From the website:
30 June – 2 July, 2010
Leeds University Business School, UK
The widespread diffusion of the Internet and a growing trend towards democratisation worldwide have encouraged new modes, projects and visions of citizen participation in decision making and governance.
OD2010 aims to bring together researchers, developers and practitioners from a wide range of academic and applied backgrounds to provide a unique opportunity to better understand the notion of deliberation in a virtual environment and to discuss specific advances in online deliberation from a number of different disciplinary perspectives.
The conference is aimed at those who wish to update themselves on recent developments in online deliberation, understand how other groups are applying the tools and techniques and exchange ideas with leading international experts.
OD2010 follows the traditions of previous high-level scientific conferences. It is organized by key experts in the field and is supported by a multidisciplinary programme committee. This is the first time the conference has been held outside the USA.
The fourth OD conference focuses on, but is not limited to, the following topics:
- current research on online deliberation;
- research challenges which deliberation, and in particular online deliberation, pose for researchers, governments, communities and citizens;
- socio-technical design of online deliberative spaces;
- links between theories of deliberative democracy with experience with online deliberation;
- descriptions of tools and techniques that are already being tested or fielded;
- deliberative platforms using novel or unusual settings, technology or approaches;
- experiences and findings related to relevant technological theories (such as Web 2.0) and/or relevant social theories of deliberation and governance (such as public sphere, government 2.0 and civic intelligence); and
- case studies in applying and evaluating online deliberation in various formal and informal engagement domains.
Lots of deliberation heavyweights are involved. The final conference program is still forthcoming at this point.
I was able to spend a few hours at Tools for Participation, the 2008 conference, and enjoyed it greatly. Definitely check out this one!
As promised, I’ve been tracking the numbers from the ongoing Open Government discussions on a daily basis (follow the thread on GovLoop for details). We’re now almost three weeks into this initiative. Here’s a chart that shows how the numbers have developed since February 9 (a few days after launch):
Ideas: 993
Comments: 2,314
Votes: 13,747
Users: 3,898
Growth is pretty linear, nothing too surprising happening (yet). At the very least, it seems that some agencies are slowly making progress with their outreach efforts.
The total numbers include active and inactive agencies alike. For comparison, here’s the same chart for NASA, the agency with the most overall activity (by our measurements):
Ideas: 122
Comments: 428
Votes: 2,453
Users: 340
It’s a bit hard to see but the last two days have seen a significant increase in registered users and votes.
There are more than three weeks left. Plenty of time to double or triple these figures.
Via the Public Decisions blog (co-organizer of the Including the Excluded online conference we’ll be attending), I just found out about a new research effort by Involve, a UK-based not-for-profit offering public participation consulting and services: Quantifying the Value of Engagement: A call for case studies
Dear Colleague,
Involve are embarking on an ambitious project with Consumer Focus England, we are seeking to develop an equation for identifying costs and benefits associated with public engagement structures and processes. The proposed equation will be a practical tool, aimed at public sector workers who wish to make the case for effective engagement by exploring and quantifying the costs and benefits. It will also help authorities, civil society and the public to identify when public engagement is an effective use of public money. We need to work with public sector organisations to test our equation, in order to ensure it is useful and that it is able to be applied in a variety of circumstances.
[...]
Specifically we are looking for case studies which:
- Can demonstrate some tangible improvements in service outcomes as a result of the engagement, for example reduced crime levels, improved health outcomes, lowered bureaucratic requirements, or more targeted spending.
- Have some understanding of the costs and benefits of the exercise
- Includes some element of engaging with members of the public
- Occurred within the last twelve months
We are also interested in looking at examples which engaged people in issues around cuts in expenditure.
I look forward to their findings. In the spirit of moving this entire field forward, please make sure to make your cold, hard ROI data available.
For some time, I’ve been suggesting the creation of a national public participation calendar and project directory as a key component of the Open Government Directive:
Based on this post on NextGov, it looks like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving in that direction: EPA Web site paving the way to transparency
As more agencies deploy online score cards that publicly chart the progress of specific missions, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Web site for tracking rulemaking could be a model, some government transparency activists say.
EPA launched its site, the Rulemaking Gateway, on Thursday to inform the public of the status of high-priority regulatory actions, such as proposals to control greenhouse gas emissions in heavy-duty vehicles and revise vehicle fuel economy labels.
[...]
EPA has committed to releasing rulemaking plans earlier than in the past. As soon as an agency regulatory policy officer determines it is appropriate to start developing a rule, information will be posted on the gateway, officials said. A regulation could appear on the site months or even years before a file is created on the governmentwide rule-tracking site Regulations.gov.
[...]
The gateway is tightly tied to Regulations.gov to increase public participation in the rulemaking process, said Madia, a federal regulatory policy analyst at the group.
[...]
The EPA Web site will show updated proposals monthly, as decisions are made. Time-sensitive information, such as announcements about public meetings, will be refreshed daily.
You can check out EPA’s new Rulemaking Gateway here.
Things are starting to look really interesting…
About This Conference
Conference Theme: Equity, Accessibility and Social Inclusion
Effectively engaging diverse people or groups can be challenging; what works well for the majority may not work as well for some individuals or groups. This may especially be the case when we seek to engage people who have traditionally been excluded (for example, those subject to racial or ethnic discrimination), individuals with physical or mental disabilities, or persons who are socially excluded for a variety of reasons (such as people who are homeless or in a country illegally).
Because of history, social norms or other reasons, we may need different or distinct ways of approaching – and practicing – engagement with these individuals or groups in order to achieve success.
The Stakeholder Engagement 2010 Conference will focus on this critical area of engagement practice. Conference sessions will feature ‘lessons learned’ from around the globe focused on engagement for:
- Social / Environmental Justice that engages historically excluded or underserved groups
- Accessibility of people with physical or mental disabilities
- Social Inclusion of individuals who are socially excluded by geography, personal habits and appearance, class structure, income, education or religion
Four kinds of conference activities will be offered
- Conference sessions (case studies, panel discussions, research presentations or field trips in Second Life)
- Conference networking events (incl. networking roundtables via audio/phone)
- Field trips in Second Life
- Conference community website
See the conference program (PDF) for details.
The conference is presented by PublicDecisions, a provider of online, “live” training, professional development events and conferences on stakeholder engagement.
Should be interesting both because of the topics and speakers as well as the virtual nature of the conference format.
NCDD members qualify for a discount. Use discount code “NCDDSpecial” when you sign up.
A few days ago, a new site was launched that helps track activity across the 23 federal agencies that are using IdeaScale for their consultations on Open Government: OpenGov Tracker
This webpage makes use of the IdeaScale API to aggregate data for all agencies which are making use of that platform. USDA and Health and Human Services also have public feedback sites; however they are not using IdeaScale and so unfortunately, are not included here. We encourage you to visit their sites, too!
Totals reflect all ideas including those submitted to the “Site Feedback” category. The “Top Ideas Across Government” section only highlights ideas in the categories of Transparency, Participation, Collaboration, and Innovation– eg., those related to the Open Government Plans themselves.
The site was created by Robbie Schingler and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, who both work at NASA.
This is a most excellent example of how participation tools can expose some of the quantitative information about an ongoing consultation (IdeaScale itself does some of the basics, though does not offer a convenient view across all 23 projects).
It’s especially nice to see how metrics are being made actionable. The section “Needs Some Love” lists those agencies that haven’t received a lot of input yet along with the call to action: “They need some love. Please help!”
This metrics dashboard is a nice addition to my tracking thread on GovLoop where we also try to keep an eye on qualitative data.
There is of course a lot more that the perfect dashboard could include but this is definitely a refreshing step forward.
Please leave a comment below if you know of any tools that offer this kind of eye candy out of the box.
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