Wondering what's going in European techpolitics? Starting today, PDF Europe will tell you more - three days a week!
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(thanks to Nancy Scola).

EU | Are you ready for (y)EU?
Julien Frisch introduces the Web Communications team of the European Parliament.

Craig Newmark flew straight to Los Angeles from Dublin in order to share his thoughts on using technology and social media to improve government at the Gov 2.0 Camp LA this past weekend. Newmark, who writes frequently on the topic and has recently been quite active in bringing attention to problems in the Veterens Affairs area, came to speak from a customer service perspective. Although I've seen Craig speak a few times about that, he always adds new anecdotes and provides additional angles on the problem showing how much he thinks about it on a regular basis. But for him, it boils down to the basics. "A lot of customer service is obvious stuff. It's just listening to people." This was the afternoon core conversation on Saturday. (See my earlier post about the conference in general and what transpired the first morning.)

• Direct mail guru Richard Viguerie emails about the Young Cons, a "musical duo of Dartmouth grads [whose] new YouTube video, 'The Problem,' uses hip hop to take Ronald Reagan's message to the Millennial Generation." And "[j]udging by the group's growing popularity, the message seems to be resonating with the under 30 crowd." One thing's for sure, it'll stick in your head. And yes, the Gip makes several Waldo-like appearances.
• Some tips for creating non-profit online communities.
• Still no website for Sen. Scott Brown.
• Here's how to search Buzz.
• Game on. That Atlantic session on the state of tech that we've mentioned has been rescheduled for a week from today.
• And here's another event worth noting: a session on "transparency, accountability, [and] collaboration" in both the U.S. and U.K., featuring Deputy U.S. CTO Andrew McLaughlin and the Prospect's James Crabtree.

(With Micah Sifry)

• E.U. | Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition
  Last week a document on Internet policy has been realeased by the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council. The document addresses Member States about illegal activities and how to fight them, but there seem to be a little confusion: copyright infringments, racist speech and child pornography are all together in the "Internet frame". A way to justify the imposition of Internet filtering?
  Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of the advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, has very strong words on the issue, defining the document 'disturbing'.

• Protests against school funding cuts in California are being documented on YouTube.
• Where everyone (English-speaking, at least) now gets autocaptioning.
• Using tech to support dissent beyond California.
• Sebelius webchatted about health care reform.
• How information flows during election observation: some notes from Kenya.
• Introducing Distraction.gov.
• Sunlight posts its House expenditure database.
• And thinking of open analytics as part of open government.

(With Micah Sifry)

This Friday we have a special "Scandinavian edition" of the Europe roundup, brought to you by PDF friend Bente Kalsnes.
If you want you can send us stories or interesting links to look into. And don't forget to check our twitter account!

• Norway | The Prime Minister is in the playground
  The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is inviting bloggers to his office this week to discuss about the government's new website, Samarbeid for Arbeid (which means, more or less, "working for collaboration"). The website is made of a blog and a Twitter aggregator, sorted by four topics. If bloggers or Twitter users want the Prime Minister to read their posts, they can register the blog or tag tweets with predefined keywords.

Credit: DC Public Safety

• DC's public safety division has some fun with its 404 page.
• The White House urges folks to participate in federal agencies' idea-gathering phase.
• Dozens of independent federal agencies haven't put up open government pages, as they were encouraged to do.
• Maybe that's something that Beth Noveck, Deputy U.S. CTO for open government, will talk about in her upcoming session on "transparent government" with the Long Now Foundation.
• As you move from the so-called Silent Generation (65+) down the Millennials (18-29), finds Pew, faith in government's potential to make things better steadily increases. (This is an extra-recommended click-through. Lots of good data in that post.)
• Here's where you go to talk about the intersection of social media and law enforcement.
• An email -- direct from the outbox of "The Internet" itself! -- announces the dates for Politics Online 2010. Says 'Net, it'll be April 19th and 20th in DC.
• DC's OCTO holds a broadband summit.
• Mapping drone strikes.
• Jon Henke, Michael Turk, and Matthew Dybwad join the team at the digital media firm CRAFT.
• Some tweeters kindly request that CNN's best political team on television shut it during today's health care summit.
• TechRepublican's Meghann Olshefski recaps CPAC's digital bootcamp.
• Is your outreach appropriately diverse?
• The Office of National Coordinator of Health IT is now on Twitter, at @ONC_HealthIT.
• North Carolina Senate candidate Ken Lewis wants you to ask him anything.
• And finally, a bit of housekeeping -- that's it for me until Monday, as I'm taking a long weekend trip to the west coast. Have a good one.

(With Micah Sifry)

• Italy | Is transparency compatible with “robots.txt”?
  PDF friends David Osimo and Alberto Cottica point us out a story from Italy about a “transparency project” launched by the Italian government.
  The initiative, launched some time ago, aimed at publishing relevant information about civil servants, such as paycheck and days of absence. But, as this article points out, most part of this data (including those about the ministry itself) has been published in a directory which is not possible to reach by search engines – using the robots.txt file with “disallow:/operazionetrasparenza/”.
  Here’s David’s take on the story: “The implication is that searching with google the name of a person, you will not find these data. You will have to know that the person is employed by a public administration, and visit the website and check the name. This is obviously limiting the real transparency of the public data.
  I assume the excuse is related to privacy: there are different privacy implications if a personal information is searchable or not. This is an important matter, which I would like to understand better. Yet in this case it appears as an excuse. Real transparency needs machine-readable data, and using robots.txt is a clear contradiction of the principle of transparency."
  Plus, David has another point to make: why is transparency applied first of all to (against) public sector workers and their behaviour instead on how the P.A. spend public money?

Just a few short weeks ago, Scott Brown’s Republican upset in the race to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat had many wondering if the age of liberal internet dominance is over.

Is the GOP gaining an online advantage? Certainly, “the Internet seems to have equipped Brown to catch, collect, and amplify the enthusiasm that grew around his campaign -- both pro-Brown energy, and anti-Coakley, anti-Obama, anti-health care reform (and anti-Republican establishment) sentiment.”

And if the rapid rise of the Tea Party movement is any indication, “increased visibility leads to increased viability.”

Join the PdF Network on Thursday, March 4 as Rob Willington, Scott Brown Web Strategist and Executive Director, RebuildTheParty.com shares how the internet is changing conservative campaigning.

Thursday, March 4th at the PdF Network
The GOP in 2010: Going Online to Win the Massachusetts Senate Race
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

Check out our upcoming PdF Network calls...

• Spain | We can fix this only together...with or without you?
  In the past days the Spanish Chamber of Commerce launched an initiative to raise the confidence of citizens affected by the economic crisis. The campaign is called "Esto solo lo arreglamos entre todos" ("We can fix this only together") and it is willing to be "the biggest social therapy of the history", in the words of Susana Diaz, one of the consultant working on the project. The campaign consists of a website and several ads by both anonymous citizens and celebrities (the ad campaign costed 4 millions, according to Expansión).
  But so far it has not been well received by lots of citizens who felt betrayed by this sort of sharing responsibilities: on Facebook it is easy to find groups protesting against the campaign, with several hundreds of fans each. The protesters complain that the campaign is opportunist and demagogic, even creating a website called "We can fix this only *without them"*" to send "a message loud and clear to the organizers of the ad campaign and the state: we are not the problem.".
  (thanks to Anna Bellorbì)

• Germany | Creating a more transparent Frankfurt
  Frankfurt-Gestalten.de (Create Frankfurt) is a new space for citizen participation: the aim is tracking local political decisions, making them more transparent and motivate citizens to connect locally and to discuss on how to change their neighborhood.
  The website offers information in form of geo-referenced data and documents properly tagged. It also offer an email service and space for comments and proposals.