CoLab Executive Summary - EN

• Deutsche Version: CoLab Executive Summary
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The Internet & Society Co:llaboratory is a policy venture platform, that seizes and analyses the developments in the context of the proceeding digitisation of our society from diverse angles with relevant stakeholders. This multi-stakeholder-approach guarantees transparency and independence, the experts’ transdisciplinarity in particular allows for the transformation processes to be apprehended in their entire scope for the first time, the possibilities and risks to be identified and their implementation to be discussed in direct dialogue with representatives of politics and administration. Its main objective is deriving a social benefit from the digitisation, for potentials of the internet to be identified earlier, in order to establish ideal circumstances.

For this purpose, the Collaboratory brings together experts from civil society, private sector and academia, who contribute their expertise in Initiatives or working groups (Ohus) on the collaboration platform. The Initiatives screen all facets of a certain subject area over a duration of several months, currently e.g. “Human Rights and Internet”. The collaborative work of the expert groups leads up to a final report, containing recommendations or describing scenarios. The Ohus are long term oriented and thematic, conducting studies, organizing conferences and picking up on early trends in internet policy. Representatives of politics and administration are also involved from the beginning.

The whole range of the discourse on Internet policies will be elaborated and compiled pragmatically, informally and constructively in open workshops, BarCamps and the Collaboratory’s information platform. At the same time, the German Internet community is offered a publicly effective platform, making the experts’ opinions accessible to a wider audience and therefore helping the platform grow into a catalyst for innovative and exciting solutions.

Conceived as a Community of Practice, the Collaboratory is open to influences from the most diverse angles regarding its form, its processes and its results and is continuously developing as a “perpetual beta”. It is open to new actors and partners.

The Internet & Society Collaboratory was initiated by Google Germany in 2010. By now, Wikimedia Germany, Creative Commons, Fraunhofer FOKUS, the W3C office Germany-Austria, SMBS, CSC and others are among the Collaboratory’s cooperation partners. The foundation of a registered non-profit organization was completed in 2012.