Readers of Gatewatching may be interested in this: the call for papers for EDEM 2010, the fourth international conference on e-democracy, to be held in Austria next May, has now been released. I attended EDEM 2009 in Vienna a couple of months ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it; much of the work presented there (including the paper which Jason and I co-authored, of course) was directly relevant also to the Australian context, especially in light of the explorations currently being undertaken by the Government 2.0 Task Force.

From the CFP for EDEM 2010:

EDem10

4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010

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government, policy, politics, public sphere CFP, conference, democracy, e-democracy, government, participation, research, social media

The CPD has just launched a new publication called Thinking Points: talking points for thinking people, providing rapid-fire responses to the debates of the day with an eye to the big picture and the decades to come.

I have a short policy piece up here.

Senator John Faulkner’s announcement of changes to Australia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) laws is long overdue, and his approach promises to address a number of concerns about FOI in Australia.

First, addressing the egregious abuse of the ‘cabinet in confidence’ provision, exemplified by the wheeling of trolleys of documents in and out of the cabinet room, is a major step forward, as is the removal of conclusive certificates. However, simply reducing the legal loopholes available for abuse by government and the public service is only part of the solution.

citizen journalism, foi, journalism, policy, public sphere

I got somethin’ in New Matilda today reporting on my recent travels to conferences at home and abroad. There’s a cross-post over the fold, but you should go there instead and read the other stuff on the site while you’re at it.

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UK, public sphere academic, conferences, e-democracy, journalism, Margaret Simons, MEAA, newspapers, public sphere, quality, research, Roy Greenslade, Steven Coleman, sustainability, UK