Today, we know that the body claimed as Pilar’s is not hers (in English). Apparently, the United Nations Police, UNPOL, made a mistake in the recognition of her body. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs discovered the truth after checking the fingerprints. Her furious husband said that he was “disgusted” by this “very serious mistake.” He accused international organizations and donors of lack of proper channels of information and coordination among them.

Meanwhile, a relatively small organization called Ushahidi was mounting an impressive network of people to gather information on the field to help the coordination of aid assistance and rescue missions, which has been translated into a website (haiti.ushahidi.com) gathering all the reports they receive via SMS and web apps. On the Ushahidi Situation Room, Patrick Philippe Meier, one of the persons behind this effort of humanitarian crowdsourcing and writer of the blog iRevolution, tells us about a

live Skype chat between Anna here in the Sit Room and Eric Rasmussen (InSTEDD and former Chief Medical Officer of the US Navy). Eric skyping from tarmac of PoP airport asking for GPS coordinates of the most obscure addresses, sites, locations and Anna providing these in record time. She has wowed the entire team in PaP including military, UN, etc. Incredible to witness all this real time networking and collaboration.

Witness the gap between an international organization that is trapped in old bureaucratic, unnecessary and expensive procedures and the agility, low-cost efforts of a network of people sharing information. The gap is how they treat and respect information. One understands information as a secondary element of “action”, whatever the latter means. Ushahidi is born with information at its core. We need to understand that information is not what is written on a paper, stored in a computer or in a book, information is alive and it is the most essential element for action. Without information one is blinded. Information is not what an expert knows, it is what everybody knows and shares. The arrogance of bureaucratic organizations is their own nemesis, for they think they know, when they don’t. They thought they knew where Pilar was. The truth was unfortunately not theirs.

Change Congress stands on three legs:

1. Ushering the candidates into accepting a four-points pledge: to refuse contributions from lobbyists and political action committees, to support a ban on legislative “earmarks,” to promote legislation that increases government transparency, and to support public financing of political campaigns.
2. Allowing the people to track the record of candidates and incumbents on those pledges using the Internet and a wiki-style engine to pool the information from all voters (not ready yet).
3. Asking voters to take the pledge, by choosing those candidates that are taking and respecting their pledges against corruption.

To indicate the support to the campaign and to show they have taken one or more pledges, candidates will use a badge available on the website.

Now, I wonder if this campaign or a similar one could be imported to Europe. Politicians in the EU take advantage from the fact that politics is deeply fractioned in nations to keep their privileges and special relationships with money, without getting any criticism about their actions from a fractioned civil society and a capital-controlled media. Thus, a first step should be to get this civil society more integrated, more European in order to track the activities of their politicians. But would a French “citoyen” track what a British MEP or MP is doing? I don’t think so, though probably as much as a regular Californian would track a New York’s congressman/woman. The campaign should be pan-European, the action national, sort of “think European, act nationally”.

There are already some movements working for a more integrated political ecosystem in Europe, these movements may be ready to work together with anti-corruption groups on a campaign that wants clean and transparent European policy-makers.

I would be interested in working for that. Are you?

“With the Treaty of Lisbon to be ratified by 2009 it would be possible for there to be one person to call – the same person as President of the Commission and the European Council.”

The design of the page is really good. Its promotion has been lightning fast, as you can see if you visit the page (you can also read another review). Politically speaking, I am not completely convinced about this idea of having one single person at the top, not because I don’t like it, but because many people don’t. Sensitivities in UK and in Eastern European countries about the big central power of Brussels will, no doubt, grow if there is one single person, particularly if that person is French. I must admit I still have to give further thought to it, so I’ll follow up this website regularly.

At this very moment, I just have one question (actually, a few questions ): What is the goal of this site? Rally support for the petition? Create public awareness about the lack of the “really necessary” President of the EU? Inform the people about the advantages of having this institution? Inform (or misinform) the population about the EU? Not sure about, it. It may also be all of them and more. I only wish it won’t become another elitist site, directed just to those that think they understand the bureaucratic jargon-driven mess the EU can sometimes be.

He basically divided all EU politics blogs in three existing levels:

What is the question mark at the top of this system? For Jon, this could be filled by a combination or a derivation of three types of sites: the PolitikPortal.eu type – a free daily news roundup – , the EuroBrussels type – having the information the people want – , the Bloggers4Labour type – bringing together several people writing about the same. He then asks…

is there anyone out there who wants to give me a hand to turn any of that into reality?

Jon places Euractiv’s Blogactiv in the category of Blog Platform, so putting it under the top-of-the-pyramid question mark, but the combination of Euractiv & Blogactiv is in fact the combination of those three websites – free daily news, information people wants (e.g. dossiers) and the gathering of people around a blog discussion on EU issues (look at the top “create your blog”). So, I am not completely sure there is a question mark there, I think he is making an artificial disaggregation of the Euractiv platform to fill the categories.

Is there a void to fill in? Perhaps not in categorical terms, but in quality terms, more websites doing it better with better integration of the information. I would even dare to say, that the void is not in Web 2.0, but in Web 3.0 (the semantic web), that is, in giving a meaning to the information aggregated. What is the point of having hundreds of contributors, thousands of news items that people are potentially interested in, if you are only using a tiny part of it, because the rest doesn’t have any meaning beyond a small contextual space. A website that gives meaning and broad context to all this information on EU politics and policy-making will indeed fill a very, very empty space.

My two cents.

UPDATE: If you are interested, follow the comments section of Jon’s post, the discussion is quite interesting.

“If nothing is done, thousands of European performers who recorded in the late 1950s and 1960s will lose all of their airplay royalties over the next ten years,” said EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, the union’s internal market chief. “These royalties are often their sole pension.”

And of course, all these musicians are planning to live 45 years longer, to more than a 100 years, assuming some might have performed music when they were 5! But if the normal musician performs its first songs between 15-25, their life expectancy life, according to Mr. McCreevy, will be of 110-120, not bad at all, I must say. And, of course, “these royalties are often their sole pension”, because they all stop performing at 25 (still assuming they will live 120), and then “viva la vida!”…poor musicians.

Mr. Commissioner, your intentions are crystal clear to me. Who you are defending is not the musicians, but again the big companies and their benefits. Is it a coincidence that Mr. McCreevy is the “Irish quota” in the European Commission and big companies are mainly coming from English-speaking countries? What a difference between you, Charlie, and Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information Society and Media. She is the Commissioner I most admire. She is fighting and regulating in favour of the citizen, not against him for the few. Thanks to her, mobile companies and internet providers are trembling. Last year, mobile companies were forced to reduced their roaming call charges, and now it is the turn of roaming SMS and internet charges. I wish all were like you, Viviane!

UPDATE: After writing this post, I realised that the extension of the term is for performers and not for composers, who already have 70 years copyright protection. I made the necessary changes to the text.

• Access to all available Microsoft technology with important price reductions. Also important reductions in the operation of information systems to automatize administrative tasks. 
• No commitment by the Generalitat to buy and no obligation of minimal purchase of resources or products.
• Creation of an Centre of Excellence in the Centre de Telecomunicacions i Tecnologies de la Informació (CTTI) with experts from Microsoft for know-how and better practices for all departments in the government.
• The creation of a service for software control and permanent support, together with a training programme for the Generalitat’s staff.
• The purchase of Microsoft software and services will be by subscription.
• Rights for the transmission of licenses between the different departments of the Generalitat.

At first sight, it seems like a good agreement, for there is no apparent obligation to buy Microsoft software or services. However, the fact of signing this agreement with just one company, which is the biggest provider of software in the world and has a near-monopoly of computer systems with its Windows makes it very difficult to believe that this is not de facto a contract to buy software and services from this company for four years. If the Generalitat is thinking seriously of saving money in the mid-long term, it should start thinking and planning the transfer to open source software. This software is free, the money then should be spent in installation, development, training and support: Installation of the Linux system and open source applications; development of applications tailored to the needs of the Catalan administration; training/recycling of the administration staff to the new system and applications; and support of the administration in the use of these open source applications. It is difficult to say how much this would cost, but I reckon in the mid-long term the cost will be much less than having Microsoft monopolizing our IT systems; furthermore open source systems are in many cases much more flexible than one-size-fit-all Microsoft software and services.

So I wonder if the Generalitat (or particularly the CTTI) is thinking of making this step. It might be useful to start evaluating the German experiences (federal and the land Rhineland-Palatinates) in this sense.

Some time ago, I mentioned in one of my posts in Blog of Change how expensive and limited broadband in Belgium is. With Telenet, a telecom company, For a bit more of 42 euros we get 10 mb download and 512 kb upload of speed and 12 gb upload/download limit. This compared to the rest of Europe is very limited, slow and expensive, particularly compared to its neighbour Netherlands. This is mainly due to the lack of competition in Belgium, where a few companies share a market as an oligopoly, for prices, speeds and limits that are suspiciously similar. The government, be it federal or regional, is passive against this situation that affects more and more consumers, for the Internet is becoming an essential service for many individuals and businesses. For this reason, a few months ago I created the website connectunlimited.info to petition the governments and the telecom companies to remove the cap in the Internet connections. I am not asking to increase the speed, just eliminate the limit that creates so many problems to people leaving in Belgium and that is so rare in Europe. Until now, only 377 people have signed, but it seems that is suddenly growing due to more and more people realising how important is for their lives this thing called “Internet”.  

• Draft for a Directive amending the Framework Directive, the Access and Interconnection Directive and the Authorisation Directive
• Draft for a Directive amending the Universal Service Directive and the e-Privacy Directive
• Draft Regulation establishing the European Electronic Communications Market Authority

More info