Barack Obama dialogue with citizens on Google +
Imagine five people selected from tens of thousands, calling on the President live from the webcam installed in their living room. This is what happened last Monday when five Americans citizens, who participated in an interview with YouTube and Google+ to discuss his State of the Union Address. For this "first online conversation to happen at the White House in real time -- ever" as called by the White House, more than 227,000 people had taken time to participate -- submitting questions for the President to answer or voting for their favorite.

Francois Hollande flour-bombed also on the web
It is the charm of the Internet: its ultra responsive. It did not take 24 hours for the misadventure of the socialist candidate for president turns into a small video game online. He was victim of a flour attack by a woman just as he prepared to make a speech. The incident had raised a lot of questions about the protection of presidential candidates. This did not prevent an Internet user who is a young right activist to create during the night a little online game very simple: flour a maximum time of Francois Hollande in minimum time. A classic in these little games on the net. To play log onto fh-2012.com.

Internet creates wider venue for political threats
The U.S. Secret Service are on alert, estimating the level of invilité against politicians especially high during an election campaign seen as very aggressive, both within the Republican camp than against President Obama. A police sergeant from Arizona has been removed from patrol and assigned to desk duties pending an internal investigation because he appeared in a photo posted on Facebook with weapons and what appears to be a bullet-riddled image of Barack Obama. According to USA Today, if political incivility is nothing new, the Internet is making more of the venom public, and it has changed the nature of incivility by allowing people to spew insults anonymously that can reach millions of people. That is why the Internet threat desk, set up within the secret services since 2000, pays particular attention to identify, among the bluster, the real threats.

London defend its reuse of electronic vote counting
The Greater London Authority has defended its reuse of electronic vote counting for the 2012 mayoral and assembly member elections following the renewal of allegations from one analyst that such systems are less secure and not worth their cost. The vote will be complex: on 3 May, Londoners will cast four votes on three ballot papers, each using a different electoral system. They will elect the Mayor of London and 25 members of the London Assembly for 14 constituency contests and a proportional representation system for 11 London-wide members. If turnout is similar to 2008, a total of almost 8 million ballots will be counted. “We think this marginal price difference in 2012 is a price worth paying for a quicker and more accurate count”, Euan Holloway, spokesperson for London Elects, told E-Government Bulletin this month. A traditional manual count would take four days, but an electronic count can produce a result within 12 hours, he said.

Anonymous' reaction raises many questions
Retaliation launched by the anonymous, which blocked many websites of government agencies, media or cultural industries in the world, after the close of the Megaupload platform by the American justice, raises many question about the powers and the might of anonymous. Despite the charges against Megaupload (the indictment is available online), accused of organizing a "Mega Conspiracy, criminal organization with global ramifications," why the anonymous set themselves as judges? In democracy, these attacks should not it concern us?

# Jan25, like a digital Bastille day?
According to LSE scholar Charlie Beckett, quoted by France 24, January 25 provided the Bastille moment of the Egyptian revolution, meaning it created a symbol that was simple and potent enough for everyone to rally behind it – much as the fall of the Bastille prison had done for the French Revolution in 1789. One year after the beginning of the egyptian revolution, the hashtag #Jan25 became the symbol of an entire movement and perhaps the most famous hashtag ever on micro-blogging site Twitter.

India Prime Minister joins Twitter
Or rather, his press service, which has just opened an account @PMOIndia (Prime Minister Office of India), showing its determination to approach the people. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is indeed often criticized for its inaccessibility. Journalists are clearly the target, in a country with less than 10% of Internet users, according to the Canadian Sherbrooke University. To read in India Today.

Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA
The White House used the e-petition website, "We The People" to try to defuse a controversy more and more threatening. The petition against SOPA has earned tens of thousands of signatures and the White House took the pole to its position, explaining that the proposal is not satisfactory, and urging users to take direct action to improve "Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions"

In South Korea, the opposition leader elected head of his party by mobile phone
The year 2012 will be an election year in South Korea with general elections in April and presidential election in December. In the country which was the first in the world in 2002 to elect a President with a lot of supporters on Internet, it will be interesting to study new IT uses. It has also started on 15 January. Former South Korean prime minister Han Myeong-sook was elected chairwoman of the liberal main opposition Democratic United Party for a mandate of two years, with 24.5 percent of the vote from a 800,000-strong electoral college. What makes this election unique is that people has been allowed to cast votes through their mobile phones, a method no other political institution in the world has tried before. The leadership election was based on votes cast by party members, party delegates and ordinary citizens who had voluntarily signed up to cast their ballots. Some 90 percent of them voting by mobile phone. The introduction of mobile voting, unprecedented in a party leadership election, has played a "revolutionary" role in encouraging mass participation. Lee Cheol-hee, vice head of the Institute for Democracy and Policies, called the experiment part of the evolution of Korean party politics. He said political parties, criticized for being insular and isolated from the public, are expanding their turf by reaching down to the grass root.

In Canada, Election laws changing to reflect Twitter reality
Faced with new practices, some laws appear increasingly obsolete. This is the case of the law which prohibits to disseminate to the public the result of an election in an electoral district before the close of all polling stations. This is the case of Canada. This rule is "outdated and inapplicable" and will soon disappear. Canada did not actually afford to retain information in a country with no fewer than six time zones. Because when Canadians located west of the country voted, the results are already known on the east. In France, this situation will inevitably resurface during the next presidential election. In a few months, French people - whose millions are on Twitter - will be called to the polls to elect the President of the Republic.

The main news that impressed me this week:

 Happy New Year!
Impossible to miss the wishes of candidates for the French presidential election on Dailymotion. From the socialist François Hollande (100,000 views) to centrist François Bayrou (36,500 views), Eva Joly (32,500 views), Corinne Lepage ( (6000 views), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (8000 views), Dominique de Villepin (25,000 views), Jean-Luc Mélanchon (42,000 views) or Marine Le Pen (46,000 views), spend all styles. The campaign team of the Left Front of Jean-Luc Mélanchon has done a pretty remarkable parody, " the true wishes of politicians . "

Access to the Internet is a Human Right?
No, access to the Internet is not a fundamental right, like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information, write Vinton Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet in an article published in The New York Times . "The Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition".

These foreign presidents addicted to Twitter
The French magazine "Nouvel Observateur" published an interesting article on the use of Twitter by Heads of State and Government in the world. Furthermore, it was by Twitter that Cristina Fernandez Kirchner ( @ CFKArgentina ) thanked "God and the Argentine people of the blessings received" after his operation and the announcement that she did not have a cancer. This article reminded us that it is through the same channel that Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president had sent a message of support to the argentine president.

The Facebook page of Nicolas Sarkozy comes to life
5 posts in a week is all that over the previous three months. The Facebook page of Nicolas Sarkozy (nearly 494,000 fans to date ) reminds us that we are entering an election year.

Right-wing activists leave Sarkozy
In France, Arnaud Dassier, one of the right "activists" the most active announced his support for the centrist Bayrou. In an interview, he explained his choice by the need to "open the locked political system that prevents the integration of different people, from civil society" and "reconcile the national representation with the forces of the country ". The same week, Pierre de la Coste, Chairman of the club Hyper Republic, published an open letter to his former cabinet colleague, Henri Guaino. He announced that he will vote "for the first and probably last time" for the socialist candidate in the second round of the presidential election if Nicolas Sarkozy is present.

United States also is in campaign
The campaign for the nomination of the Republican candidate who will face Barack Obama, really began with the Iowa caucuses, narrowly won by Mitt Romney. The popularity of the former Massachusetts governor is widely reported on the Internet. His Facebook page has well over 1, 2 million fans, far more than its main competitors. The breakthrough of former Senator Rick Santorum , came second, resulted in an increase in its visibility on the Web, but according to Socialbakers , which analyzed the Facebook candidate, it is Ron Paul who would win the onine electoral battle because he is the most efficient in mobilizing its supporters. 

http://tinyurl.com/7vyrncb

Out of the 80 cities surveyed, from every continent and of different sizes, only a dozen significant examples were identified. According to André Santini, Member of the French Parliament and Mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, who lead the Global Cities Dialogue (GCD) workgroup on "e-Government", the Open Data movement is "a new subject for the great majority of cities". "It is a subject which interests mostly the specialists and there is a certain utopian enthusiasm around it”, continued Santini, who also announced that his city would open its geographic data in 2012.

Most of the questioned cities bring forward the complexity of the subject in order to explain the absence of an open data strategy. Open data does not only raise internal organizational issues (what data to publish first and foremost? Who takes the decisions? Who does the data management?), but also legal (personal data protection, IPR) and technical issues (licence, format, dedicated platform).

The Open Data movement is well underway. It is an inevitable process, and it will require a little bit of time before all institutions, and in particular the local authorities, organize and publish their data.

• Download the speech of André Santini
• Téléchargement Open Data benchmark

The idea behind it was to boost Caen-la-mer’s presence (225,000 inhabitants, 29 municipalities) on the web and to accustom its inhabitants to the NFC issues. An exhibition stand which had as motto ”Devenez accro aux jeux de l’agglo” (Get addicted to the games of our city) presented four funny games, available for testing on eight touchscreen tablets. The objective was to collect a maximum number of points – either via a cityzi symbol or a QR code – in order to win many gifts. The games were also accessible online on the geemik-game.com website. The game with the highest success rate among both the visitors and the internet users will be developed into a free mobile application.

It is thus trough games that the promoters of the operation want to associate the population to the digital projects of a region that was selected as leading territory of the NFC. The urban community doesn’t want to be the only one proposing or imposing services which use this technology. "We wish to work in a co-constructive approach", explained the vice-president for communications Jacques Lelandais in an interview for Blog Territorial. This device is the first piece which will allow to associate the future users in the design and development process of new future services. It’s what all the web 2.0 philosophy relies on, i.e. the development of collective intelligence.

This is the first time a conurbation uses the social networks and playful digital tools to educate the public and raise awareness of the potential and benefits of using digital technologies. As Marc Thébault put it, “The idea behind it is to pass from the Computer-aided design (CAD) to the Usage-aided design and to enable the future users of the new services created to make their voices heard”.

If only 26 written proposals were submitted during this first phase of the project, its designers are convinced that "the intelligence of a territory is always collective" and that their goal has been reached, if the game can help raise people’s interest and make them participate.

You can check out below Marc Thébault’ presentation:

Geemik or the “Usage-aided design” 

Earlier this month, Hugo Passarello Luna, director of the website Argentinaelections.com, had surprised the audience during a round table on e-democracy organized at the Microsoft headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, explaining how new technologies had changed the way of making politics in his country, where 64 % of the population is connected to the Internet and 41 % are regular Facebook users.

You can check out his online presentation below.

Personal Democracy Forum is “a combination of different elements”, explained Micah Sifry, with an annual conference launched in 2004 which gathers every year thousands of participants from all over the world, both from the ICT domain and all US political parties. An associated blog, "TechPresident" founded in 2007 and which registers 50,000 visitors per month, invites the bloggers interested in the political life to contribute by telling how political representatives make use of the Internet in their campaigns.

Also authors of several books among which "Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency”, the founders of Personal Democracy Forum are convinced that technologies are changing the world and democracy. According to them, today "we can speak about We-Government rather that e-Government, because more and more people discover every day the power of the Internet. And more and more people want to be heard".

The next Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) conference will take place on June 11-12, 2012 in New York City.

From e-government to We-government