What is EP2014 ?
EP2014.org is a common platform to support NGO campaigns for 2014 European elections taking place between the 22th May and 25th May. Eleven NGOs that have developed pledges or manifestos ahead of the elections that they will ask Parliament candidates to sign, are taking part in this project. A coalition that consists of Democracy International, ALTER-EU, Transport and Environment, ILGA-Europe, CAN Europe, EDRI, Oxfam, Save The Children, EPHA, Concord, ATM and Transparency International. The database relies on CiviCRM, an open source CRM, which is already used by several of the NGOs in the coalition. CRM is a web-based, open source designed for the needs of NGO to manage an important amount of information such as contact information about the 2014 MEP candidates. All the structural information for the project has been customized to collect specific information, such as the circumscriptions and national parties.
How does the coalition proceed ?
The coalition has divided the 28 EU Member States and each organisation is responsible for collecting contact information to the candidates representing all countries. All the data are progressively added to the shared database. Each coalition member can then use the data to push their own pledge or manifesto, which means that the collected data, “back-office” work, is shared rather than developing joint manifestos. The database contains a form enabling the candidates to sign, a validation work flow for the signatories and a way to display the result following (map of Europe, list per country…).
And after ?
After the European elections, the coalition will update the database to flag which candidate has been elected. It will provide a complete and final list of the elected Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) including all information as it is published on the official European Parliament website and note if the candidates in fact signed the pledges . In addition, a final visualization of the result, including a filter option to only see the elected candidates will be added.