L4D Learning for Democracy

" This report is the result of research conducted in 2010 by the Information Society Unit of IPTS as
part of the CROSSROAD Project – A Participative Roadmap for ICT research on Electronic Governance
and Policy Modelling. CROSSROAD links very diverse research disciplines with practitioners’ views and
policy makers’ concerns, through a multi-stakeholder and participatory approach, in order to build a
unified vision of the future.
Overall, the research aims to push the boundaries of traditional eGovernment research and help
resolve the complex societal challenges Europe is facing by the application of ICT-enabled innovations
and collaborative policy modelling approaches, which include the harnessing of collective intelligence,
agent-based modelling, visual analytics and simulation, just to mention a few.
Innovation, sustainability, economic recovery and growth will in fact depend more and more on the
ability of policy makers to envision clearly and effectively both the root causes and the possible solutions
to complex, globalised issues.
This research sets out to help policy makers implement the Digital Agenda for Europe, the flagship
initiative of the EU2020 strategy that aims to increase growth and competitiveness of the EU in the fast
evolving global landscape, and address the grand challenges our world is confronted with today. In this
report, we look at the future of ICT-enabled governance and develop a vision of the role of ICT research in
shaping a digital European society in 2030 through four thought-provoking visionary scenarios.
These scenarios are of strategic importance because they help us to foresee how European society
could become twenty years from now, thanks to advances in ICT for governance and policy modelling.
The scenarios, their formulation and interpretation, expose the gaps there are today in research and what
needs to be addressed in order to enable better governance and construct a more open, innovative and
inclusive digital Europe tomorrow. In other words, it helps shape the contours of a desirable future - with
two important caveats: not all possible futures are equally desirable; and not all ICT developments assist
all possible futures. With this in mind, now is the time to design together the future of Europe.
I wish you pleasant reading."
David Broster
Head of the Information Society Unit, IPTS