Jørn Sjøstrøm

Webmaster, Folketinget (National Parliament of Denmark)

Jørn works as webmaster in Folketinget where his main task is to implement and develop CMS and closely integrate it with Folketingets internal systems for documenting the parliamentary work.

With 30 years experience in software development and data modelling and almost 20 years work with developing Internet applications, Jørn has worked with many cutting-edge technologies and projects.

He has worked at The National Museum of Denmark and The National Monuments Record Centre, now part of the The Heritage Agency of Denmark, developing systems to document the museum collections and using the results for making interactive multimedia (web)applications for schools and general public as well as applications for curators. Projects include Guder & Grave and Eskimo Treasures.

He has worked at The Danish Broadcast Corp. building CMS with integration to production systems for on-demand audio and video, and has migrated loads of information from all kinds of sources into the CMS.

He is now working in The Danish Parliament implementing a whole new web.

Jørn has an extensive knowledge of content management, data modelling, information flow and application construction. He has a degree in economics (but found that a little too boring).

Folketinget (National Parliament of Denmark)

The Folketing, or Folketinget, is the national parliament of Denmark. The name literally means the People's Ting - that is, the people's governing assembly.

Christiansborg Castle has been the domicile of parliament since 1849. The palace is located in the heart of Copenhagen.

Presentation

Wednesday, November 7^th: 14.30 - 15.15

Track: E-government

In the service of democracy

On the surface e-government and e-parliament sounds very alike. But in reality the two concepts are very different. And as different concepts often do, they very much complement each other.

Whereas the purpose of e-government is to collect information and “control” the citizens, disguised as a service, (probably Erik Hartman and Dorine van den Brandhof will break it more gently to you), the task of e-parliament is to provide as much information and documentation as possible for all the parties in the democratically process.

In this presentation you will see how this is done in The Danish Parliament, all the way from the proposal of a bill until it’s passed (or rejected).

We will also look into the importance of open standards and some possible consequences of not using (open) standards.

Open standards can also be seen as part of the democratically process. So why are so few systems supporting open standards, or just standards?