Let’s work on Democracy! Open Government Meetup 29 November

What are *Open government, **Open source, ***Civic tech? See bottom page for quick definition.

This event is intended for activists and stakeholders, but anyone can join in.

See event page on Facebook.

The meetup will reflect on French and Estonian experiences of implementing Open Government policies, on 3 scale levels :

• Local scale: inclusive governance for smart cities. French city of Nanterre (Paris area) collaborated with activists to build an **Open Source Platform dedicated to citizen participation. Also, the Open Tartu project is creating a prototype for the follow-up of the City of Tartu’s decision-making process.
  
• National scale: open data to monitor democracy. French association Regards Citoyens is tracking Parliament activity through data in order to foster transparency and accountability.
  
• International scale: the Open Government Partnership. Ahead of Paris Global Summit, next December, French government is working with the civil society on building a “toolbox” that could be useful to ***civic tech scenes around the world. Besides, Open Knowledge Estonia will present how the Open Knowledge Foundation is making a move towards the Open Society.
  

On this occasion, the French institute will be inviting Valentin Chaput, a Paris-based activist, entrepreneur and teacher on civic tech, to share his experience. Estonian perspectives will be introduced by members of freshly born Open Knowledge Estonia.

This meetup will be a great opportunity to exchange open source code, discuss the collaboration process between activists and governments in both countries, and dig up into possible new paths to improvement.

It will take place at Tallinn University, 29 November, at 19:00.
Free and open to everyone!

It is organised in connection with the upcoming World Summit on Digital Democracy, that will be held in Paris this December.

Paris, capital of digital democracy

Paris will indeed host the 4th Open Government Partnership Global Summit: governments, researchers, activists, civil servants and entrepreneurs are invited to meet up and cooperate for the sake of improving digital democracy. If you’re willing to know more regarding this major event, read our post on Medium, “Why Paris will be the world capital of digital democracy in December 2016”.

WHAT IS…

*Open Government It’s about giving citizens access to the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight.

**Open source governance advocates the application of the free software movement to democratic principles, enabling interested citizens to get more directly involved in the legislative process.

***Civic tech or Civic technology is technology (mainly information technology) that enables engagement or participation of the public for stronger development, enhancing citizen communications, improving government infrastructure, and generally improving the public good.