Young Europeans are having trouble completing their transition towards full independence. The problem bites deeper here, because our social model is based on the status of full-time, long term employee, that unlocks important social and economic rights (in France, where I live now, if you don’t work you have no right to health care). This generates tensions, because it forces young people to fight for this status at all costs, even if it got very difficult to obtain and even if many of them would like to explore different roads. Result: 20% of 15-34 years old, in Europe, is not in employment, education or training. It is not even a matter of being young anymore: young people are in the line of fire, but citizens of all ages are losing autonomy.

The paradox is that the currently young generation is probably the most creative, generous, idealist, collaborative ever. Everywhere you look young people are creating, seemingly out of thin air, their own jobs in entirely new businesses like my friends at CriticalCity or the extraordinary twentysomethings at Blackshape Aircraft; they experiment new ways to share resources, from their couches to motor vehicles, or going out to live off the beaten track; others still are building new way to meaningful activism, making their voice heard and matter in an age of crisis of representative democracies. These people don’t know each other, and they act independently; and yet, one can’t help get the feeling that their projects are somehow coherent, as if they were pieces of the same emergent future. The OpenStreetMap 2008 video (above) is of course completely unrelated, but it makes for a great metaphor of this emergence; and it gives me the same feeling of elation and hope.

The Council of Europe has an idea: try to dig out all of these experiences; aggregate them; validate them through peer-to-peer assessment; and use them to propose to the European Commission and its own member states a new strategy. We might call it adaptive; in plain terms, it is about:

1. figuring out what the young people of Europe are already doing to build the world we will all inhabit in twenty years. The proof of the cake is in the eating: if they struggle so hard to build something, it means they really want it. So that gives you a goal for your policy.
2. if possible, help them with it, in the sense of creating the conditions for these strategies – that today require a lot of resourcefulness and self-sacrifice, and are de facto accessible only to a minority – become viable for the average young person.
3. if it’s not possible to help them, get out of their way, by refraining from projecting onto them the social and economic model of the 70s. It is the one most senior European decision makers grew up in, but that does not make it the best or the best suited to this day and age.

This will be done through a web project, characterized by fully open and constructive interaction. Its final result will be presented in a high profile conference, probably in May 2012. I have the honor of managing this project, and the good fortune of having been able to put together a stellar team (I will introduce them in a subsequent post). I need to credit the Social Cohesion Research and Development Division of the Council of Europe for believing in the project, and for the courage demonstrated in rolling out such an open initiative.

The project is called Edgeryders. The platform will launch in late October; for now we have put online a provisional blog to start the conversation. Come say hello, and, if you think we are credible, pass word around: we will need all the wisdom and all the help we can get. And you, and we too, that means all of us are the real experts on future building: we struggle with it every day.

On July 1st I started on a new job with the Council of Europe. There will be time to share just what I am doing here. The point I am trying to make at present is that I have become a migrant again (I spent a couple of years in London in the 90s), joining the growing host of my fellow Italians who decide to pursue their own development abroad. I’m renting an apartment in Strasbourg, on Quai des Bateliers: from my windows I see the cathedral, on the other side of the river.

Hanging out on the Italian side of blogs and social networks I got the idea that many Italians, when they move abroad, slam the door on their way out. I had a sort of tag cloud in my head, where expressions like “stagnating country”, “incompetent ruling class”, “talent is not recognized”, “innovation-averse” hang fluctuating, in large colored letters. But when I thought better about it, actually none of the Italians working abroad I know (and there are many) use these expressions. Sometimes I have noticed a hint of bitter irony in comparing their trajectories in London or Berlin with those of their previous lives in Cosenza or Sassuolo, but it is of course not really fair to compare London with Sassuolo. There are a few world cities, and qualified migrants tend to end up there. Italy has no city of this class, as is true of most European countries. The expressions of this particular tag cloud, I now think, are mostly used by people who have not left Italy, and who feel, right or wrong, underrecognized.

I certainly don’t feel that way. I have no reason to think my talents, if any, have not been recognized in my own country. I moved out firstly because my intellectual development brings me to seek closer interaction with smart people all over the world, and secondly because I am an European patriot; I think Italy makes sense in the context of Europe, and that Europe would be mutilated without Italy, the astounding traction of its civil society, its ability to make things happen without delegating everything to a nanny State, yet staying away from extreme individualism. Now that I have left Italy, I hope I can be even more useful and more present to my countrymen. I work in an international institution as an Italian, and I want to be an open channel between my country, my continent and the world.

I just got back from presenting my book on Wikicracy at PDF Europe. PDF Europe is the spinoff of Personal Democracy Forum, a conference on how the Internet and communication technology in general can improve democracy (politics) and government (policy). The original PDF takes place in New York City and it started in
2004; its European spinoff is in Barcelona and started in 2009. I had the honor to be enlisted as a speaker in both PDF Europe editions; I think I can claim to know it well.

PDF Europe is a veritable child of the Internet culture of sharing knowledge and creating community. Like its parent conference, it was created by American entrepreneur Andrew Rasiej, an early adopter of the Internet who has enough traction to get on board the most innovative and influential thinkers around: Clay Shirky, danah boyd, Howard Rheingold, among others — for free. As soon as the New York conference was starting to get established, Andrew and his partner Micah Sifry created an European spinoff, and started all over again.

Internet tech conferences are legion on this side of the Atlantic, but PDF Europe is a pretty unique place. Firstly, it is not dominated by business: tech corporations are there (Google is an important sponsor), but they take care not to upstage the activists and public servants that constitute the backbone of the PDF community. You don’t hear much about branding or marketing: this year’s hit was the story of how Croatian blogger Marko Rakar exposed electoral fraud in his country with a dataset on a couple of CDs, a hard look at raw data and his blog (he even got arrested for it). Last year, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told us how he does not feel he his in physical danger in Europe – in Africa, it’s another story. With all due respect, I am interested in these uses of the internet a lot more than in branding and marketing.

Secondly, PDF Europe embodies what I love best in American culture. The American presence is much stronger than in most European Internet-tech events. It is pretty amazing, when you think of it: here’s a bunch of Americans that are working very hard for free or for cheap (I’ll bet you that Andrew actually loses money so far) to give us Europeans a common platform to talk about e-democracy and e-government. They are like, come on, guys! You can and should create a continent wide movement for better democracy and better government. Here, we can help you, lets figure it out. It feels as American as apple pie: idealism, plus can-do attitude, plus a real sense of kinship with the Old Continent. It feels like the stories of long lost “uncles from America”, who suddenly show up – bearing gifts. And it makes me feel ashamed of how embedded in our petty differences Europeans sometimes can be.

So, whether you are an activist or a public servant, if you are trying to improve your democracy with the Internet I really recommend you head for the next PDF and check these guys out. They really believe in us. The least we could do is to believe in ourselves a little, too.

Paul Johnston di theconnectedrepublic (è l’iniziativa di Cisco sui servizi pubblici in rete) ha fatto questo video, che secondo me è straordinario. Le persone che vedete stanno tutte leggendo la Open Declaration sui servizi pubblici europei. Lo trovo emozionante, anche a prescindere dal gioco a riconoscere chi è chi (ehi, aspetta quello non è Lee Bryant?). Potete contribuire anche voi: basta riprendersi mentre si legge ad alta voce la propria parte preferita della dichiarazione (testo qui) e postare il video come commento video a quello di Paul.

Però a me piacerebbe di più fare un’altra cosa, e cioè fare una versione italiana. La traduzione esiste già (qui: grazie a Francesco e a Gianluca che ha lanciato l’idea). Qualcuno, oltre a me, avrebbe voglia di riprendersi mentre ne legge un pezzo?

UPD – Il gruppo Facebook della Open Declaration è diventato molto vivace, 100 iscrizioni da ieri sera (sono le 11 del 3 novembre). Se avete un po’ di tempo, questo è un buon momento per visitarlo e partecipare.

UPD 4 novembre – David Weinberger parla della dichiarazione sul suo blog – e l’ha firmata. Suvvia, potete farlo anche voi, no?

On November 19-20, 2009, the EU ministerial conference will define the main priorities of e-government in the next three years.

David Osimo, whom I hold in high esteem, is coordinating an effort to bring to Malmö the voice of citizens 2.0. I think he has the traction to do that, especially since his Public Services 2.0 – with a highly successful workshop held in March in Brussels – showed the European Commission that there is a new generation of state-of-the art European e-gov projects, and that the people who run them are connected in a scene. As I’m writing this and only for a few more days – a very international group of people who care about this issue are collaborating in writing a European civic hackers manifesto. If you care too, join us: just go here and get busy.

For some time now I have been designing and deploying interfaces between public authorities and citizens (in particular between authorities and creative people/creative firms). The strategy behind them all is very simple: connect people – those who work for public authorities and those who work in the creative industries – in a many-many-interaction environment with very transparent information. Web 2.0 tools and an appropriate value system – that David maintains coincide with hacker ethics – have so far brilliantly solved the filtering problem: civil servants in these networks are not clogged by people asking for favours. On the contrary, they give every sign of enjoying their proximity to citizens and what they do.

These interfaces allow a strong reduction of the distance between administrators and constituencies. The Ministry of economic development is a central authorities, but to the creatives populating Kublai it is just one click away. It is pretty obvious that Kublaians have a much, much closer relationship with it than with their local authorities, closed within their palaces (and almost always locked behind firewalls that inhibit their access to social networks).

I wonder if, in this situation, we should not rethink the subsidiarity principle. As far as I can see it says that public policy should be managed by the most local public authority which has the means to address the problem in discussion: so, in Europe, the European Union deals with global environmental planning, while urban planning in the smalltown of Pisticci is dealt with by the Pisticci municipality. This sounds simple; unfortunately, in a globalized world almost every local problem is inextricably linked to some broader context. Urban planning in metropolitan areas is a perfect example: it does not make sense to plan according to administrative borders if the economy and the society are integrated beyond it. So, it is not always easy to understand in the abstract which authority is closest to any particular problem. In practice, on the other hand, it is very simple: the closest authority is the one the least clicks away, the most accessible, the one with the best interface. For Kublai’s creatives it is a lot easier – not to mention more rewarding ad even fun – to talk to the Ministry of economic development than to their municipal governments, so they will tend to strentghen their ties with the former and ignore the latter. Old style subsidiarity is unsustainable.

It may be worth it to study the British setup (I have done it here). Policy competences are allocated not geographically, but by issues. Funding is centralized, so the central government has a lot of traction: when a strategy is adopted (like the first Blair government’s stance on the creative industries) things happen fast. But strategies are in general implemented locally, by small semipublic organizations who try out solutions competing with one another for funding from Whitehall. The system – at least for policies on creativity – works fairly well. It is no chance that the English – in a 2004 referendum – have decided that they do NOT want democratically elected regional authorities. A certain distance from the problem sometimes guarantees a broader perspective (and local politics can be toxic). All the more so since, with a little effort, central authorities can be just one click away.