PADGETS project


In January 2010 CeGD together with 11 other partners, 6 EU member states, comprising Universities, Research Centres, Public Sector and the Industry, launched the 7th Framework Project PADGETS, which is being co-financed by the European Commission under the ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling call.

PADGETS is an acronym and “word play” of the term Policy Gadgets, as the full title of the project “Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media”, implies.

PADGETS presents a novel approach in policy making by applying the web2.0 philosophy of "going directly where users are in the web"

The project aims at designing, developing and deploying (crucial involvement of CeGD) a novel toolset that will allow citizens and public administration decision makers of European Member States to engage interactively in group planning, simulation and assessment of governmental policy. Similarly to the approach of mashup gadgets in web 2.0 (i.e. using data and services from heterogeneous sources to create value added services) the project introduces the concept of Policy Gadgets (Padgets) to represent a body of intertwined policy, relative content and decision parameters that work together to facilitate decision analysis in the policy making procedure.

Through the PADGETS platform any policy can become a reusable and communicable web application to be used in relation to underlying content and social activities over the web. Policy makers will be able to set up such applications on their own and use them to communicate their policies to the public. People can use these applications as they use everyday services and policy makers can track the results of this interaction back to their policy making process to assist them in reaching solid decisions that represent society’s input and aspirations.

PADGETS project partners at kick off meeting in Athens, Greece on the 25th of January 2010
 

A Padget is composed of three elements:

• 1. Padget’s Policy - A policy, in any of its stages and forms

• 2. Padget’s Context - A sum of underlying group knowledge, that may reside in external social media, forums, blogs, wikis, social networks and is interrelated to the policy

• 3. Padget’s Decision Model - A set of decision guidelines that are defined for each case separately and determine how the content and knowledge that is related with it leads to specific decisions about the policy

How does it work? For example, in contemporary environmental policy reducing CO2 emissions is one of the top priorities. The existence or increase of a volume of content talking about the benefits of clean energy in blogs, forums and social network groups would signify high public a tendency to accept this policy.

Using “Policy Gadgets”, policy makers will be capable of disseminating their policy messages through multiple social media simultaneously, using a single integrated interface. They will be able to reach large user groups in these platforms and collect their feedback. So far, nearly every attempt to use the Web in order to engage society in the policy making process consisted of trying to attract citizens to a formal online environment organized and moderated by the decision makers. Project PADGETS aims to change this approach by providing the decision makers with a platform in order to make a step towards the citizens in places where users already feel comfortable to communicate, collaborate and express opinions.

To keep following the development and evolution of PADGETS please visit www.padgets.eu or get in touch through one of the following web 2.0 platforms.