How Users will use the EuroPetiton Service

Local Petitioning

At a local level the EuroPetition tool will look very similar to the petitioning tool which is already in operation at Bristol at http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk and more recently at Malmo at http://www.epet-malmo.public-i.tv:80. The stages of these petitions are as follows:

• Citizens are able to propose petitions which are then moderated and checked by the Local Authority before they are made live. 
• An online discussion is opened in parallel with the petition on order to increase participation and engagement with the process
• When the petition closes it is submitted to the Local Authority and the meeting at which it is discussed is, where possible, webcast
• Once the Local Authority has considered the petition then the response and any actions are included on the petition site in order to complete the process for the Citizen
• Throughout the process the Lead Petitioner is able to send out updates to participants and the Local Authority are also able to post information.

EuroPetitioning

EuroPetition will take this existing model for petitioning at a local level and extend it in the following ways:

1.     Extending beyond one Local Authority:  Local clusters

Though the project will have just one Local Authority or representative in each region as part of the Consortium the project also plans to support other users of the system in that region as Cluster Members of the project.  These Members will get a small amount of funding from the local consortium partner to cover the hosting of the Petitioning service, participation in user group events and also to support marketing activities around cross-border petitions.  All individual Local Authorities will have either their own Petitioning system or they will host specific petitions which are being managed by the main project partner – however they will share the common discussion board which is hosted by the main project partner in the region.

The aim is to create local clusters of Petitioning activity which can be self-supporting (through the creation of User groups) after the end of the project.  By creating additional activity at a local level the project aims to break down barriers to collaborative petitioning and to create a wider audience for the larger European Parliament and Citizen Initiative petitions.

The discussion boards will be used to provide space for additional debate and to provide a next step of activity for anyone signing a petition.  They should also be a communication tool for the lead petitioners to help support a viral effect for the marketing of their petitions.

2.     Connecting across borders

The EuroPetition system will enable different territories to link up and share petitions which will be made available in local languages.  Any lead petitioner will be able to highlight a petition for cross border adoption and the other regional partners will assist in finding a local lead petitioner to gain support for the petition.  Petition materials will be made available in local languages and discussion will be shared between groups in different territories by the Project Team.  Discussion will take place in the local languages and the Project Team will make summaries available for translation for the other territories to make it possible to track the discussion across different locations.  The project’s aim will be to have a petition initiated for cross border deliberation from each of the partner territories.

3.     Accessing the European Parliament and Commission

Where petitions have been created for cross border support the EuroPetition Project Team will ensure that these comply with the requirements of the European Parliament’s PETI Petitions Committee and the Commission’s Citizen Initiative procedures and are practical candidates for the appropriate petitioning process.  The local authority partner from the region that a petition has been initiated will take the lead with this process and assist the lead petitioner.  Objectives of the project are through this franchised approach to petitioning, to enable at least trans-national PETI petition from each region, and one petition to reach the 1 million signatories threshold for consideration by the European Commission as a Citizens’ Initiative. The Project Team will establish a dialogue with PETI and the Commission in order to support this process.

4.     Technical objectives – using Web 2.0 more effectively

The petitioning tool will work with multiple instances – i.e. this will not be one shared tool.  This is to accommodate local differences in petitioning workflows for petitions which are being considered locally.  However each of the instances will have a common workflow for creating petitions aimed at the European Parliament and Commission, and these EuroPetitions will be shared across the different sites by displaying a count of signatures from the other regions against the petition.

In order to reach the threshold of signatories the petitions will need to be effectively marketed within each region.  The Project will use Web 2.0 tools in order to support the lead petitioner and other signatories.  These tools will include:

These technical tools will be provided in parallel with advice and guidance for marketing each of the petitions – building on the best practice experience which has already been documented by Bristol.

The summary use case for a cross border and pan-European EuroPetition will be:

The result of this process is then posted on the EuroPetiton site and the signatories emailed with an update