Archive for the 'Dictionary' Category

Civic Participation Terminology From the National Democratic Institute

Published by Tim on January 9, 2010 in Dictionary. 1 Comment Tags: .

I came across this document from the National Democratic Institute (NDI):

Civic Participation Terminology: A Guide to Frequently Used Terms and Phrases

This Glossary is part of NDI’s growing library of publications that form the basis for the Institute’s efforts to create a new and precise lexicon to convey the concepts central to democracy and governance. Putting some of these principles into practice, the Glossary was developed through a consultative process with NDI’s staff in Lebanon, other field offices throughout the Middle East as well as the Institute’s Citizen Participation team. Special thanks also to NDI’s civic partners in the Citizen Lebanon program, who served as the inspiration for this project and also offered valuable feedback throughout the process of development.

The document is written in both English and Arabic and is available for download (PDF, 4MB).

Here are a few definitions that are relevant to our work (some of which you may recognize from previous entries)

  • Citizen Jury – A form of deliberative democracy in which small groups of people are brought together to hear evidence about a policy or legislative issue, debate and determine a judgement based on the evidence received. They are used to inform issue-based advocacy campaigns or public official’s decision making on complex policy matters. Also see Deliberative Democracy and Advocacy.
  • Civic Engagement — Involvement in or commitment of citizens and citizen’s organizations into the political or community process as they fulfill their rights and responsibilities.
  • Community — State of being shared or held in common. With regard to participation, community can apply to spatial communities (a body of people living and/or working in the same area), which can come together at any spatial scale for the local to the global.
  • Community Mapping — A social network assessment tool used to determine stakeholders and power brokers in a particular community. This technique for collecting information is often used by civic organizations in order to determine community needs, identify community assets or resources, identify stakeholders, and design appropriate responses, including advocacy campaigns.
  • Consensus — General agreement that involves seeking and taking into account the view of all parties concerned, and reconciling any conflicting arguments. Consensus does not imply unanimity. Consensus is a way of making decisions which aims to include everyone in the process and resolve any objections.
  • Deliberative Democracy — Based on the principle that legitimate democracy arises from the public deliberation of citizens. Activities associated with this process include citizen juries, town hall meetings, public debates, and citizen forums.
  • Participation — The act of sharing in the actvities of a civil society organization, political party, or political process; the condition of sharing in common with others. Participation is a right and responsibility of citizens in a democracy, through issue-oriented civil society organizations and/or political parties.
  • Participatory Budgeting — Process through which a portion of the budget is set aside for citizens to determine how to use it. This process works to increase citizen’s participation in decision-making while improving accountability, community cohesion, and furthering the delivery of cost-effective services.
  • Stakeholder — A person or group with a direct interest, involvement, or investment in a particular issue. For example, employees, stockholders, and customers of a business concern.
  • Stakeholder Analysis — Research of the problems and interests of members of a certain community which politicians or civic groups may wish to influence or engage. Such an analysis is a common first step in the development of party platforms or advocacy campaigns.
  • Town Hall Meeting — Gathering citizens linked by geography or a common interest to meet with public officials to discuss pre-determined issues and express their views.

Solid definitions. Plus, now we know مشاركة (pr. musharaka) means participation in Arabic.

Citizen Jury
A form of deliberative democracy in
which small groups of people are
brought together to hear evidence
about a policy or legislative issue,
debate and determine a judgement
based on the evidence received. They
are used to inform issue-based advoca-
cy campaigns or public official’s deci-
sion making on complex policy mat-
ters. Also see Deliberative Democracyand Advocacy.

Talking About Participation

Published by Tim on October 30, 2009 in Dictionary and Public Participation. 3 Comments Tags: , .

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.

What Is Community?

Published by Tim on September 17, 2009 in Dictionary. 0 Comments Tags: , .

If there was an award for most-overused term, I’m sure community would be a contender.

For future reference, here is one of the best definitions I’ve come across so far. It’s somewhat hidden in a blog post by Canada-based Myriam Laberge from a while back: Collaboration As A Living Emergent Co-Creative Process

A ‘community’ is created over time around shared purpose, language and meaning, and the development of shared values, reciprocity and mutual trust in the longer term from being and doing together.

Community doesn’t happen overnight. And it certainly doesn’t come out of the box with any online tool you might install.

An interesting relationship to point out is the one between community and participation. In my view:

  • Participation often happens within or across existing communities
  • Participation done right can have strong community-building effects
  • Participation without the slightests levels of (a pre-existing) community fabric is difficult to imagine
  • Especially for online participation, a lot of moderation and facilitation activities are often required that are commonly referred to as community management

Myriam will be in San Diego for the 2009 IAP2 annual conference next week, and I hope to get a chance to talk to her in more detail about this important interrelation.

Mind Your Jargon

Published by Tim on March 19, 2009 in Dictionary. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Interesting article on BBC News regarding a list of 200 jargon terms recently “banned” by the UK-based Local Government Association (LGB):

Council leaders have compiled a banned list of the 200 worst uses of jargon, with “predictors of beaconicity” and “taxonomy” among the worst horrors.

The Local Government Association says such words and phrases must be avoided for staff to “communicate effectively”.

Cliches such as “level playing field” and inscrutable terms like “re-baselining” have been prohibited.

LGA chairman Margaret Eaton said: “The public sector must not hide behind impenetrable jargon and phrases.”

Reading through the full list (including suggested replacements) I noticed that quite a few of these terms are frequently used by practitioners in the fields of public particpation, dialogue and civic engagement.

It’s good to use language that’s easy for people to understand. However, I’m not quite sure that simply replacing these terms would always be helpful. There are subtle but important differences in meaning between “stakeholders” and “other organisations,” and sometimes it is important that normal people understand these complexities). Maybe a glossary of key terms is more advisable in these cases.

Whether or not you subscribe to all entries on the list of banned terms, it’s certainly a good reminder to be mindful of the language we use.

One of the categories here on this blog is fittingly named Dictionary. In it, we collect definitions of some of the key terms we use that we have found useful in helping explain the concept behind the jargon.

Via:

What Is E-Consultation?

Published by Tim on March 6, 2009 in Dictionary. 0 Comments Tags: .

The latest edition of the European Journal of ePractice is dedicated entirely to the topic of e-participation. One article contained a useful description of the term e-consultation (actual quote taken from the PDF download, 135 KB): E-consultations: New tools for civic engagement or facades for political correctness?

2) Defining e-consultations

E-consultations constitute interactive “tell-us-what-you-think” on-line platforms where ordinary citizens, civic actors, experts, and politicians purposively assemble to provide input, deliberate, inform, and influence policy and decision making. Initiated by political institutions, non-state actors (or jointly), e-consultations vary in approach, goals, selection of target groups, breadth of themes or issue areas, in the use of technical tools and administrative level at which they are launched (Gøtze 2001). They often simultaneously incorporate vertical citizen-to-government as well as horizontal spaces for citizen-to-citizen interactions. The fact that citizens are provided the opportunity to influence policy making processes makes e-consultations distinct from other spaces in the informal virtual public sphere. In informal discursive e-spaces such as virtual communities, topical forums, chat rooms or newsgroups, participants interact as equals and may but do not explicitly seek to wield political influence. The raison d’être of e-consultations is to affect formal (institutional) political and decision making processes.

E-consultations are also more formal and structured than discussions in the informal virtual public sphere. They tend to have a set duration, agenda, employ the use of moderators, with topics for discussion pre-defined by the host. Given that it is government agencies that in most cases initiate e-consultations, relationships among participants are seen to be asymmetric where the actors involved – politicians, policy experts, citizens – differ in their level of authority, expertise and access to decision-making processes. Arguably, as it will be later discussed, these implicit structural dynamics distinctly influence the e-consultation process.

The article goes on to list five types of e-consultations:

  1. Question and answer discussion forums
  2. Online polls
  3. E-petitions
  4. E-panels
  5. Editorial consultations

The kind of e-consultation we have in mind here at Intellitics is probably a combination of all five.

What Is Deliberation?

Published by Tim on March 4, 2009 in Deliberation and Dictionary. 0 Comments Tags: , .

In their FAQ, The Deliberative Democracy Consortium defines deliberation and deliberative democracy as follows:

What is “deliberation”?

Deliberation is an approach to decision-making in which citizens consider relevant facts from multiple points of view, converse with one another to think critically about options before them and enlarge their perspectives, opinions, and understandings.

What is “deliberative democracy”?

Deliberative democracy strengthens citizen voices in governance by including people of all races, classes, ages and geographies in deliberations that directly affect public decisions. As a result, citizens influence–and can see the result of their influence on–the policy and resource decisions that impact their daily lives and their future.

See also these previous posts:

NCDD’s Learning Exchange lists a few more definitions and notes that deliberation “can be used to solve problems, make decisions, produce recommendations, identify choices, and develop action plans.”