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Puzzled by Policy: Helping you to be part of the EU

Puzzled by Policy aims to reduce the complexity of decision making within the EU and reconnect citizens with politics and policymaking by combining successful pre-existing eParticipation tools with new widget technologies to bring policymaking on the hot topic of immigration and migration ‘to the people’ in a manner that is both fun and engaging.

Project Goal

Every day, people encounter situations that are governed by national and EU policy: what mode of transport to take to work, how long will they wait for a hospital appointment, where they can study. However, many are unaware of what their country’s current policies are and, as such, whether they agree with them.

Puzzled by Policy ‘Helping you to be part of the EU’ aims to help correct this situation by providing citizens with an engaging and easy-to-use platform, where they can learn about and give their voice to policy issues.

A key goal of the project is to test the Puzzled by Policy (PbP) platform in a real-world setting with the potential of more than 6000 everyday citizens accessing the platform, including at least 400 hard to reach users, coming from the four pilot countries: Greece, Hungary, Italy and Spain. The pilot trials will be executed at a National and EU level, coordinated by a pilot lead within each country.

Who benefits

Mass of citizens in pilot countries and across Europe

  • Immigrant groups, including:
  • Persons with literacy or language barriers
  • The disabled
  • The elderly
  • etc

 

  • Non-Government Organizations
  • Community Organizations
  • Research Institutes and Foundations
  • Decision Makers and Influencers

 

How it works

The implementation will take place in two stages. The first stage is platform technical set up and raising awareness within target groups (especially decision-makers). The second stage after the official launch will focus on the facilitation of eParticipation processes, engaging target groups, delivering result to decision-makers and ensuring their feedback.

The platform allows users to graphically compare their views on immigration with national and EU immigration policies, as well as with the opinions of other relevant stakeholders. Users are then encouraged to join discussions on particular aspects of immigration policy they feel strongly about.

Results

Increase awareness to the stakeholder community and wider public, as well as the EC .

eParticipation community, so that academics, stakeholders and other relevant experts and researchers become informed about the advances and innovations introduced by PbP.

Better awareness of immigration policy and legislation by the community.

Evaluation

The evaluation methodology consists of 4 steps:

  1. Identifications  of the PbP needs (analyse the project objectives, activities and circumstances to better understand the evaluation )
  2. Application of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
  3. Evaluation framework. Five stakeholder groups will be involved in PbP evaluation: (i) citizens, including the hard-to-reach group of immigrants, (ii) policy makers, (iii) organisations such as NGOs, CSOs, (iv) experts in the eParticipation field and finally, (v) the project partners
  4. Construction of the instruments needed to perform assessments and measurements. These could be user questionnaires, interview sheets, etc. We expect that different instruments for different stakeholder types will probably be needed.

 

Funding and resources

Puzzled by Policy is funded by the European Commission under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) – ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP), Theme 3 – ‘ICT for government and governance’. The total cost of the project is €3.89m, with an EU contribution of €1.95m

The project is led by DERI, National University of Ireland Galway and has a consortium consisting of 12 partners from eight European Countries (Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and United Kingdom). European University Institute (EUI), Cyntelix and Athens Technology Centre (ATC) will collaborate on the technical implementation of the platform. 21c Consultancy, Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET) and the Institute for Electronic Participation (INePA) will provide project support, evaluation and dissemination expertise to engage their networks of NGOs and industry groups as well as other stakeholders. Finally, the City of Torino, Dimos Athinaion Epicheirisi Michanografisis (DAEM) for the Municipality of Athens, Nemzeti Infokommunikációs Szolgáltató Zrt. (NISZ) in Budapest, and the University La Laguna in the Canary Islands will coordinate the deployment of the local pilots whilst LUSA (the Portuguese News Agency) will support the European dissemination.

About this good practice

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Cristina Giner
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