From an otherwise interesting post on Govfresh last week about the use of contests in citizen engagement: Collaborative innovation in open government: Is there an app for that?

Could contests help us realize the vision of participatory democracy outlined by Thomas Jefferson, where citizens collaborate with government to solve the nation’s most difficult problems? The White House hopes so. As the Federal Times reported this morning, agencies are trying to crowdsource their way out of problems.

These efforts won’t always work out as proponents might hope. To date, crowdsourcing government reform has had mixed results. The new British government’s first crowdsourcing attempt fails to alter Whitehall line. And as Wired’s Jeff Home observed last year, crowdsourcing and the President were a “failed marriage” when the new administration tried its first online town hall.

Not to be too picky, but here’s the comment I left (as of now still awaiting moderation):

I have one simple request:

Could we please stop referring to every online comment form under the sun as “crowdsourcing”? Please!

The “Programme for Government” website, which the new UK government launched shortly after it came into power in May of this year, had nothing whatsoever to do with crowdsourcing. Blindly repeating The Guardian’s misleading headline doesn’t make it so.

Here’s what actually happened:

After the usual negotiations, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats had come to a definite agreement on which to base their coalition government. In the spirit of transparency, they presented the final document on a public website. Yes, they offered citizens the opportunity to comment. But no, it was never their intention to engage in a two-way conversation, let alone incorporate any of the feedback and make changes to their program based on citizens’ input.

No crowdsourcing there!

Granted, they did do a rather poor job communicating the scope of this exercise, which led many participants to believe the document was still open to modifications (hence the disappointment), but that’s another issue entirely.

So there.

Here’s what Simon Dickson, who built the Programme for Government website, had to say recently: Commenting is not crowdsourcing

Now, I’m speaking for nobody but myself here – but what the Guardian piece doesn’t fairly reflect is that it was not a crowdsourcing exercise, nor even a consultation.

It was the definitive statement of the outcome of negotiations between the two parties currently forming the country’s coalition government. It was not ‘give us some ideas for what you think we might have agreed.’ The comment box provided an opportunity for people to voice opinions or ask questions, and government promised it would listen.

There was no commitment to take the responses back for a second round of coalition negotiations. To do so would have been quite ridiculous. So I’d argue that it’s entirely reasonable for the departmental responses to take the position of ‘well, we’ve heard what you say, but…’.

I previously wrote about Programme for Government here and here.

Like last year, the vast majority of session proposals for SXSW ‘11 in the Open Government category seem to focus on transparency and open data. Here are five sessions that look interesting from a participation perspective (including ours, of course):

• Social Powered Community Planning – How Now
• Open Government through Participation: Designing Successful Online Consultations
• Rebooting Iceland: Crowdsourcing Innovation in Uncertain Times
• Make Citizens Social: Digital Participation in Public Services
• State of the Union: Government v. Technology

Voting has just been extended through the weekend. You know what to do!

Did we miss any? Leave a comment.

Three interesting threads to highlight this week:

• For the second time, NCDD ran a “featured member” post and attracted a few good questions and answers: Today’s Featured NCDD Member: Healthy Democracy Oregon
• Over on the NCDD Forum, Matt Leighninger asks (great discussion, to be continued): Better to convene, or to aggregate? (and how?)
• My own post on online/offline integration got great feedback and a number of comments: Public Participation: Ten Simple Ideas for Better Online/Offline Integration

Enjoy your weekends, everyone!

Over the past few weeks, Melbourne, Australia-based Ron Lubensky has written an series of posts explaining the concept of a Citizens’ Assembly and defending it against unfounded criticism:

• July 23, 2010: Open letter to Julia Gillard, Prime Minister
• July 26, 2010: Assembled citizens make sense
• July 26, 2010: Another good op-ed supporting Citizens’ Assembly about climate policy
• July 26, 2010: What I think the Citizens’ Assembly should do…
• July 27, 2010: On collaborative learning and online deliberation…
• August 14, 2010: Labor MPs avoiding Citizens’ Assembly pitch
• August 27, 2010: The public appetite for public engagement

There’s a lot of advice in there! Take these recommendations to heart, and you should be ready to design your own citizens’ assembly in no time (well, almost).

For anyone interested in learning more, Participedia has an in-depth case study available about the 2004 British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform as well as one on the 2009 Australian Citizens’ Parliament, which Ron worked on at the time.

Reading up on the Knight Foundation’s Technology for Engagement Inititative as they’ve just announced their first round of five projects to receive funding, I came across Boston, MA-based Engagement Game Lab. From their mission statement:

The Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College is devoted to forging a place for games in urban civic life.  The faculty, students, and affiliates of the lab are actively engaged in building digital games that pursue this goal, as well as researching their efficacy and effectiveness.

In a recent blog post, they make a brief mention of a previous project and their use of Second Life,which I thought was worth capturing (emphasis mine): Community PlanIt: Where We Are, Where We’re Going

In Hub2, we used the Second Life multi-user virtual environment within an urban planning process (Allston’s Library Park) to help augment stakeholders’ sense of the development area, its challenges, and its considerations. Users could walk around the environment, make suggestions, and instantly see their creations come to life. One notable feature of Hub2 was the elements of role-play incorporated into the process. For example, perhaps a resident would have to use the park as a person in a wheelchair, or as a mother walking her daughter outside the library to read. Having people “become” someone else really helped create a sense of empathy for others who would use the park.

This — the fact that one can have very real experiences in a virtual environment, either as oneself or somebody else — is one aspect about Second Life that has always fascinated me and which to this day, sadly, many nay-sayers don’t seem to fully appreciate.

On the very first day of our recent IAP2 training, we learned that empathy may be the most important tool practitioners can apply towards designing and managing public participation efforts and leading them to success. The above is a great example how immersive environments such as Second Life can support certain public participation objectives.

By the way, here’s Community PlanIt’s project blurb:

Community PlanIt is a fun, new way for stakeholders to plan for the future. It combines a mobile role-playing game with a social software platform, and is adaptable to any local planning process. Residents begin participating online weeks—or months—before the community meets for a large, live, public event. They share comments, pictures, and videos of their neighborhood and answer important questions about its future. During the event, the community plays a game, in the neighborhood, with mobile devices. After that, they leave with the tools they need to continue the dialogue.

Sounds cool. Of course, the first question that comes to my mind is: Will any of this have any real impact? What are the decisions at stake? Who are the decision makers? What level of influence do these “stakeholders” actually have? And most importantly, does the game take into account any of these questions?

Other than that, I can’t wait to try it out. We definitely need to play more with games.

In preparation for the upcoming series of NCDD 2010 Regional Events (including the one right here in the Bay Area, October 29), Sandy Heierbacher (Director, NCDD) has asked for input on a question I know has been on the minds of many in the NCDD community for the past few years: “How can we best meld/combine face-to-face engagement with online engagement?”

NCDD is currently in the process of gathering “some of the best-of-the-best materials” to support the three topic areas the events will focus on (quality public engagement, online tools, collaborations that work). Here’s the forum thread regarding the question above if you’d like to check it out: Combining Online and Face-to-Face Engagement

Much to my disappointment, I wasn’t able to find any specific material about online/offline integration on our internal wiki (aside from a few very general tidbits which — unsurprisingly — seem to indicate we think favorably of the concept and would like to explore it further). That despite the fact that we’ve tossed this question around many times in the past and do have a few ideas as to what the app could do to make integration easier. Adding Web 2.0 insult to social software injury, my bookmark stream on Delicious came back empty as well, though I’m almost certain I’ve enjoyed reading about this topic elsewhere before.

I guess I’ll have to go back and try to dig up some of the sources I vaguely remember, but before I do that here is a list of ten things I’d probably look into first if I were in charge of online/offline integration for a standard public participation effort today. As an obvious disclaimer, any of these may have already been tried by someone during some project (please leave a comment if you are that person).

With that out of the way, here we go:

1. Start from the beginning: Make online/offline integration a core piece of your overall participation strategy (as with many things, success is probably much harder to achieve if the idea enters the project as an afterthought).
2. Use online to promote offline and vice versa: Think online event calendar or event notifications on your website or websites, and promotion of your various web properties at your face-to-face events, incl. hand-out materials.
3. Allow for each of the two channels to feed into each other: Post summaries/minutes of your face-to-face events online, make some time at the beginning or during an event or meeting to hear report-backs from online participants on how their part of the consultation is coming along. Live broadcasting (audio, video) of face-to-face events can be extremely valuable as well as a backchannel to allow for some level of remote participation.
4. Make your online content available offline: Many online consultations maintain a library for important documents and resources, some projects even allow the participants to add to this repository or express whether or not they find a particular resource helpful. In addition, participants are generally given the opportunity to create a lot of raw content (posts, comments, ideas etc.), and sometimes these are summarized and synthesized by a moderator or facilitator. To the extent it is reasonable, consider taking some of these materials to your face-to-face events. That obscure third-party impact study about the planned development in your neighborhood from two years ago that one online participant shared and that many others found highly valuable? Maybe a good candidate to share with your offline audience as well.
5. Identify the “bumble bees”: Ask participants to indicate if they plan to attend both online and in person and give them an opportunity to become ambassadors between the two channels. Their task can be quite simple: occasionally report back, generally help communicate between online and offline participants, help identify disconnects or gaps etc.
   (Note: for those unfamiliar with Open Space Technology, a Bumble Bee “moves from one group to another, cross-pollinating.”)
6. Get the media to attend both online and offline activities: As part of your regular media outreach, make sure the press is aware of your online activities and give them observer status. Furthermore, make sure they are comfortable using your online properties (e.g. discussion forum, idea generation tool etc.). Facilitate direct contact with online participants where appropriate (e.g. for interviews).
7. Bridge the digital divide: Ok, this is a tough one as digital divide issues can be hard to overcome. Don’t try to boil the ocean! Small things can have a positive impact and may be worth the extra effort. There are a number of things you can do to bring your online offerings closer to those people who don’t have access. Think partnering with public libraries or schools for computer access, installing kiosk systems at your face-to-face events etc.
   One particular idea we’re pursuing with Zilino is the ability for the facilitator to invite participants into the role of citizen reporter (if you will) and have them gather evidence (stories, ideas, concerns etc.) from people who lack online access or aren’t likely to participate at all (either online or offline).
8. Synchronize online and offline activities: Events done right — whether online or offline — can have huge drawing power. Orchestrate your overall activities in ways that link online and offline participation more tightly (e.g. an online discussion phase leading up to a face-to-face event, a face-to-face meeting designed as the kick-off for further dialogue online). In some instances, you might even consider running online and offline activities in parallel and allow for some level of exchange of content and ideas in real-time.
9. Encourage participants’ use of social media: Similar to item #3 above, social media can be a great way to enable participants help each other make sense of the process and share their findings. Luckily, there is a ton of material out there that explains how to do this kind of community building so I won’t go into detail here.
10. Encourage higher-bandwidth modes of communication: This all depends on the geographic realities one is dealing with, of course. Provided a large-enough group of online participants live in close proximity to each other, you could use your website to coordinate small groups to meet face-to-face (alternatively, a phone conference might do the trick). Just because someone can’t attend a public meeting at 5pm on a Thursday doesn’t mean they can’t meet their neighbors for coffee after church on Sunday. The web can be great at this kind of matchmaking and scheduling. You could take advantage of these ad-hoc gatherings by keeping a list of small group tasks handy or topics your participants ought to address. Or, leave it more open: simply provide them with a minimum amount of guidance (e.g. how to have a productive conversation) and let them focus purely on relationship building, something that may pay off immensely once they go back to engaging each other online.

Still reading? Here’s a bonus idea:

11. Ask your participants: Seriously, they are way smarter than you (often enough, at least). Let them help you figure out how to bridge online and offline in ways that work best for them.

And that’s it, ten pretty basic starting points to get going! Hopefully, this is enough of a collection to get the conversation started. Please leave a comment if you have feedback to share, more ideas to add or know of any interesting resources (confirming or contradicting anything I’ve said). Thanks!

IAP2 Certificate in Public Participation

I had the distinct pleasure to attend all five days of IAP2’s Certificate Training Course in Public Participation last month (check their training calendar for upcoming training opportunities in your area). As I mentioned at the time, it was time well spent!

As per the training materials, here’s what the three training units encompass:

Planning for Effective Public Participation (two days)

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Define public participation and what distinguishes it from related fields
• Apply a systematic, rigorous planning process to public involvement
• Identify and understand the IAP2 Foundations of Public Participation and apply the Foundations to public participation planning
• Apply the IAP2 planning tools to public participation planning including:
  • The Core Values
  • Code of Ethics
  • Spectrum
• Identify and write public participation objectives that clarify the role of the public
• Develop a public participation plan
• Plan for evaluation of a public participation process

Gain enhanced awareness of:

• The relevance and benefits of public participation within decision making that affects the public
• Ways to effectively engage stakeholders in decisions and related processes

Communications for Effective Public Participation (one day)

Communications for Effective Public Participation offers an introductory overview of communication skills necessary for conducting public participation activities. The course provides an introduction to general communication concepts as they apply to public participation. It focuses on skills needed to prepare and present information and offers tips to address communication challenges commonly faced while conducting public participation activities.

The course is designed as a primer and is suitable for practitioners who want an overview of basic communication techniques as they apply to public participation efforts. At the end of the day, you will be able to:

• Describe the communication process and what is required to make that process effective and authentic
• Discuss specific communication skills needed for effective implementation of public participation projects at all levels of the IAP2 Spectrum
• Use the course manual as a reference for different methods of conveying information

Techniques for Effective Public Participation (two days)

The focus of this two-day course is on techniques, or what public participation practitioners do to facilitate the process of participation. We will build on the foundations laid out in the Planning course to link technique selection to the different levels on the IAP2 Spectrum of Participation and achieve the objectives for different steps in the decision process.

Our goal is that students will leave this course with a broader understanding of what, when and how– what techniques to use, and when and how to implement those techniques effectively.

Needless to say, this was quite a bit of material to digest, and it will be exciting to further apply the IAP2 principles and framework to the work we do with Zilino and beyond.

A couple of months ago, I started an innocent thread on Govloop: OpenGov unconference in the SF Bay Area?

Speaking of barcamps, we should really do an unconference about this stuff in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I know at least a couple dozen people who have expressed interest (a number of whom were at OpenGovWest in Seattle, WA back in March).

Who’s in?

A number of local Open Government enthusiasts immediately took the bait. After doing a couple of conference calls and tossing around a few ideas, here’s what we came up with:

CityCampSF
October 16/17, 2010
San Francisco, CA (USA)

CityCampSF will be part of a greater string of global CityCamps:

What is CityCamp?

CityCamp is a barcamp focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations.

Each City Camp has four  main goals:

1. Bring together local government officials, municipal employees, experts, programmers, designers, citizens and journalists to share perspectives and insights about the cities in which they live
2. Create or maintain patterns for local government transparency and effective local governance using the Web as a platform
3. Foster communities of practice and advocacy on the role of information and open data in cities
4. Create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is over

CityCamp explores and documents ideas, lessons learned, best practices, and patterns that can be implemented within and shared across municipalities, anywhere in the world.  Of particular interest is the use of social/participatory media, mobile devices, linked open data, and “Web as platform.”

CityCamp recognizes that local governments and community organizations have the most direct influence and impact on our daily lives.  This event seeks to create local communities of practice who are dedicated to design, process, and technology applications that make cities more open and “user friendly.”

The first CityCamp was held in Chicago, Illinois, 23-24 January, 2010. CityCamp is inspired by Transparency Camp and Gov 2.0 Camp.

For updates, follow @CityCampSF on Twitter. Everyone is invited to use the wiki to help with the planning and prep work. Or, head over to Eventbrite to RSVP straight away.

Thanks to everyone involved so far, this should be fun!

Just a few threads to point to this week, a couple of which prompted me to highlight IAP2’s core values and code of ethics:

• Andrea di Maio covers a report by The Guardian on Programme for Government, I point out that this was not crowdsourcing and reiterate the list of possible reasons why this effort failed (in the view of many observers, at least): Crowdsourcing Is Far From Easy for Government
• Christopher Berendes shares the story of a participation effort a few years back that seemed to leave participants in the dark about their lack of impact: The house always wins: the ethics of participatory planning?
• Richard Parsons provides a nice overview of the recent discussions around Programme for Government: Government and crowd sourcing

Have a great weekend!

As is the tradition with South by South West, they do a great job of allowing the community to help design the conference program. Their famous Panel Picker application went live this morning, and this is the session proposal we submitted:

Open Government through Participation: Designing Successful Online Consultations

Public participation—the process of engaging citizens and stakeholders in collaborative problem solving and decision making—has been around for a few decades. Whether urban planning, participatory budgeting or environmental conflict resolution, the basic principles of designing and running effective consultations to gather citizen input or co-create policy solutions are, for the most part, well understood. The use of technology to support and enhance these participatory efforts, on the other hand, is still a fairly young and emerging discipline. While there have been many advancements in this area in recent years, the lessons learned still aren’t always readily available for practitioners. This fast-paced and interactive panel will explore what it takes to deliver successful online consultations. We’ll go over the basic processes involved, look at some of the typical challenges and how they can be addressed, and highlight innovative tools and projects from around the world. Technology, if applied properly, can greatly increase the opportunity for citizens to participate in the decisions that shape their future. With this session, we want to give anyone involved in delivering on this promise a solid head start.

Questions Answered

1. What are the benefits of public participation and where does it apply?
2. What are common design principles of successful online consultations?
3. What are some of the typical challenges for engaging the public online and how can they best be addressed?
4. What are some of the tools and technologies available today (in the US and globally)?
5. How to get started creating your next online consultation?

This panel will make good use of the many project examples (successful or not) that we’re starting to see on ParticipateDB.

If you remember, this is our second attempt at bringing online participation to SXSW. With your help, we can make it happen! Please head over to the Panel Picker and leave a comment of support if you like the topic or have suggestions how we can make this panel great. Of course, don’t forget to vote it up.

There are a number of people who would make excellent co-panelists, some in the US and some international. Let me know if you’re headed to Austin, TX and would like to join us.

Last week, San Francisco saw the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, a five-day international event that included the two-day U.S. Conference on Initiative and Referendum.

Due to scheduling conflicts, I was only able to attend on two days and not for very long but made a few good connections nonetheless.

The San Francisco Declaration on Direct Democracy, a statement that was read and released at the conclusion of the event, contains this list of the following three values:

We agree that three values must be applied to direct democracy everywhere: transparency, open access, and deliberation

1. Transparency: At every stage of each direct democratic action, and in every aspect of the initiative and referendum process, citizens have a right to know as much as possible about the people and money behind each measure, so long as individuals are protected against coercion and retribution for their votes and for their signatures.
2. Open access. Access to the process, especially the qualification of measures for ballots, should be based on measures of substantial popular support – and should not be dependent on money or on the sanction or approval of public officials or political parties or interest groups.
   Technology and other innovations should be fully incorporated into the process consistent with the values of expanding access and ensuring transparency.
3. Deliberation. A deliberative process that is driven by and managed by citizens themselves should be part of every direct democracy. We believe that the most important factors in deliberation are the ability to hear multiple views from all sides – and the time to consider each direct democratic measure fully.

We cannot stress enough the importance of sufficient time to the health of direct democracy. We are concerned that many direct democratic systems, particularly those in the United States, fail to provide the time necessary for thorough deliberation and open access.

It was a pleasure to follow the active Twitter stream during the conference. A number of issues were brought up that deserve to be looked into in more detail, most notably–from our perspective–with regard to the relation between direct democracy and public participation as well as the role of technology and social media.

As one of the conference’s junior sponsors, we look forward to continuing these conversations.

Via the NCDD mailing list, I was just alerted to this upcoming conference. Looks interesting!

Reinventing Governance Conference

A conference to promote new forms of collaboration among community, business, and governmental leaders through engaged dialogue and case-study analysis.

University of Colorado and the Millennium Harvest House
Boulder, Colorado
October 8-10, 2010

Reinventing Governance will challenge people to learn from others, to share their stories, and to participate in a vibrant, interactive environment of dialogue and exchange. By bringing conference participants together around real-life cases, lessons, and strategies, Reinventing Governance will explore issues of community planning, environmental management, sustainable business growth, international development, and global politics.

From the email:

The basic philosophy of the conference is pretty straight forward.  If in today’s complex and inter-connected world we are going to provide a healthy business environment and solve serious social, political, economic, and environmental problems, we need to improve the institutions and processes by which mutual decisions are made by businesses, governments and civic groups.

Sounds like it was taken straight from our slide deck.

Following up on my earlier post, I was trying to find out how exactly the Programme for Government online consultation had been announced when it launched. When evaluating consultations, a lot depends on the commitment the sponsoring organization has made, their promise to the public.

I couldn’t find anything on the website (on a side note, it’s not a good sign if this content disappears from the website that hosts the online consultation as it makes it so much harder to hold the convener accountable) so I searched around a bit and came across this excellent post by Tim Davies: Comment on government: How should I be interacting?

He quotes part of the original invitation to participate, which helped me find it quoted in full elsewhere:

This website is the online version of The Coalition: our programme for government. It sets out a programme for partnership government over the next five years. These plans are inspired by the values of freedom, fairness and responsibility, and a shared desire to work in the national interest. Working together, we are confident that we can take the country through difficult times to better days ahead.

We believe the programme can deliver radical, reforming government, a stronger society, a smaller state and power and responsibility in the hands of every citizen. Great change and real progress lie ahead.

Have your say

This programme is a historic document in British politics – it’s the first time in over half a century that two parties have come together to prepare joint plans in this way.

This website gives you the opportunity to enter public discussion on the programme. We’ll take all your comments and suggestions on board and publish the Government’s response to those policy areas receiving the most feedback.

In a way, this already confirms what I suspected was poor expectation management. Looking at the language I’d guess they were aiming at a Consult-level engagement (the implied promise being to keep participants informed, listen to and acknowledge concerns and aspirations, and provide feedback on how public input influenced the decision but without any further commitments). The general public, however, reading the same statement, would usually be quick to expect a lot more influence. That’s why it’s always a good idea for the sponsor or convener to be very specific in outlining what participants can and cannot expect.

As Tim Davies noted back in May:

[...] it goes no further to explain who will be reading the comments, what sort of feedback to expect, and whether the goal is discussion between members of the public, or dialogue between the public and government.

[...]

As the Government team behind this online document, and, hopefully future online documents, iterate the development of such spaces, it would be good to see a lot more attention paid to the forms of interaction between citizen and state that are to be facilitated. Personally, I’d like to see a clear statement about exactly who will be reading and summarising the comments; how that will take place; and who the summary will be shared with. And it would be good to have something more nuanced than simply a numbers game for knowing what will get considered.

To be fair, it’s worth pointing out that this project was carried out in an “insanely short” timeframe, as Simon Dickson, who built the Programme for Government website, notes in his comment.

Beth Offenbacker of Public Decisions just announced they will be hosting a weekly Twitter chat on public engagement, starting two weeks from now:

Starting on Tuesday, August 17, PublicDecisions will begin hosting a weekly Twitter chat from 18:00-19:00 Eastern (New York) / 22:00-23:00 GMT on topics related to public engagement.  (Check your respective time zone at www.WorldTimeServer.com.)

[...]

Join us to share resources, ask questions, discuss current news, trends and issues (or even maybe rant a little bit if needed) about any aspect of public engagement.  We may even have a special guest ‘tweeter’ on specific topics every once in a while!

By using a unique hashtag, Twitter chats allow conversations among larger groups of people on Twitter.

Just the other day I had a chance to join #localgovchat (website), a popular Twitter chat that covers open government-related issues at the local level. There were maybe 40 or so participants discussing questions around online surveys, and the quality of contributions was pretty good. Another one I like to listen in on occasionally is #lrnchat (website), for topics at the intersection of social media and learning.

The two things I’ve enjoyed about Twitter chats the most so far are the fact that there is a surprising level of focus and the opportunity to meet new people who work in the same niche.

For this upcoming Twitter chat on public engagement, the hashtag will be #P2chat. So get ready and join on August 17. Should be fun!

It seems the topic of ethics and integrity in public participation is coming up more often these days (see my comments here, here).

Just for the record, these are the rules by which we at Intellitics abide.

First, we have IAP2’s Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation:

Second, IAP2’s Code of Ethics for Public Participation Practitioners:

The International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) Code of Ethics for Public Participation Practitioners supports and reflects IAP2’s Core Values for the Practice of Public Participation. The Core Values define the expectations and aspirations of the public participation process. The Code of Ethics speaks to the actions of practitioners.

Preamble

As members of IAP2, we recognize the importance of a Code of Ethics, which guides the actions of those who advocate including all affected parties in public decision-making process. In order to fully discharge our duties as public participation practitioners, we define terms used explicitly throughout our Code of Ethics. We define stakeholders as any individual, group of individuals, organizations, or political entity with a stake in the outcome of a decision. We define the public as those stakeholders who are not part of the decision-making entity or entities. We define public participation as any process that involves the public in problem-solving or decision-making and that uses public input to make better decisions.

This Code of Ethics is a set of principles, which guides us in our practice of enhancing the integrity of the public participation process. As practitioners, we hold ourselves accountable for these principles and strive to hold all participants to the same standards.

PURPOSE. We support public participation as a process to make better decisions that incorporate the interests and concerns of all affected stakeholders and meet the needs of the decision-making body.

ROLE OF PRACTITIONER. We will enhance the public’s participation in the decision-making process and assist decision-makers in being responsive to the public’s concerns and suggestions.

TRUST. We will undertake and encourage actions that build trust and credibility for the process among all the participants.

DEFINING THE PUBLIC’S ROLE. We will carefully consider and accurately portray the public’s role in the decision-making process.

OPENNESS. We will encourage the disclosure of all information relevant to the public’s understanding and evaluation of a decision.

ACCESS TO THE PROCESS. We will ensure that stakeholders have fair and equal access to the public participation process and the opportunity to influence decisions.

RESPECT FOR COMMUNITIES. We will avoid strategies that risk polarizing community interests or that appear to “divide and conquer.”

ADVOCACY. We will advocate for the public participation process and will not advocate for interest, party, or project outcome.

COMMITMENTS. We ensure that all commitments made to the public, including those by the decision-maker, are made in good faith.

SUPPORT OF THE PRACTICE. We will mentor new practitioners in the field and educate decision-makers and the public about the value and use of public participation.

Needless to say, we believe these rules apply both online and off.

Shortly after the newly-elected coalition government in the UK took office this past May, they launched a website that invited the public to comment on their Programme for Government (their policy agenda for the next few years). The site went live on May 20, 2010 and stayed open for feedback for about three weeks, during which time they received close to 10,000 comments.

They just published their responses, and The Guardian on Monday pointed out a few issues with this project: Coalition’s first crowdsourcing attempt fails to alter Whitehall line

9,500 responded online to request for suggestions but no departments willing to amend any of their policies

The government’s first attempt at crowdsourcing its coalition programme has ended without a single government department expressing a willingness to alter any policy.

Crowdsourcing involves soliciting knowledge and expertise from the public to help find solutions to problems. The coalition asked the public to respond to its programme on government websites. It received 9,500 replies online.

However, its formal responses, published on each website, shows Whitehall regarded the process largely as an endorsement of what it was already doing.

In cases where most of the submissions conflicted with existing policy, the department simply restated the policy. The departmental responses were published last Friday without publicity.

Leaving aside for a second the use of the term crowdsourcing in this context (see here, here), here’s the comment I left over on the Democracies Online Exchange:

This looks like your typical bad attempt at public participation, a prime example how *not* to do it.

Things that may have possibly gone wrong:

Maybe the final decision on what the “programme for government” should look like had already been made, in which case there was no reason whatsoever to consult the public in the first place.

Or maybe all the new leadership was interested in was to inform the public (and maybe acknowledge their concerns) with little or no commitment for this input to be incorporated in any way. In this case, it appears the public’s expectations were managed rather poorly.

Or maybe they *were* in fact open to incorporating public feedback in some areas and to some degree but the input they received was irrelevant, lacked in quality or otherwise was not helpful to them. In which case, maybe they should have facilitated the process better.

Or better yet, maybe the *leadership* was genuinely interested in collaborating with the public on improving the proposed policies but many or most of the key internal stakeholders (the various departments) hadn’t bought into it. In which case someone didn’t do their homework.

Whatever the case may be, any of these would constitute a major and inexcusable failure, in my view.

I’d be interested to hear HMG’s side of the story, though based on how their other online projects have been going so far I’m not convinced they know what they’re doing.

Two of the other online projects I mention are the Spending Challenge, which is still ongoing and has already raised concerns, and Your Freedom, which for a lot of the same reasons has received mixed reviews at best.

The cornerstone of quality public participation, whether online or offline, is process integrity. This is not it!

Announcing that this was going to be a weekly segment on the blog may have been a bit premature (some weeks are just too busy while others are too slow), but let’s get back to presenting some of the interesting conversations we’re getting into elsewhere around the web, shall we?

• Last week, David Eaves (whom I met had the pleasure to hear at OpenGovWest back in March) posted about scoping and moderation problems with an online consultation by the Canadian government that’s currently under way. I left a quick comment: we want to consult, until you say something we don’t like
• Since Stephen Buckley launched his OpenGovRadio weekly live radio show and podcast earlier this year, I’ve been a regular listener and occasional guest. Six months into the show, he is asking his audience for feedback so I made a couple of suggestions: OpenGovRadio at Six Months: What’s Been Learned
• On Monday, I jotted down a few thoughts on the Spending Challenge in the UK, which has sparked an interesting discussion about crowdsourcing and public participation (and a lively conversation on Twitter, which warrants its own follow-up post): Brainstorming Policy Ideas Online: We’re Not There Yet!

You all have a nice weekend!

We already have one very good definition of public participation in the archives, but for comparison’s sake, here’s the official IAP2 definition as per their training material:

IAP2 views public participation as any process that involves the public in problem solving or decision making and uses public input to make decisions.

Public participation includes all aspects of identifying problems and opportunities, developing alternatives and making decisions. It uses tools and techniques that are common to a number of dispute resolution and communications fields.

What do you think? Which one suits you better?

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) just announced a series of regional one-day events for later this Fall. The Bay Area event is scheduled for Friday, October 29, 2010 at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. From the website:

The events will build on what we learned in the past year and a half from our involvement in the White House’s Open Government Initiative, and through efforts like the creation of the Core Principles for Public Engagement. With the increase in national and local attention to open government and public engagement, members of the dialogue and deliberation community are focusing in on three priorities:

• Learning how to use online tools and technology more effectively, to help people discuss contentious issues and have a greater impact on policy decisions.
• Engaging and working with public officials, and working within government structures in more effective and sustainable ways.
• Educating more public managers about what constitutes quality public engagement and how to connect with public engagement organizations and practitioners.

Our fall one-day events will connect practitioners, researchers, and public managers locally around these three priorities. NCDD feels that building knowledge and capacity in these three areas will better position members of our professional community to successfully navigate new opportunities that are emerging in open government and online engagement so they can make a greater impact in their communities.

This will be a great opportunity to meet fellow NCDD members from up and down the West Coast. Intellitics will be there.