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European Citizens´ Initiative Forum

Expanding the ECI’s digital dimension: co-creating the future Online Collection System

Author: Forum Team |
Updated on: 21/05/2019 |
Number of views: 664

With around 60% of signatures collected online, the digital dimension of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) needs to continuously evolve in order to reflect the realities of 21st century campaigning. The launch of the European Commission’s new online collection system in 2020 is an opportunity to make the system as easy to use and campaigner-friendly as possible.

This page has been created in the framework of the ECI Day 2019 to gather YOUR ideas and suggestions on the Commission’s future Online Collection System.


Everyone is welcome to join the discussion!


Please kindly post your ideas in the comments section below by answering to the following questions:

1. What are the strengths of the Commission’s Online Collection System (OCS)?

2. What are the weaknesses of the Commission’s Online Collection System (OCS)?

3. Please suggest some improvements to tackle the weaknesses you have mentioned (possibly inspired by systems used in the context of similar participatory democracy instruments at local or national level).

4. The future ECI portal will incorporate three main elements: the ECI Forum, the register and the central Online Collection System. How would you design the ECI portal to include the three components into one single user-friendly access point?


The ECI Forum Team


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Comments

Inactive user | 03/04/2021

1. What are the strengths of the Commission’s Online Collection System (OCS)?

Free, Open Source, Identified Users

2. What are the weaknesses of the Commission’s Online Collection System (OCS)?

No e-id authentication required. Preview version is too much in draft mode to be able to give an opinion? Layout is a bit austere

3. Please suggest some improvements to tackle the weaknesses you have mentioned (possibly inspired by systems used in the context of similar participatory democracy instruments at local or national level).

What about putting the software on Git? If you want to have some constructive feedbacks, you should provide a working test version

Real-time analysis of participant datas, user friendly dash-boarding

4. The future ECI portal will incorporate three main elements: the ECI Forum, the register and the central Online Collection System. How would you design the ECI portal to include the three components into one single user-friendly access point?
As long as there's a Single Authentication shared among the 3 products and there are links clearly identified, it should be user friendly. Improve the graphic side of the page, take away unnecessary text.


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Inactive user | 04/08/2019

What is the joy of it being for free and open source if the restrictions to run an OCS are such that you practically can not run it on your own server?

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Inactive user | 03/04/2021

Strengths:

free of chargeequal international platform/system including all EU languagesinvolving young people in politics and policy-making decisionse-mail notifications regarding news about further outcomes of initiatives and other questions somebody is interested in

Weaknesses:

usage of the data, where the data is going and who is using data and whynot everyone is having access to the internet and the pc - technical structure may be the problemconventional way F2F has to remain the possibility to express your opinion or start up the initiativesingle point of entranceif the system is down or it is hacked we have to predict backup plan in order not to lose collected data if we collect signatures or information on the paper we know it will remain there, but with data, we have risk and uncertaintyconventional way F2F has to remain the possibility to express your opinion or start up the initiative

Improvements:

develop an open friendly systemflexibility for front endeach campaign has to have the possibility to decide what will be on the front endthe system has to be open to create individual requirements visible on the front endinstall requirements like the scope and objective of the initiative to be more specific e.g. scope is strength democracy, the objective is informing citizens and giving them the possibility to voteclearly separate front end and back endKISS (keep it stupid simple) complicated to register every time somebody wants to express their opinion or to start up an initiativeurge to create a single entry point with the electornic ID card or another card or e-mail that contains all personal data in order to simplify and accelerate the registration processconventional way F2F has to remain the possibility to express your opinion or start up the initiativethe possibility to have insight on how supporters of the campaign are doing - which teams need help and which team is well structured - Which team is doing what? Over what media? Real-time access?a local, regional and national map, not only national map with final results

ECI portal:

KISS III = keep it stupid simple + inspiring + intuitive + innovative

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Inactive user | 03/04/2021

Free Of Charge”
All languages
Security of personal data
Signatures will be forwarded to national authorities by ECOS-flexible?
Freedom of campaign not given
Captcha problem solved?More campaign freedom of creativity
Technical flexibility has to be tested platform-wide (OS+iOS!!!)

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Inactive user | 03/04/2021

1) Strengths:

FreeSecurity of personal dataAll information in one placenew OCS: work with the member states

2) Weaknesses:

Ugly/institutional designInconvenient reading direction (switch columns)Limited personalization (design and content)

3) Improvements:

Upload several languages at onceFlexibility in embedding it in websites, technical flexibility for all systemsFront-end before the front-end, having the choiceMore social media possibilitiesAbility to give e-mail to campaignersNotification for new ECIs, ability to easily sign up (tick a box)

4) Portal:

Forum to be easily approachable/accessibleConsistent designOne main page - three boxes for the three websites

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on the ECI Forum reflect solely the point of view of their authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the position of the European Commission or of the European Union.
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