On June 17th, 2016 another workshop of the Fortschrittskolleg “Online-Partizipation” took place at Schloss Mickeln. Svenja Schulze, the Minister for Innovation, Science and Research of North Rhine-Westphalia used this occasion to inform herself about the current state of the PhD projects, all of which deal with the potential of online participation on the local level. The projects were presented by the doctoral students. The workshops of the PhD programme are supposed to facilitate the exchange among the researchers as well as with the practitioners involved in the Fortschrittskolleg.
After a short welcoming address, Prof. Dr. Martin Mauve presented the strategic development and (future) projects of the Fortschrittskolleg. Dr. Lars Heilsberger explained the status of the scientific Wiki which serves as a public platform where the members of the Fortschrittskolleg collect and document their scientific findings in the field of online participation. The current state of a Wiki which is supposed to facilitate the implementation of online participation for practitioners was introduced by Prof. Dr. Katrin Möltgen, while Dr. Tobias Escher reported on the creation of data security guidelines as well as a rule-making procedure for the regulations for habilitations at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Heinrich-Heine-University. Afterwards Nadja Wilker and Malte Steinbach introduced preliminary results of a survey that focused on online procedures for citizen participation in the municipalities of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was designed and implemented by the doctoral students. Prof. Dr. Stefan Süß welcomed Minister Svenja Schulze before the PhD students presented their projects in form of a poster exhibition. The day came to an end with the annual summer party of the Fortschrittskolleg.