The other day, I mentioned on Twitter how I sometimes wish there were a glossary of the key terms and definitions that guide our conversations around participation.
With the Open Government Directive expected to be released within a few weeks, one challenge remains that people don’t necessarily mean the same thing when they discuss participation and participatory government. While some use the same terms for slightly different concepts, others rely on different terms for essentially the same ideas.
Here’s a list of just a few of the general concepts that seem to be commonly implied in these conversations (in no particular order):
- Participation as general citizen-related activities: this includes voting in elections, attending local city council meetings, writing a letter to the editor etc.
- Participation as general community activities: e.g. volunteering
- Participation as involvement in decision making: giving people meaningful ways to be part of and contribute to a decision-making process, maybe following IAP2′s Spectrum of Public Participation (PDF) or the recently released Public Engagement Principles developed by NCDD and others (our endorsement here)
- Participation as consensus building: getting everyone to agree on something
- Participation as interaction with government data: for example, citizens building applications or mash-ups using open government data
In order to be effective, the Open Government Directive will have to clarify the concepts it tries to promote. Maybe we can expect some very specific language, who knows?
At any rate, more people using more precise language would be very helpful. Here’s one working definition we prefer.
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The first thing that I will look for, when the Open Government Directive finally comes out, is whether they have a section on “Definitions”.
And, even if there is a “Definitions” section, I’m afraid that many of the definitions (e.g., “transparency”, “participation”, “collaboration”, etc.) will be fuzzy and ambiguous.
If so, then it will be terribly ironic that the Directive that is all ABOUT “transparency” (i.e., clarity) is, itself, NOT clear about what it specifically means by “transparency” (and the other related terms).
I pointed out the importance of “Terminology” during the Open Government Dialogue, but it’s not a sexy topic, so it did not get many votes.
Scroll down to –> #4 here:
http://ustransparency.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
And I raised the “Definitions” issue again here:
http://ustransparency.blogspot.com/2009/07/first-define-what-it-is-transparent.html
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what’s in the Open Government Directive.
vr, Stephen Buckley
Yep, can’t wait to find out what they came up with in the final document.
Excellent and still very valuable after the publication of the OGD. I would argue that there is also “participation in service delivery” or “participation in government operations”. Or is that colaboration?
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