Just before Christmas I and several partners have signed a contract with the European Commission to run the European PSI platform from March 2011 tot March 2013.
The work will aim at four things:

• Run the already existing website epsiplatform.eu as a one stop shop for all things that are happening in the EU and beyond on the re-use of government information (open government data).
• Provide an advisory service to the EC, including a scoreboard on how well Member States are doing on open government data
• Stimulate the community of stakeholders
• Raise awareness in places where momentum for PSI re-use is currently low.

I am very excited about the opportunity to work on this, and make PSI re-use rock across the EU. Last September we worked very hard on wording the proposal, including working through a stay in Italy, that was meant as a holiday with Elmine. But it paid off.
I will be working in the team (with Zenc BV, Marc de Vries, Katleen Janssen and the Open Knowledge Foundation), as ePSIplatform’s Community Steward and Lead Editor. All the others also are deeply involved with the subject matter itself.
Our plans include using a narrative database to gather stories around re-use of government data and thus surfacing barriers, opportunities, concerns and novel uses.
We intend to actively reach out to existing communities around the EU, supporting local events etc.
And we’ll turn the current website into a main hub for people, not just news, that also connects to other existing on-line spaces where the Open Government Debate is already being held. All this while maintaining the current level of information and news available through the website, additionally actively defining the scope of discussion.
I have been active as a news editor for the current ePSIplatform.eu in the past months. This new contract however provides the opportunity to also bring in my full experience on community of practice, community building, narrative sensemaking, and guiding change processes.
And it still leaves plenty of room in my schedule to add other exciting projects as well. One of those has already been added to the portfolio. More about that later.

Got a cake at the Cognitive Edge Bizz Network for the narrative database project that’s part of the EPSI plan