Following their recent informal survey, Lucas Cioffi just shared a comprehensive list of arguments why requiring citizens to register on government websites with their real names may not always be such a good idea: Protect Anonymous Comments Online
Here’s the comment I just left:
Nice list of arguments.
I wonder what opportunities there are to design systems that offer more flexible ways of dealing with identity. For many of the participation scenarios I’m aware of, neither a strict real name requirement nor a complete laissez-faire approach seem to provide the right structure.
As an alternative, an online participation system might well require participants to sign up with their real name or even verify their identity (as part of their account information). Yet participants could choose if and to what extent they want to share their real identity with the other participants or the general public (via their profile and privacy settings). In case the system was hosted by a neutral third party provider, participants might even be able to shield their private information from the convener organization.
This approach would also allow us to differentiate between various activities participants are asked to engage in. Some processes would require real names, other might work better if participants stayed anonymous.
Finally, participants could be empowered to choose as a group which level of anonymity (or revealed identity) they prefer. For example, a group of participants engaging in small-group dialogue could choose to reveal their real names only if and when all of them have expressed that they are comfortable with it.
I think it’s worth exploring these dynamics.
Please leave a comment if you’ve come across any online tools that deal creatively with this tension between anonymous and identified participation.
Thanks once again to a most distinguished network of people we follow on Twitter, I came across an interesting paper yesterday: Leading Complexity: The Art of Making Sense (by Charles J. Palus and David M. Horth)
Introduction
This article is about developing and using creative leadership in the face of complex challenges. What has emerged from seven years of our research with over 500 leaders is a new and surprisingly useful definition: Creative leadership is making shared sense out of complexity and chaos and the crafting of meaningful action.
The following definition of complex challenges has been useful as a starting place in our work with leaders:
Complex challenges are situations or contexts that defy existing approaches or solutions. They are central in importance and demand decisive action. Yet because the organization, team, or individual does not know how to act, there is also a need to slow down and reflect.
Here’s how you know it’s complex:
- You feel “stuck,” and the challenge is a source of real pain. Prior attempts at resolution have misfired.
- The challenge seems outside current or proposed approaches. Existing formulas don’t fit. You may not even be sure exactly how to talk about the challenge.
- The challenge involves a clash of basic assumptions, worldviews, or communities. People disagree about the nature of the challenge and what should be done.
In facing and resolving complex challenges, we have found that two sets of competencies are necessary. One is well known — rational skills such as planning, analyzing, and decision making. Most leaders are aware that they have to develop these in themselves and in their organizations. Indeed, excellence in these skills is typically what people are hired and rewarded for. The second set is less well known in the organizational setting. These creative leadership competencies are typically considered inappropriate and are therefore often neglected.
The paper goes on to explain the following six creative leadership competencies:
- Paying attention – the disciplined art of slowing looking down in order to discern the unfamiliar in the familiar, as well as the familiar in the unfamiliar
- Personalizing – adeptly tapping into one’s unique life experiences and passions to provide insight and perspective on shared challenges
- Imaging – making and using of all kinds of images — pictures, stories, metaphors, visions — to make sense of data and communicate effectively
- Serious play – generating knowledge through exploration, experimentation, rule bending, limit testing, levity, and sport
- Collaborative inquiry – the ability to sustain productive dialogue in addressing complex issues within and across community boundaries
- Crafting – the skillful synthesis of issues, objects, events, and actions into beautifully integrated, meaningful wholes
Sound familiar? I thought so. What struck me is that a very similar skill set is required in the context of dialogue, deliberation or public participation — and not just on the part of the leaders (the conveners or facilitators), but rather the participants themselves.
This is where education and training come in as important building blocks of successful public participation — a great opportunity for online offerings to support this kind of capacity building over time in a cost-effective manner.
As the first phase of the Open Government Dialogue is almost drawing to a close, here’s Intellitics’ humble contribution (as posted a couple of days ago):
Create an Open Government project directory and knowledge base
The basic idea is to make sure that any important information about past, current or upcoming government projects or programs in the areas of transparency, participation and collaboration is captured and shared in a timely manner and easily accessible to anyone interested in or affected by these projects/programs.
The project directory would contain project briefs, contact information, key performance indicators, lessons learned, media coverage, citizen feedback etc.
The knowledge base could include information on key people and organizations, tools, metrics, case studies etc. as well as checklists, how-tos and other best practices.
This information would benefit everyone involved (citizens, government, research, media, vendors etc.) by helping design better projects/programs as well as increase the likelihood of project/program success.
Why Is This Idea Important?
Because a lot of the work that will be performed in this area is relatively new and fairly experimental, it is important that successes as well as failures (or experiences in general) be captured and shared so as to avoid reinventing the wheel too many times.
The idea has since garnered 73 net supporting votes (74 for, 1 against) and has quickly entered the top 100 highest-rated ideas (out of over 1,000), which — given the short amount of time it’s been up — seems to indicate that tracking is high on many people’s agenda.
I feel like sharing a few of the ideas that have accumulated on our wiki over the past couple or so years.
Most of these are related to the hosted e-participation service we’ve been working on, and hopefully some will see the light of day very shortly.
First, though, one general note on what has been driving a lot of our thinking. Public participation can often be fairly dry, especially when it boils down to a public reading exercise where participants are required to work their way through tons of briefing material. And while the work aspect is probably something that’s not entirely avoidable, I believe better efforts need to be made to make participation fun and entertaining and to create a more engaging user experience.
Let’s assume for a second that you’ve already figured out a process that allows you to conveniently split up a larger group into smaller teams, define a certain time frame, and assign specific tasks and deliverables related to the issue at hand that these teams can then collaborate on.
Now, if you also captured some basic demographics (e.g. age or age group) then that would allow you to assemble some teams according to certain demographic criteria. In the case of 1771, the idea is to bring together the fresh views of participants who are still young and foolish (17 years or younger) with the life experience of those wise and of old age (71 years or older) while leaving out everyone in the middle.
The outcomes from a 1771 team dialogue or deliberation could be nicely juxtaposed against those from the other, more randomly assembled ones.
Used in the right context and for the right purpose this could potentially provide quite a bit of community insight (and be entertaining at the same time, depending on how you phrase it).
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