The Participation Company
These were our three most popular posts in January: Response to White House Request for Input: What Are the Most Effective Web Tools for Public Participation? 2012 Event and Conference Radar What Is Public Participation? Thanks for following along, everyone!
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Possibly not of global relevance (yet), but since it is my home town I thought I’d give it a quick shout-out: Earlier today, Offenes Köln (Open Cologne) was officially announced. It’s a grassroots project by Marian Steinbach in Cologne, Germany that aims to make information, documents and data related to local government available (and accessible) to [...]
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Steven Clift just alerted me to a new report from the IBM Center for The Business of Government: A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation (PDF), authored by Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University. I admit I haven’t fully read it yet, but a couple of issues jumped out that I wanted to point out really quick. 1) Terminology [...]
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As an IAP2 USA Board member, I would like to take a short moment to plug the membership drive we kicked off in October and which will end tomorrow, January 31, at midnight: IAP2 USA Fall Membership Campaign: $99 Deal, Good for 99 Days! I don’t have the latest numbers handy, but it looks like we’re getting [...]
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In case you’ve been following We the People (see our coverage), this upcoming conference call might be for you. From the IAP2 USA blog: We the People Follow-Up: February 1, 2012 Last October, we asked you to help us improve We the People, the new White House e-petition site. Collaborating with our partners, the National Coalition for [...]
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It’s that time of year, and SXSW Interactive (that week-long mass pilgrimage of web, film, music and — for the first time this year with a conference track of their own — education innovators to beautiful Austin, TX) is almost around the corner. Since there’s a good chance I’ll make the trip out there yet once again, I [...]
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In the second chapter from his upcoming book, Tom Atlee picks up the topic of learning in deliberation, something he has written about previously. It’s a thorny issue and generally applies to public participation as well. One problem, as I see it, is that quality deliberation requires informed participants, but properly framing the issue and creating the [...]
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As has been discussed intensively elsewhere on the web for the past several weeks and months, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act currently before Congress are ill conceived and, if passed, would have terrible consequences for the internet as we know it. At the heart of the matter is the question how [...]
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Over at Human Transit, public transportation planner Jarrett Walker points to yet another online budget puzzle, this one from Portland, OR and still ongoing: portland: balance the budget yourself Portland’s Tri-Met faces another horrible funding shortfall this year, but they’ve come up with a good survey tool to engage the public in their decisions about what services [...]
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Tom Atlee will be presenting at this week’s NCDD Confab Call. From his blog: I’ll be doing an online dialogue in the 2-hour National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation Confab Call on Tuesday, January 17th at 2pm Eastern (11am Pacific). Ben Roberts, a principal in both weDialogue and Occupy Café, will be facilitating the call [...]
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Like last year, we’re taking a quick moment to look back at the topics that stood out over the past twelve months. Here are our top 10 most popular posts of 2011: February 14: Calgary Budget Consultation: 13 Design Principles February 21: CRS Report on Open Government Initiative March 7: How To Create Policy on a Wiki March [...]
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I’m probably the last person to see this, but the Canadian Government provides a comprehensive directory of consultations from various departments and agencies. From the English language version homepage: Welcome to the Consulting With Canadians site! The Government of Canada is committed to finding new and innovative ways to consult with, and engage Canadians. Consulting [...]
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The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) have put out a joint response to the recent White House call for input. It’s very solid, so please make sure to read it in full: Strengthening the Public Participation Elements of the Open Government Plan (PDF). Especially noteworthy is a list of [...]
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In light of the recent call for input regarding public participation best practices, it’s always interesting to compare how that question is being answered abroad. Here’s a 2010 document by Planning Aid England, which is part of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), the UK’s “leading planning body for spatial, sustainable, integrative and inclusive planning”: Good [...]
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Via Alex Moll on Twitter, I just came across OpenGov.gr, the website for the Greek Open Government Initiative. From the English language version: Opengov.gr has been designed to serve the principles of transparency, deliberation, collaboration and accountability and includes three initiatives: Οpen calls for the recruitment of public administration officials. Top level and mid-level openings [...]
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For the past three years (ever since attending “The Underlying Dynamics of Conversations that Matter”, a most excellent pre-conference workshop with Tom Atlee and Peggy Holman at NCDD 2008 in Austin, TX), I’ve been following the Group Pattern Language Project, a very exciting endeavor led by Tree Bressen, Sue Woehrlin and Dave Pollard and involving dozens of contributors from a [...]
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Last April, Stephen Buckley started OpenGov Metrics, a Google group about “the adoption and use of standard metrics for measuring progress in ‘Open Government’ efforts, i.e, to make government more ‘transparent, participatory, and collaborative’.” In light of the recent White House request for input regarding best practices and metrics, the group is currently being relaunched. If [...]
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A couple of months ago, we set up our Intellitics company page on Google+, a new social networking thingy from Google. It’s still early days for this service, but more people and organizations are joining every day so things are bound to get more interesting over time. If you’re already using Google+, feel free to circle [...]
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In December, the White House issued a request for input regarding the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan. Their list of seven questions included one on e-participation. To jog your memory, here it is once again: What are the most effective forms of technology and web tools to encourage public participation, engage with the private sector/non-profit and [...]
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Following their very successful 2010 budget puzzle (see our coverage here, here and here), the New York Times today has released another exercise, this time asking participants to identify their preferred approach to cuts to the U.S. defense budget. From their site: The Future Military: Your Budget Strategy The Pentagon has committed to $450 billion [...]
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