They work to open up government, to build new, creative tools, push for transparency and make life easier for people - I call them the eGov geeks, and they are scattered throughout Europe.

Whether you call them politechnorati, eGov geeks or political hackers, they are giving new meaning to the word participatory democracy, which can be much more than “just” voting in an election every forth year. Most of them are working in the outskirts of political institutions, but influencing them by building tools that are vastly better than what the institutions can come up with themselves.

From my base in Brussels, where I work as a journalist who writes about communication technology and EU, I bump into them frequently. I will soon give you an overview of some of the hardworking political geeks in Europe. But be aware, this is just a small selection of them, there are many more, and we will continue writing about them.

Even though they come from different European countries and political cultures, they have a lot in common, such as the fight for:
- access to public data
- improving communication between politicians and constituency through new digital communication tools
- transparency in political processes
- encouraging use of open source
- teach people how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives

At this point, the most innovative eGov geeks are based in Britain, but that can soon change.

The nonprofit organization MySocietythat started in 2003, has been leading in developing democracy and transparency websites in the UK. Some examples of their work are FixMyStreet and TheyWorkForYou. Mapumental is their latest creation – a new and very advanced kind of journey planner. You should also check their blog, where the founder Tom Steinberg, who has also appeared here at PDF, is sketching out new exciting ideas for internet politics.

UK-based FutureGov is a collaborative consultancy that specialises in political innovation through digital communications, engagement and collaboration. Dominic Campbell, the managing director, was recently rewarded a Google Fellowship for this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference.

Farmsubsidy is a collaboration of transparency geeks and journalists from Britain, Denmark and Germany. Since the start back in 2005, they have campaigned for transparency in European farm subsidies, which constitute more that 40 percent of EU’s budget. By using Freedom of Information Acts in different countries, they were able to publish the most comprehensive list of farm subsidy millionaires in Europe ever. Germany is the only country that completely refuses to reveal farm subsidy info. The Farmsubsidy group is also behind the FollowTheMoney site (an EU budget transparency project) and the upcoming FishSubsidy, in cooperation with Pew Environment.

Social Innovation Camp is the camp where the geeks meet up to create social innovations. This year’s camp will be hosted in Glasgow, Scotland, and the idea is to bring together talents within programming, politics, design, writers, developers, etc, and within a weekend, build digital tools that can improve people’s lives.

Belgian-based Europatweets gives us an overview of what members of the European Parliament are writing about on the microblogging site Twitter. The same idea has also been developed in Norway, Sweden,Denmark and the UK, as well as in the US. The geeks behind Europatweets have also made Tweetag, an advanced Twitter search tool.

Way up north, in Norway, Origo has developed into a vibrant and smart online community. What started with a hugely popular social calendar in Oslo, Underskog(translated underwood), has grown into a flexible and advanced platform for social conversation. The Norwegian Labour party is using Origo’s online community to reach out to potential voters and encourage political involvement in this year’s election campaign, inspired by My.BarackObama.

About the author: Bente Kalsnes has a MA from Georgetown University, Communication, Culture and Technology program. In addition to writing articles for Norwegian publications such as Mandag Morgen and Morgenbladet, she is blogging about politics, technology and media and about EU (in Norwegian). She is also cooking up wild ideas with the political geeks at techPolitics.