Project of the Month May 2004

The ”Openness in the Digital Administration & the Press as a Mediator in the Democracy” Project: Easier to Check Up on the Proceedings of Public Administration

The DDN project has made its contribution to opening the doors to all the information owned by the public administration – for the benefit of both the civic public, the press, - and even the public administration

By Naia Bang / Texthuset Aalborg
”The project has two main objects. It will offer education to journalists for a more convenient use of electronic applications in their daily work, especially the retrieval and analysis of computer-based information from authorities. And this will generate an experience as to where and how authorities can make electronic information available to contribute to better stories in the media and thereby present all citizens with a deeper knowledge of what actually goes on within the systems of authorities.”
This is the wording of the project description of the ”Openness in the Digital Administration & the Press as a Mediator in the Democracy” project under the Digital North Denmark. Today the project as such is concluded, but the project contributors are still benefitting from the experience they made during the time of project.
- This way of data retrieval and processing is not the common routine of journalism. It has required a good deal of training in these new methods – but then again, this new type of journalism is getting close to social science. For all has been well documented and clarified. And likewise authorities must learn to allow access to the information they own. And gaining a new openness like this takes its time. But the County of North Jutland has been sucessful in this process, reports Nils Mulvad, project manager and director of Dicar. Dicar is short for ”Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting”.  

 Hans Christensen, located in Frederikshavn and journalist of the Nordjyske Stiftstidende newspaper, took a scrutiny in the traffic census made for the street named Rimmens Allé – and found that the number of trucks passing the location had increased in spite of the reorganised traffic arteries. Now the municipality has made the sign-posting necessary.
Photo: Ajs Nielsen

Searchable Open Mail Lists
Nils Mulvad is praising the County of North Jutland for taking the lead in openness concerning the mail lists – the lists recording all in and outbound mail at the county offices.
- The county of North Jutland is the only public authority in Denmark with clear rules for the handling of in- and outbound mail. The development towards the present solution was made in collaboration between the county management, Dicar, journalists of the Nordjyske Stiftstidende newspaper, the DR Nordjylland broadcasting and press law specialists, explains Nils Mulvad.
- Collaborating with the press meant that we were able to develop a number of facilities, from which they can benefit. For example journalists can search on topics, find record numbers, find case officials etc. in stead of the mail being recorded under a date only. This is also a useful feature for the citizens, says Poul Carstensen, Head of Department, the Secretariat of the Management of the County of North Denmark. He continues:
- It was vital for us to know what was really important to press reporters. And we have only good experience with this collaboration. It has had the consequence that today we are having a far better dialog with the press, characterised by a mutual trust and understanding – even though they are obviously still covering us with a critical approach.  

In locations other than North Denmark, journalists have been in training to process and use electronic public information. This is a series of articles from the Jydske Vestkysten Newspaper.  

”Luring” traffic census
One reporter who has been in training to retrieve and process data delivered from public administration is Hans Christensen, the Frederikshavn department of the Nordjyske Stiftstidende newspaper. Here the municipality of Frederikshavn, too, has been involved in the project – and it turned out to be to the benefit of both the press and the municipality.
- I have been working with three or four different stories in the course of the project. One was dealing with a traffic census made by the municipality of Frederikshavn in three streets that were subject to a traffic reorganisation. We got access to the counts and with the help from Dicar we arranged them in a more readable way. The counts of the municipality showed that traffic in general had decreased in one of the streets called Rimmens Allé, which is a school road leading to the school called Munkebakkeskolen. However, going over the figures we found that the amount of heavy traffic, ie. lorries, had increased between 7.00 and 8.00 in the morning – just at the time the children were on their way to school. Obviously that story went to print, reports Hans Christensen:
- This story lead to the technical department promptly setting up a signpost prohibiting through-going heavy traffic. And obviously the school management were pleased with the article – they had not been aware of this problem. Neither had they realised this at the technical department, where they were happy to have their attention drawn to the problem.
- The good thing about this kind of articles is that here the documentation is OK. Nobody will have second thoughts about the integrity of the story with figures being delivered right from the public authority involved. It's good journalism – even though it takes time to complete it, when the figures need processing and arranging in columns, states Hans Christensen.  

Commission Learns from the County
Now is the time to disseminate the positive experience from the ”Openness in the Digital Administration & the Press as a Mediator in the Democracy” project”. Recently several representatives of the County of North Jutland were visiting the Public Commission to report the experience made by the county concerning openness in the administration and the open mail lists.
- They were very attentive to our findings as we are the only succeeding authority in establishing a mail list that is so trustworthy, open and easy to overview, explains Poul Carstensen.
And at Dicar, which is located at the Danish School of Journalism in Århus, they carry on with their effort to make democracy more transparent and more clear by facilitating access to information of the public administration for citizens and the press.
- We have received grants from the European Social Fund. Among other things they are allocated to training the journalists, who are already researching via the Network to do more in-depth reporting – to document, systematise and analyse the information found, explains Nils Mulvad and continues:
- We have also made contact to an American sister organization, arranging conferences in computer-aided research – and here we have had people participating from the Nordjyske Stiftstidende and DR Nordjylland.
- Together, using he experience made in the ”Openness in the Digital Administration & the Press as a Mediator in the Democracy” project, we have made the foundation for developing the tools further, states Nils Mulvad.

Read more about the ”Openness in the Digital Administration & the Press as a Mediator in the Democracy” on the homepage of Digital North Denmark, www.thedigitalnorthdenmark.dk . Also you can follow Dicar’s work on www.dicar.dk.

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