The document announces two field trials by the WeGov project to test engaging citizens in political discussions through social media. The trials will use opinion polls in Germany and discussions on consumer policy in Spain and Germany. WeGov is developing tools to access major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and to analyze opinions. The trials aim to help governments better engage citizens through two-way dialogue as part of policymaking.

1. Closing the loop between policy makers and citizens
Enriching dialogue by harnessing the dynamic potential of
Social Networking Sites
Athens, Greece, 21 January 2011
WeGov wishes to announce two important field trials in support of its objective to give
governments the opportunity to engage directly with citizens via popular social networking sites
such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These two trials will be applied to political opinion polls
in Germany and discussions on consumer policy in Spain and Germany.
The WeGov technical team has been developing a central API for accessing a set of common
social networking sites. This API will be used by the project as a single access point to
read/write information to any of the social networking sites that the project has targeted for
communication between government stakeholders and citizens. The project is also developing
tools for identifying and categorizing opinions among users of social network sites and an
ontology to model their behavior.
The project Consortium has decided to focus primarily on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube due
to their popularity and a functionality that makes them accessible and of high relevance. WeGov
aims to provide an integrated toolset that will facilitate better engagement between governments
and citizens in two-way dialogues as part of governance and policy-making.
Further details of the field trials follow:
The WeGov field trials
GESIS field trial – Public Policy Research in Social Sciences: The GESIS field
trial is dedicated to "Public Policy Research in Social Science", and will apply the WeGov toolset
to investigate its usage as a complement to political opinion polls in Germany. At present
meetings are being planned to discuss the evaluation process that will be followed. While doing
so, GESIS expects to get more details on their stakeholder's working day. This information will
be used to fit the toolbox functionality and workflows in accordance to the stakeholder's existing
workflow, thereby enabling smoother integration.

2. Gov2u field trial – Diversity of opinion on Consumer Policy: The Gov2u
field trial is focused on "Diversity of opinion on Consumer Policy," and will involve discussions
around consumer policy in Spain and Germany. At present promising negotiations are taking
place with policy makers, MEPs and regional heads to fine tune stakeholder requirements of the
WeGov toolkit. Also it is anticipated that training sessions will be held by March, to enable the
end users to ease into engagement with the WeGov platform.
The Hansard Society is also working on contributing towards the evaluation of the WeGov
toolkit within the UK context.
About the project:
WeGov has been funded with support from the European Commission under the SEVENTH
FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME THEME ICT 2009.7.3 ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling.
The project aims to provide the tools and techniques for closing the loop between policy makers
and the citizens, taking advantage of the plethora of well established social networking sites.
These tools will enable policy makers to move away from limitations involved in the current
practice of government hosted websites and instead to make use of the high levels of
participation and rich discussions that already take place in existing social networking
communities. The three pilots are conducted in the UK, Spain and Germany.
How can you reach us?
We are very interested in your opinion and would like to include your involvement in the project.
For more information please visit: http://www.wegov-project.eu/
Email: somya@gov2u.org and eirini.s@gov2u.org
Tel: +30-210-6121340
Fax: +30-210-6147206