’s relevance considering the solicitation. Assessment results will be published and promoted by media. This will also be the way of involving citizens into debates over Parliament ‘s actions through forums and blogs.

What country will this operate in?: Serbia

Who are you?:

Zajecar Initiative (ZI) is non-profit organization, which mission is development of a civil society and grassroots democracy in Serbia. The vision of ZI is strong civil society, acting as democracy watchdog, that is able to both keep a check on government performance and participate in policy formulation and implementation that will enhance good governance. ZI was established in 2001 as a response to emerging transition challenges by a group of young people. So far, ZI has cooperated with the European Agency for Reconstruction, National Endowment for Democracy, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Norwegian People’s Aid, Fund for an Open Society, Institute for Sustainable Communities, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Schueler Helfen Leben etc. Since 2007, ZI has been awarding small grants to youth NGOs in the Eastern Serbia. ZI is a member of two nationwide networks: The Network of Resource Centers in Serbia and the Peace Policy Network.

What problem are you solving?:

We want to establish a project interesting for children and youth, especially for those who are not poor. Established by the young is to create interesting propositions of spending leisure time. It should give them some answers for rankling them questions, provide some patterns and new forms of acting in a democratic society. There is a need to prevent social pathology and social poverty. Youth, having nothing to do, start to use drugs and to drink alcohol. The crime rate is increasing. There is a danger of excluding some groups of young people from the society and that can lead them to extreme forms of intolerance such as racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and so on. As one of the priority we want to solve local problems using local potential. We want to give them interesting propositions of spending their leisure time so that they will not become members of the social marigin. The programme will be for both girls and boys. They co-operate in the sport and recreational activities.

Describe your idea:

For the project we will use for the first time well working internet website because so far we were using regular communication only because our website has technical problems and we cannot afford to hire a professional to make us and take care for the new web site. The direct benefit of this will be better communication with our target groups and we will be able to give particular information faster than before. People will also gain chance to meet new way of information. Through professional web site we want to rise the importance of the problems that neglected people have among local authorities. We want authorities to give biger attention to local problems. There is big distance between authorities and local people. We want them to get closer. We will be happy to share our ideas with other organisations form other cities and even countries.

What country will this operate in?: Poland

Who are you?:

Our mission is to generalise sport and physical culture, health prophylactic. We organise sport events mainly for amateurs but also for professionals. Our areas are local environments and area of the City of Lodz but we co-operate with similar organisations from Holland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Slovakia. We try to help people who have social problems. One of our goals is to generalise sport among youth and children. We also help disability people to find their new way through sport.

What problem are you solving?:

Bulgaria, along with Romania, was the latest country to become EU Member State but during its two years of membership unfortunately got notorious for cases of misappropriation of finances received under EU funds. This triggered critical monitoring reports and actions on the part of the European Commission resulting in suspension of funds under Phare, ISPA, SAPARD, Structural and Cohesion Funds. Bulgaria’s image turned negative amidst growing dissatisfaction within the society. Information on the hot topic of distribution of EU funds, competitive procedures, decision-making, etc., which is published by central government bodies, is sporadic and chaotic. More importantly, it provides no opportunity for monitoring by the civil society.

Describe your idea:

To launch a watchdog web site where info on the work of the parliamentary Commission of European Affairs and Control of EU Funds, and Sofia Municipality’s Commission of EU Affairs and Relations with Civil Society – will be published and subjected to civil scrutiny. The site will be the first of its kind in Bulgaria to:
• Offer info on the activities and decisions of the two key public commissions on EU fund issues, and also an info search engine;
• Provide interactive online platform for two-way communication for citizens and CSOs concerned with the non-transparency of Government’s utilization of EU funds, featuring online forums, blogs, etc.
• Promote the web site as the first to tackle issues of lack of systemic information and accountability by using the web based info tools of our organization (www.europe.bg, http://direct.europe.bg, http://parliament.europe.bg, http://westernbalkans.info)

What country will this operate in?: Bulgaria

Who are you?:

The European Institute Foundation is a Sofia based non-profit organization with a 10-year experience in dealing with pre- and post- EU accession issues, providing consultation & advice, and also with enough project management and programming skills. We’ve had rewarding cooperation with many organizations, among them OSI, PASOS, etc.

What problem are you solving?:

Ever since the democratic change in 2000, Serbia’s political scene has been lacking one of the most important components of a truly democratic system: accountability. In addition to political parties being ideologically poorly defined, proportional representation system fosters elected representatives’ and civil servants’ loyalty to their parties instead of their accountability to voters. All relevant political polls conducted in the last several years show that citizen confidence in political elite readiness and will to introduce substantive changes has greatly deteriorated. The pressure from the civic and media sector has still been sporadic, unsystematic and inconsistent. Mechanisms to help voters remember all the un/fulfilled pledges, un/proven mutual accusations, and politicians’ programmatic/ideological in/consistencies during numerous election cycles have been severely lacking, as well as investigative journalism.

Describe your idea:

We aim to promote accountability in Serbia’s politics, to mobilize and empower citizens and NGO, and connect them in common efforts to create public pressure towards local and national officials’ accountability. Out of necessity to systematically combat (deliberate) oblivion climate in Serbian politics we created a beta version of the fact-check website that relies on an easily searchable database with public officials’ statements and compares them with their previous statements and official decisions. Full access will be free to all users.

We are committed to restrain any partisanship and encourage users’ active engagement in on-line discussions and contribution with their own research on accountability. We will reach out to prominent intellectuals, journalists, artists, sportsmen, etc. and offer them blog space at the website.

What country will this operate in?: Serbia

Who are you?:

LiNet is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental and nonprofit organization from Serbia. Founded in 2002 by a handful of young activists who wanted to present an alternative to Serbia’s increasingly inert civic sector, it currently has 4 project staff, 13 experienced trainers, and more than 50 volunteers throughout the country. Our trainers’ are experienced in areas of campaigning, communications, advocacy, negotiation, grass roots empowerment, and human rights.

Through trainings with international organizations (ISC, NDI) and implementation of its own projects LiNet has developed significant capacity in the area of advocacy and has worked with high school and university students and with local watch dog organizations. We also act as umbrella organization for small local NGO and students groups providing them capacity building and project development assistance.

What problem are you solving?:

In albania does not exist a “tutoring online ” where all students should ask their questions or learn from the tutoring online.this is a big problem because the students in universities (public or privates) does not learn,research and share experiences with each other in real time .This problem really influences on the quality of the studies in Albanian universities.The univesities in albania are not understanding the real power of the online technology and they are not working in developing it as an important tool to comunicate with the others.

Describe your idea:

The idea is to buid a online center where the students will find profesors online to help them and to answer their questions using open source tech.then after a while the students will have a database where they can search for the answers they need.This way we have a system that evolves every day and the students and everyone who wants knowledge will search there for it.This project will help the process of learning and researching in our universities with the fleksibility of the online technology.

What country will this operate in?: Albania

Who are you?:

We are a group of ex-students(now we are grown up and we work) that still are thinking to improve the univesitary system in albania with the help of tech. Personaly I work as IT administrator. 2 of us are young profesors in universities . another is a lawyer.2 others are still students for masters degree.we think that knowledge is the best material to build and to evolve in our world.

What problem are you solving?:

Macedonia is characterized with very poor road infrastructure, sanitation and water supply system. Besides that, inadequate maintenance of the existing infrastructure is another problem. Another point what we want to stress is that the Government of Macedonia is decreasing the amount of resources in the State Budget for this issues, which automatically means that the LGU are having lower budgets. Next one is that most of the reappearing and building of new water supply system, sanitation and asphalted streets and roads is done during the periods of elections for the Central and Local Government. In order to gain more votes, political party who is on position, for a short period of time without respecting the priorities, strategies, plans are overspending most of the resources planned for this purposes. Municipalities’ public administration is evaluated as inefficient, incompetent etc. Because of that improvements in the infrastructure are happening very slowly.

Describe your idea:

We will create a free web portal that will serve the citizens quickly and easily to solve their daily problems with the municipal authorities and institutions. Citizens will be able to write a description, address, municipality and to attach a photo. The service will have its own separate central database where will gather all the information’s about the problems of citizens and also tracking their status, from where will be made different analysis. Every citizen will be able to monitor the status of settlement and he can evaluate the resolution of the problem. When the problem is reported by the citizen it will be followed to the relevant institution by email. The citizen will be notified by email when some of the authorities will write respond about the problem and also he can discuss about the problem with others. The portal will contribute to better communication between the authorities and citizens and building closer ties with the public administration.

What country will this operate in?: Macedonia

Who are you?:

We are two young people who want to make Macedonia a better place for living.
Hristijan Risteski graduate at 2008 on International economy and business. He had 3 years working experience in Civil Society Organizations. Managing international teams and projects, strategic planning, grant writing and fundraising, delivering skills trainings and career advising sessions, facilitating seminars and workshops, developing and analyzing community needs surveys, broadening human resources and communications methods, performance appraisals, sales and legal representative.
Darko Todoroski is Engineer in information technologies. He had 7 years working experience of programming, designing and maintenance web pages. He participated in the implementation of many non government and government projects related with the internet. He had experience of designing a lot of databases and implementing a lot of web portals.

What problem are you solving?:

All the existing web-site for on-line petitions are not fully suitable for russian speaking space, and those exiting in Russian and other cyrrillic languages are organized in a way – that you can submit any kind of petition (sometimes not very effective and thought of), afterwards such web-sites are full with bad petitions. For example, petitions to presidents on any type of problem.

Besides, the general level of civic activism is very low in these countries, so we would like to higher it through the petition in action project.

Describe your idea:

so we would like to develop the interactive petitions project which will be accessible in different languages with pre-selection and consultation of petition-makers, building a community of civil activists and building a full system of creation, submission, sending the petition and getting the answer.

In many ways, our idea is very similar to one of your web-sites in Number10 e-petitions.

We want to make people aware and responsible of what they do and help them to develop a good petitionthat can really be halpful in advocacy, and also with consulting them on how to use other advocacy instruments instead od starting an immediate petition on any case.

We develop it together with IT company from Ukraine. and would like to get your advice and consultations and also technical assistance in implementing this project. The web-functional itself is alost ready, so we are about to launch it wuite soon.

What country will this operate in?: Ukraine

Who are you?:

Youth Human Rights Movement – is the larget youth activists community in Europe.

We are:

Human rights University, Laboratiry for social changes, community of activists for mutual help, suppoirt and solidarity.

What problem are you solving?:

Currently in Poland there not too many ways to influence politicians who once elected forget that they should serve their voters and not waste time in political bickering. Public debate often is organised after and not before bad laws are enacted, which is too late.
People who are most interested in making difference or show they disagreement are not heard as it takes too much effort to voice their views and stands. They are not sure how they can contribute to ideas they support and who are change leaders they could entrust.
People are not aware if what they view is important can gain momentum as it is not easy to find other would be supporters with whom they could team up and achieve more. They don’t want to be inactive yet due to work, family and money constraints they are left with little choice of what they can do about issues vital to them.

Describe your idea:

Pluru.pl is a Internet platform under development (currently beta tested) that aims to empower people in their grass-root actions around variety of issues whether political, social or local initiatives. It will help to access opinion of registered users, contrast it against that of others, start online discussions, enhance voting and provoke reactions of officials thus hold them accountable. It will be a platform for politicians, social and environmental activists who want a useful and powerful tool to gather supporters, manage social campaigns, assess feasibility of projects by collecting critical or enthusiastic comments and organise real life events.

What country will this operate in?: Poland

Who are you?:

The main founder of pluru.pl project is Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Internet entrepreneur, social and occupational psychologist, Wroclaw University of Economics graduate in the area of marketing, PhD student (social competences thesis), graduate of School of Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights, NLP coach, member and co founder of Direct Democracy Association (Poland). In pluru.pl project he is supported by IT specialists, computer graphics designers, political science studies graduates and PR specialists.

What problem are you solving?:

– Polish National Strategy for Social Integration says, that there is the social exclusion of disabled people. The digital exclusion reduces their level of activity in the society and the functioning of the democracy. There is more than 5 mln cripples.
– No comprehensive web portal for the cripples, which is informative and plays a role of a platform where the views on culture, art, education are exchanged. There should also be available social consultations on legislation for people with disabilities and policies pursued by the Polish Gov.
– Resolutions are consulted with NGOs, which represent the interests of a limited group or selected concepts, so there are excluded people, which can not understand the decisions that affect them and can not take part in discussions.
– No monitoring of tenders announced by the public administration, to which everyone has the insight and everyone – including people with disabilities – can report irregularities to take adequate measures.

Describe your idea:

Multimedia portal will make cripples able to actively participate in social life and be a genuine window on the world for excluded people because of their disability:
– updated daily
– communication tools
– active participation in the development of portal
– information on culture, arts, education, published by people from various regions
– information on planned changes in legislation and opportunities of consulting to develop a position which will be communicated to the legislative authority
– monitoring the administration’s activities or retain the principle of transparency, respect the civil rights and are consistent with the democratic right – each user of the portal will be able to report irregularities in order to take action
 
Open Source tools used only.
We want to make all of our work as the OS project.
The portal will be designed for use by disableds, incl. visually impaired (materials read by the lectors too).

What country will this operate in?: Poland

Who are you?:

Bridging the Barrier Association Open Doors is a new non-governmental organization, which does not result in gainful activity. It was created in order to promote the social integration of disabled people while preserving and respecting their rights. We counteract the social exclusion of disabled people and we are planning projects for people with disabilities, such as film workshops targeted to deaf and partially hearing, digitization of theatrical performances with translation into sign language.
 
At this time we have gathered a group of volunteers in various regions of the country who are willing to work as soon as the portal starts to work. Our volunteers are mostly people who feel themselves excluded and denied their right to participate in the society because of their disability. The aim of the portal is to change this situation.