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

First off, I like this explanation of the term “citizen participation” (page 6):

What is Citizen Participation?

Citizen participation can be broadly defined as the processes by which public concerns, needs, and values are incorporated into decision-making. Citizen participation happens in many places (e.g., civil society, electoral, legislative, and administrative arenas) and can take many forms (e.g., methods may range from information exchanges to democratic decision-making). [...]

Citizen participation may be indirect or direct:

• Indirect participation, such as voting or supporting advocacy groups, occurs when citizens select or work through representatives who make decisions for them .
• Direct participation occurs when citizens are personally and actively engaged in decisionmaking

It appears that the term “citizen participation” as applied here is more narrow than civic engagement but considerably broader than public participation.

That’s why I don’t quite agree with the statement that “many of the assumptions behind the IAP2 and other organizing principles for citizen participation do not always hold” (page 7), as the side-by-side comparison of “Assumptions and Realities about Citizen Participation” (page seems to slightly confuse the terminology.

For example, the table lists as an assumption that “[p]articipation is focused on decisionmaking and helps direct government allocation of resources” and  contrasts this with the reality that “[p]articipation can be done for reasons other than decisionmaking. Even when focused on decision-making, participation might not (and often need not) address resource allocation issues.”

It’s true that “citizen participation” (as defined above) may not always focus on directly engaging citizens in decision making. “Public participation” as defined by IAP2, on the other hand, is always about decision making and the various levels the public can be directly involved. Furthermore, IAP2′s framework is not limited to resource allocation issues.

For more on this, see our previous posts on terminology (here, here) or browse the dictionary.

2) Mapping tools to IAp2 Spectrum impact levels

On pages 10-12, the report provides a number of examples of online and offline tools as they map to certain levels on the IAP2 Spectrum. This is something I’d love to work on in more detail at some point, especially to help categorize the many online tools out there. It’s been tried several times before but I haven’t quite seen it work.

The challenge, as I see it, is that most group processes or tools don’t map neatly to one level on the Spectrum or another. For example, Deliberative Polling and AmericaSpeaks 21st Century TownMeeting can fall on the Involve or Collaborate part of the Spectrum but only if the decision maker is on board. If, on the other hand, the process is used without a clear link to a decision making process then the Spectrum does not apply.

Both the 2007 CaliforniaSpeaks project (21st Century TownMeeting) and the 2011 What’s Next California project (Deliberative Polling) are examples where either process has been applied for opinion research and advocacy purposes but where the outcomes did not have any concrete impact in terms of decision making.

* * *

At any rate, the main focus of the report is on evaluation and metrics and looks quite useful. Hope to dig in later tonight.

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 variety of backgrounds, that aims to build — you guessed it — a pattern language of group processes.

Here’s how they describe the concept:

A Pattern Language is an attempt to express the deeper wisdom of what brings aliveness within a particular field of human endeavor, through a set of interconnected expressions arising from that wisdom. Aliveness is one placeholder term for “the quality that has no name”: a sense of wholeness, spirit, or grace, that while of varying form, is precise and empirically verifiable.

The term was originally coined by architect Christopher Alexander, who, together with five colleagues, published A Pattern Language for building in 1977. Others have since applied the term to economics, software design, liberatory communication, wikis and more.

The intention behind this ambitious project is to share knowledge that goes to the “deeper core of what brings a group conversation alive”. Their goals include:

1. To support Purpose-driven design. Form should follow function. The most important part of any meeting planning is to get clear on why you are having the meeting. That choice drives all subsequent choices for that event.
2. To deepen the skills of those who serve as group process guides, leaders, hosts, and facilitators. To assist with their learning in how to do design. To help them choose among many possible processes to create something that will be the best possible fit for their situation at a given time. [...]
3. To serve as a resource for those who are teaching others to design, lead, facilitate group process.
4. To increase process literacy among people who are users of process(es)–which is all of us. Our world needs us to wake up and get more savvy about this.

Throughout the three-year period, progress was documented on a public wiki, as new patterns were identified and went from seed stage to full maturity.

Yesterday, the group launched the Group Works Card Deck, a collection of 91 cards to help facilitators and participants make their group process work more effective:

The Group Works card deck is designed to support your process as a group convenor, planner, facilitator, or participant. The people who developed this deck spent several years pooling our knowledge of the best group events we had ever witnessed. We looked at meetings, conferences, retreats, town halls, and other sessions that give organizations life, solve a longstanding dilemma, get stuck relationships flowing, result in clear decisions with wide support, and make a lasting difference. We also looked at routine, well-run meetings that simply bring people together and get lots of stuff done.

More from the about page:

About the Group Pattern Language Project and the Card Deck

Why are we doing this? Our world is, to a very real extent, based on dialogue. Every action taken that involves more than one person arises from conversation that generates, coordinates, and reflects those actions. Those actions have impact. If our human world is based on conversations, then the work of creating and supporting those conversations is central to shaping a world that works. Designing and conducting meetings and other group sessions well is vital to determining our common future. This project grew around a shared understanding that in an urgent way, our survival depends on our ability to work and play well together, and on discovering and creating group processes which are at the same time effective and life-affirming. Because this is easier said than done, we wanted to deepen and spread the insights, skills, and capacity to make that promise real.

The following core beliefs guide our work:

• Seeing a world in flux and deep need, we believe the work of facilitators, both formal and informal, can make a significant difference to the quality and outcomes of essential conversations. Thus we accept a responsibility, as facilitators and participants in group process, to act for the common good.
• We expect convenors of group process to act with full transparency regarding the motives and expected results of the sessions we organize and run. With honesty and humility, we strive to continuously improve the calibre of our work.
• We choose to assume the best of people. We believe people flourish when entrusted with the opportunity to authentically self-manage, collaborate, and make decisions collectively, as true respected equals. Because the most critical issues facing us in the world and in our organizations are complex and interconnected, we need each other to do this—the challenges we face are beyond solving by leaders or experts in isolation. We believe in sharing power, that we are wiser when we work together.
• We believe that effective group processes are clearly driven by the purpose for which they are called. We respect participants’ life energy by invoking processes that productively use their time, resulting in cooperative sessions that meet a high standard in engagement, achievement and connection. We draw on experience and knowledge to create elegant designs with great care, yet remain flexible and open to change as the circumstances, will of participants and flow of events may dictate.
• Good process builds strong communities. Our work is an act of love in service to the world.

The  print version of the deck can be purchased for $25. A PDF is available for download free of charge.

While this marks a major milestone in the project’s history, the work is not done yet:

Because of space limitations, each card aims only to name the essential What and Why of that particular element. In order to actually use the patterns, you’ll need to come up with the How. A lot of Hows are supplied on our website, where you will find a growing pool of information about the patterns represented in this deck. Some cards have plenty of resources already on the website, while others remain to be fleshed out. Over fifty people were involved in the creation of this card deck, and we’d be delighted for you to join the circle by helping explain how to apply the patterns—see more on this below.

It will be fun to watch how this work evolves next.

And to everyone who played a role in this: Congratulations!

This morning, I was alerted to the relaunch of Participedia, an online resource that documents organizations, methods and projects in the area of participatory democracy.

From the about page:

Participedia harnesses the power of collaboration to respond to a recent global phenomenon: the rapid development of experiments in new forms of participatory politics and governance around the world.

We live in a world in which citizens of most countries are asking for greater involvement in collective decisions. Many governments, non-governmental organizations, and even some corporations are responding by experimenting with ways to increase public participation.

Hundreds of thousands of participatory processes occur each year in almost every country in the world. They are occurring in a wide variety of political and policy problems. And they often supplement and sometimes compete with more traditional forms of politics, such as representative democracy.

Participedia responds to these developments by providing a low-cost, easy way for hundreds of researchers and practitioners from across the globe to catalogue and compare the performance of participatory political processes.

Practitioners, activists, government officials, and journalists will benefit from Participedia’s searchable database of cases, methods, and organizations, including knowledge about how well processes have worked for similar problems, under similar conditions.

Social scientists, policy analysts, democratic theorists, and other scholars will benefit from access to a dynamic, diverse, and growing source of comparable qualitative and quantitative data. We encourage you to contribute information on case studies, methods and organizations. The more you participate, the more you will appreciate what this site has to offer.

Read the blog post about the new version here: Welcome to the new, beta version of Participedia!

Contributors need to register, but adding content is easy. For example, I just added a new entry for IAP2 USA.

Tom Atlee is working on a new book (due out this Summer). From an email he sent this morning:

My new book – “Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics” – has gone through two rounds of editorial review. It is scheduled for publication in early August 2012. The publisher – North Atlantic Books, whose books are sold and distributed by Random House – has agreed to post two chapters on the web for pre-publication public review and comment. (This is not something that is ordinarily done, and they are, to their credit, going out on a limb to do this.) In addition to crowd-sourcing editorial perspectives, we want to seed the book’s ideas into the public conversation (in a very hot election year!) and get an early sense of public reaction.

You can get the sneak peek here (one chapter this week, another one next week): Empowering Public Wisdom

From the introduction:

“Public wisdom” results when the public — as a whole or in randomly selected “mini-publics” — engages in learning about, reflecting on, and discussing public affairs in ways that take into account what needs to be taken into account to decide what will produce long term, inclusive benefits.

The chapters being posted on Reality Sandwich describe that kind of randomly selected mini-public — the various forms of temporary, well-informed “citizen deliberative councils.” They tell us about the hundreds of these councils that have been held around the world and how they have been used. They tell us about new forms of councils that could be developed and new ways they could be used-including organizing them at grassroots levels and through using the Internet.

These councils provide a way to readily and affordably generate a legitimate, authentic, coherent, and wise voice of “we, the people” — a voice for “the general welfare” that is not currently present in our political discourse. It moves us beyond partisanship to a place of collective responsibility for our shared destiny. It reclaims the idea of “we, the people” as a coherent political force that integrates the diversity of the whole citizenry rather than a catchphrase used by one more special-interest group that attempts to speak for “the people” but doesn’t really embrace our full range of perspectives and needs.

And here are the eight characteristics Tom has identified:

The purpose of a citizen deliberative council is to inform officials and the public of what the people as a whole would really want if they were to learn about a public concern or issue, carefully think about it and productively talk it over with each other.

The eight characteristics shared by every current form of citizen deliberative council are:

1. It is an organized face-to-face assembly.

2. It is made up of 12‑200 people selected randomly (and usually demographically) so that their collective diversity fairly reflects the diversity of the larger community from which they were drawn. (In this context, “community” means any coherent civic population, whether a block, a citizens’ organization, a city, a province, a country, or any other such public grouping.)

3. It is convened temporarily, for a specified time, usually a few days to a week of actual meetings, sometimes distributed over several weeks. (A rare version goes for many months of meetings every other weekend.)

4. Its members deliberate as peer citizens, setting aside any other role or status they may have for the brief duration of their deliberations, after which they return to their previous lives in their community.

5. It has an explicit mandate to address a specific public situation, issue, concern, budget, group of proposals or candidates, or other public matter.

6. It uses forms of dialogue and deliberation, usually facilitated, that enable its diverse members to really hear each other, to expand and deepen their understanding of the issues involved and to engage together to identify the best ways their community might address those issues.

7. When it is addressing a specific issue, budget, or public policy, its deliberations feature inclusive balanced briefing materials and, usually, interviews with, testimony from, and/or conversations with diverse experts, advocates, and other stakeholders involved with that issue.

8. At its conclusion, it releases its findings and recommendations to its convening authority, concerned officials, the media, the electorate, and/or the larger community from which its members came — and then it disbands.

Ideally, further community dialogue is stimulated by the report and this is sometimes organized as part of the overall process.

Citizen deliberative councils in most current forms have no permanent or official power except the power of legitimacy and (hopefully) widely publicized common sense solutions to compelling public problems.

The chapter goes on to share some of the rich history of citizen deliberative councils and how they could and should be used today.

This looks like a publication to really look forward to. And who knows, maybe subsequent editions will have to revise the first characteristic to also include online assembly.

Earlier this summer, I happened to come across an excellent new article on online deliberation design. Now that it’s out of draft mode, I can finally share it here.

Online Deliberation Design: Choices, Criteria, and Evidence (PDF, final working version) by Todd Davies and Reid Chandler is currently in press and will appear as chapter 6 in Tina Nabatchi, Michael Weiksner, John Gastil, and Matt Leighninger (Editors), Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement, Oxford University Press, Fall 2011:

Abstract: This chapter reviews empirical evidence bearing on the design of online forums for deliberative civic engagement. Dimensions of design are defined for different aspects of the deliberation: its purpose, the target population, the spatiotemporal distance separating participants, the communication medium, and the deliberative process to be followed. After a brief overview of criteria for evaluating different design options, empirical findings are organized around design choices. Research has evolved away from treating technology for online deliberation dichotomously (either present or not) toward nuanced findings that differentiate between technological features, ways of using them, and cultural settings. The effectiveness of online deliberation depends on how well the communicative environment is matched to the deliberative task. Tradeoffs, e.g. between rich and lean media and between anonymous and identifiable participation, suggest different designs depending on the purpose and participants. Findings are limited by existing technologies, and may change as technologies and users co-evolve.

Table 6.1: Summary of Five Design Categories

The authors present a number of design issues, grouped into five multi-dimensional categories (click to enlarge image on the right):

[...] These issues have been selected for inclusion mainly because they have been the subjects of empirical research. As should be apparent, the issues discussed below represent a relatively small subset of all the potential choices a deliberation designer faces. Nevertheless, these issues do provide a way to organize the empirical literature relevant to deliberation design. [...]

Table 6.1 (page 3 in the PDF) illustrates the five design categories and the dimensions they include:

1. Purpose: Why is the deliberation being designed?
   • Outcome (decisions-beliefs-ideas)
   • Collectivity (group-individual)
2. Population: Who will be involved?
   • Recruitment (random-selected)
   • Audience (public-private)
3. Spatiotemporal Distance: Where and when will participants be interacting with each other?
   • Colocation (face to face-telecommunication)
   • Cotemporality (synchronous-asynchronous)
4. Communication Medium: How will communication occur?
   • Modality (speech-text-image-multimodal)
   • Emotivity (impeded-enabled)
   • Fidelity (transformed-unaltered)
5. Deliberative Process: What will occur between participants
   • Facilitation (moderated-unmoderated)
   • Structure (rules-free form)
   • Identifiability (identifiable-anonymous)
   • Incentivization (reward-no reward)

Under “Design Criteria” (page 9), the authors share “some of the [success] criteria that have been applied in the past, especially by researchers evaluating different design choices [...]“. They are:

• Quantity
• Quality
• Inclusiveness
• Preference
• Efficiency
• Efficacy

The article goes on to describe empirical findings related to each of the design dimensions, touching upon some of the key trade-offs involved in choosing either between online and face-to-face or between various online setups, and mentions plenty of opportunities for future research, including:

• Effects of random versus non-random sampling for participant recruitment
• Effects of audience (public versus private deliberations)
• Effects of various modalities
• Effects of structure (specifically, particular techniques)
• Effects of incentives

This research potential is summed up as follows (page 22):

Remarks on Result Specificity and Culturalism

The studies we have cited in this section, together with the design dimensions into which we have organized them, demonstrate that the main question facing future deliberation designers as they contemplate online designs will increasingly be not whether but how to use online tools. Early research in this area tended to treat technology as “a dichotomous variable … either present or not.” But as technologies have evolved, the range of experiences they offer now span a broad spectrum from the simple and truncated text of a Twitter message to the high verisimilitude of the most advanced virtual reality environments, as well as augmented reality systems that attempt to give us the best face-to-face and online experiences simultaneously. Online deliberation and its public version – online deliberative civic engagement – are rich areas of study and design because of the huge space of possibilities within them.

Great stuff! It is clear that given certain objectives, requirements and conditions a variety of design choices may be viable. Furthermore, every tool has its strengths and weaknesses and must generally fit the design approach in order to perform well. There can never be a single most effective web tool for online deliberation (or for public participation, for that matter). That question falls short as long as it’s not based on at least some specifics.

Peter Levine points to an interesting research effort:

OWS research

[...] Thus I am very interested in Occupy Research, a wiki page that includes a research agenda, a survey instrument, a semi-structured protocol for qualitative interviews, guides for researchers, and even a sample release form. Doing this in a “wiki” style, so that anyone is allowed to edit the instruments, is of course very much in keeping with the ethos of the movement itself. Whether it will yield interesting research is an open question. I do like the instruments and questions so far.

The wiki lists the following research questions, among others:

Collaboration and Deliberation

• RQ: Collaboration/Deliberation. What tools/practices/techniques are used by OWS to create consensus positions, documents, comunicados, videos, texts that are shared w/the world to ‘represent’ the demands of the assemblies? Could they be improved? Can OWS be a useful site for codesign of deliberative tools to link f2f assembly decisionmaking w/remote participation?
• RQ: Collaboration/Deliberation. How/where/when were the tools/practices/techniques developed? What are some of the historical trajectories and influences? What about the connections/flows across occupy movements in other parts of the world (e.g. U.S., Arab World, Spain, Greece, etc.)?
• RQ: Comparisons: What are the similarities and/or differences between different occupation sites (within the U.S. and beyond) in terms of tools/platforms/techniques, forms of organization/collaboration/deliberation, tactics, participants, etc.? Via what mechanisms do specific ideas, tools, structures, practices, etc. flow between sites and what is the relevance of particular places and sedimented histories?
• RQ: Comparisons: How does the OWS and broader occupy movement around the world relate to previous experiences in the global justice movement (with respect to tools/platforms/techniques/organization/practices/discourses, etc.)? What are the similarities and differences?

Participation & Movement Building

• RQ: Participation. Who is participating? Even just descriptive stats interesting (age, gender, race/ethnicity, SES, etc). Also, at different levels of participation (key organizer/ camper / came to a march or two / produced media / observer at a distance, just shared or retweeted / etc)
• RQ: Participation: How are occupiers reaching out to wider constuencies? [sic] What specific tools, media, discourses, practices, are being employed?
• RQ: Movement building. How are connections being made (or not) across movements, sector, race, class, ethnicity, gender, etc.? How might these connections be facilitated?

This fits nicely with some of the things I’ve started to track around group decision making and facilitation (see previous post), so I plan to add my findings there.

There’s an interesting new book project launching in Europe, scheduled to come out next year: Sustainable eParticipation

Here’s the introduction:

In the past 5-10 years, eParticipation emerged as a novel theoretical and practical domain, and it will further characterise the policy agendas of most industrialised and developing countries in the near future. By eParticipation, we mean the take-up of ICT solutions to empower citizens and involve/engage them in the public decision making process.

Its state of the art is now characterised by a number of achievements worldwide. In Europe, the eParticipation Preparatory Action 2007-2010 has funded 20 demonstration projects including 30 pilot sites, 100,000 citizens, 50 public sector entities and 70 MEPs from 18 EU Member States. Recently the Bertelsmann Foundation recognized 150 Government-led initiatives worldwide (see www.vitalizing-democracy.org), demonstrating that excellence in eParticipation is a growing and international endeavour.

However, documented practice shows mixed results from eParticipation initiatives, and concerns about sustainability-related matters (the likelihood that an expensive trial program will become “embedded” as a stable practice in the institutional setup of the concerned public sector organisation) have started to emerge. As a result, scholars and practitioners face an increasing need to learn and apply the best methods for creating long-term sustainable eParticipation.

The site lists the following target deliverables:

• a collection of European and international best practice of sustainable eParticipation
• a set of evaluation exercises to be used as guidelines for political understanding and future action
• an overview of existing methods, tools and ICT solutions available as a result of prior experiments
• an initial assessment of the “market potential” of the above.

Francesco Molinari and Rolf Luehrs are the people behind the project. Should make for a great read.

I’ll be heading out to Dayton, OH tomorrow to attend the Kettering Foundation’s Deliberative Democracy Exchange 2011:

[...] This collaborative event is the Kettering Foundation’s annual opportunity to share our research and to get acquainted with people who have just learned about our work and are looking to learn even more. These research exchanges are also a chance to continue conversations and develop collaborations that would not be as easy or even possible at other times during our program year. These research exchanges also include Kettering Foundation colleagues from other countries who participate in the Deliberative Democracy Workshops (DDW). Taken together, the workshops and research exchanges held during DDEx offer a unique opportunity to engage in a stimulating exchange of ideas about democracy.

I’ll be part of a workshop on Digital Strategies for Deliberative Politics, which aims to “explore the opportunities offered by digital/social media to advance deliberative politics with other DDEx participants, to share experience from this field, and perhaps spark collaborations.”

The 300 or so attendees come from all around the world (going through the list, I can count at least 25 countries from all continents). Quite the international crowd!

About the Kettering Foundation:

The Kettering Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan research organization rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Everything Kettering researches relates to one central question: what does it take for democracy to work as it should? Or put another way: What does it take for citizens to shape their collective future?

All lines of Kettering’s research relate to these questions in one way or another. The foundation explores ways that key political practices can be strengthened through innovations that emphasize active roles for citizens. Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people collectively can do to address problems affecting their lives, their community, and their nation.

I understand participants are being encouraged to share their live impressions online. You can follow the newly-launched @KetteringFdn on Twitter, keep an eye on the #DDEx hashtag or like Kettering Foundation on Facebook for occasional updates.

Catching up on tons of good stuff in my feed reader, I just came across a publication by the Knight Foundation that was released earlier this month: Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril and Potential of Networks

In the full report, I found an interesting tidbit about the recent Give A Minute Chicago project (emphasis mine):

“An easy way to lock up bikes.” “Tax break for not owning a car.” “Cleaner train cars.” Chicagoans have posted thousands of ideas in response to an open call for input on how to increase walking, biking and the use of public transportation in their city. This exchange was made possible by Give a Minute, a public-input platform piloted in Chicago in November 2010. The formula is simple: The city poses a call for ideas, citizens post their suggestions on the website or send them in by SMS, and they’re read and responded to by the local agencies, nonprofits and other civic groups working on the issue. Citizens are asked the question on billboards, an idea they post shows up immediately on the website, and the city’s top leaders respond to at least one insightful concept each day. The result has been 2,893 suggestions as of January 2011, of which 97 percent were on-topic. The most common: Heated bus stops, better train security, discounts on monthly passes, more bike lanes and better clearing of multiuse paths in the winter. The Chicago Transit Authority will incorporate them all into its policy making this year.

According to the footnotes, this last piece of information is based on “[e]-mail correspondence with Julia Klaiber at CEOs for Cities in January 2010 (sic!)”.

With regard to any potential impact on decision making that Give A Minute Chicago may have, this is the most concrete statement I’ve read to date. It remains interesting to watch how things will play out eventually. I’m happy to revise my interim assessment if proven wrong.

Another project worth mentioning that’s very much related to the ROI discussions that are happening elsewhere is the Making the Case campaign by the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2). It must have launched shortly after I last wrote about their efforts back in November of last year.

From the site:

Dialogue and deliberation (D&D) is making a real difference to Canadian community life, public policy making, responding to major problems such as climate change and homelessness, and how governments interact with their citizens. These contributions need to be heard and celebrated more widely.

A number of success stories have already been submitted, with more to be published later this year.

A couple of fellow IAP2 USA members and I are interested in doing something similar for the field of public participation here in the US. We’re still in the early stages, but it would be great to have produced a first round of insights by the end of this year. Let me know if you’d like to contribute.

It’s great to see the IAP2 Affiliates form in the US and Canada. IAP2 USA, where I serve on the Board, is making great progress, and Canada is only a few weeks behind us it seems.

Anyway, I would love to go up to Vancouver for this one:

IAP2 BC Chapter Spring Symposium
May 19, 2011
The Listel Hotel
1300 Robson Street, Vancouver, BC

Making the Business Case for Public Participation

Symposium Overview

More than ever government and business decision-makers are critically weighing the value of each business tool they employ / fund. While the discipline of public consultation has earned a legitimate spot as a practice: its strategic value is often challenged; its use viewed as a required administrational “check-list”; and its associated opportunity is often watered down or never realized.

How do we as practitioners ensure that public consultation is used as a valuable and strategic business tool that is sustainably aligned with existing practises, and integrated into how an organization conducts itself and its “business?” This full-day discussion will consider how public consultation can be better stitched into organizational and project paradigms and become viewed by leaders and decision-makers as a valuable strategic asset that delivers a positive / acceptable return on an organization’s investment (money, time, reputation, & outcome).

The agenda is available for download (PDF).

It’s as if someone had read my tweet from last October:

Let’s hope they capture a lot of it and share it on the web.

Last week, Dave Briggs, a long-time commentator at the intersection of government and technology and recently the founder of UK-based Kind of Digital, kicked off what has turned out to be a very productive discussion: The need for micro-participation (that’s the original blog post, though the majority of comments seem to have come in via Govloop).

From the article (emphasis mine):

A theme I’ve been returning to on a regular basis in the talks I’ve been giving lately has been about the need for government to make participation easier.

[...]

Perhaps there’s an opportunity here to learn from the micro-volunteering that is becoming increasingly popular. An easy, quick way to get involved in civic activity that fits into people’s lives the way they are lived now, not fifty years ago.

After all, I may not be able to give up two (or more!) hours of an evening to attend a council meeting, but I’m sat in front of a computer almost all day, and could easily take 15 minutes or longer out to get involved, perhaps by answering some questions, providing ideas, or identifying problems.

Even better, with a smartphone and a bit of geo-tagging, why not tell me how I can contribute from exactly where I am?

Getting involved and participating shouldn’t be a chore. As I mentioned in my post about councillors, we need more people doing less, rather than the situation we have now where only a few people do far too much.

Lowering the barriers to public participation is a topic that matters. Though I didn’t use the exact same term then, here’s how I framed the concept of micro-participation back in late 2009 in a comment on the PEP-NET blog:

Providing better low-level or “drive-by” participation opportunities whereby citizens can make (many) small yet valuable contributions without having to be involved over the full length of a participation project.

Various definitions are currently being proposed, but they all generally tend to cover the following indicators:

• Can be done alone (individual rather than group action)
• Short (takes little time to complete, requires only a short attention span)
• Easy (low level of difficulty)
• No overhead (requires little or no instructions, prep work, learning etc.)
• Independent (only very loosely tied to other activities or participants)
• Immediate (instant results upon task completion)

Before I get into the question of how this concept might be applied to online consultations, it’s time to be reminded once again that the term participation means different things to different people. While it’s often applied fairly broadly to include all kinds of processes that fall into the “civic engagement” category (individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern), I’m referring to the considerably more narrow “public participation” (involving people in decisions that affect them).

With regard to online consultations (a certain form of public participation), there is tremendous potential for micro-participation. If these types of easy, convenient activities can actually be offered as part of the overall process, they promise to make participation more attractive and broaden overall reach. The reason micro-participation looks so appealing is precisely because it avoids a lot of the aspects that can make participation seem cumbersome at times (the need to be engaged over a long period of time, the energy required to digest lots of briefing materials, working off a pre-determined or inconvenient schedule or interacting with strangers, to name just a few).

Some activities that would presumably work well in a micro context include:

• Express personal values that should drive the decision making process
• Express key concerns
• Ask questions
• Submit ideas (brainstorming)
• Prioritize, rate or rank items

However, it’s clear that not all processes within a consultation lend themselves to a micro approach. Dialogue and deliberation take time and energy. They require a certain level of focus and attention and usually considerable information and learning efforts beforehand.

In order to increase the likelihood of micro-participation to occur, conveners can do three things:

• Explicitly invite participants to indicate their availability and preferred level of commitment
• Identify or create consultation activities that are suitable for micro-contributions
• Facilitate matchmaking between these activities and the available resources (participants)

I’m sure someone somewhere has already tried this. Let’s hope a lot of interesting things will surface at Dave’s new site: microparticipation.com

The Collaboration Project, an initiative by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), just released a new resource: Tools for Online Idea Generation: A Comparison of Technology Platforms for Public Managers

The document is a follow-up to their previous introduction to online group brainstorming, which I thought was a nicely done primer for anyone just getting started with online engagement.

This latest document compares ten online tools for idea generation (one of which hasn’t launched yet), including key benefits and pricing information.

They also provide some guidance what to consider when choosing a tool. From the document (PDF):

Considering your needs

Many technologies are commercially available for online idea generation, ranging from low-cost, out-of-the-box tools to large scale, custom-built solutions. As such, many factors should be considered in deciding which technology best fits your needs. These include:

• Duration of engagement. How long will the idea generation project run? Will it be limited duration or an ongoing “market” of ideas?
• Community. Do you need to be able to identify your “power users,” those whose ideas tend to be the most influential? Do these users need to stand out among participants?
• Responsiveness. Do you need to respond to ideas and comments as the dialogue happens or provide updates on the status of particular ideas?
• Output. What kinds of data and analytics do you need the technology to provide?
• Structure of dialogue. Do the ideas need to be strictly organized or siloed (e.g., by topic), or can all ideas mingle together?
• Cost and resources. What budgetary and staff resources can you allocate to this engagement?
• Support. What degree of technical support might you need from the vendor?
• Deployment. How quickly do you need to launch the engagement?

Remember: While deciding on a technology is important, this decision is best made by aligning the the (sic!) technology to your core purpose for engagement. In other words, let the tools fit your needs, not vice-versa.

A few notes I might add:

• Raw contributions collected via these tools are usually quite messy. The ideas are half-baked (not a bad thing at all, by the way), not unique and tend to include a lot of other stuff (see this older post about different types of participant input). Accordingly, voting on these tools tends to happens prematurely.
• Strictly speaking, most of these tools fail to adhere to one of the core rules of brainstorming, namely to suspend judgment during the initial phase of idea generation. Remember there is no “thumbs down” in brainstorming (see this older post on brainstorming, which contains a couple of helpful definitions and explanations).
• Another common feature in this tool category is that they expose the leader board (those ideas which have received the most votes). This, of course, tends to significantly distort the results as the top ideas receive the bulk of participants’ attention (see this post).

No tool is perfect, they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Choosing a tool always requires looking at the trade-offs relevant to a particular situation. The point here is to be aware of the potential limitations and challenges and, where possible, mitigate around them.

This week saw an unexpected focus on wiki-based dialogue and deliberation. To round out the series, here’s a list of shortcomings or challenges I observed back in 2007/2008 when I was reviewing the examples listed yesterday.

With regard to Politicopia (January 2007):

One challenge I see with a pure wiki approach in this context is the fact that in order for participants to contribute they must make edits. And while that is ok when collaboratively writing a document, it does not scale well when it comes to any type of polling or voting.

Secondly, the unstructured nature of the data makes filtering, aggregation, or visualization — in short, anything that helps with the consumption of large amounts of data — very difficult.

With regard to Virtual Petition (January 2008):

Here are some of the issues I see with a pure wiki approach:

• Unstructured, flat text — Almost impossible to slice and dice data in meaningful ways (generally true for most wikis, as far as I can tell): Which arguments or ideas are viewed more often than others? Which are considered relevant? What’s the level of agreement for each item?
• Little to no process support — Workflow, business logic etc. are practically non-existent on most wikis (and while oftentimes that is exactly the reason why they are so useful, in this case it’s a considerable weakness)
• Scalability issues — Ever try to run a vote on a wiki with 1,000+ participants? Now try that while the content of the item you’re voting on is in flux.
• Fairly limited (or at least very loosely structured) social networking capabilities — Who are my friends? What do they think? How can they help me filter information or peer activities?

Note that wikis have come a long way (what with folks integrating IBIS), and it all depends on the use case you’re trying to support, really. Four years later, some of my initial reservations may be a bit dated. What do you think? Do they still apply today?

Stephen Whitehead, researcher at London, UK-based New Economics Foundation (nef), recently alerted me to a new paper of theirs: Connected Conversations

Reflecting on nef’s decade of experience in democracy and participation, this pamphlet argues that tackling the biggest issues, from climate change to social inequality, needs to start with small conversations between friends and neighbours. By linking these small groups together we can sow the seeds for new social movements.

From the executive summary:

Meeting future challenges

The UK faces an interlinked set of economic, environmental and political challenges that have led nef to call for a ‘great transition’ – a fundamental shift to a more sustainable, socially just way of living. But transition cannot be achieved from the top down. It will require central and local government, businesses, communities and individuals to develop their own understandings of sustainability and social justice and to debate and negotiate with each other about the way forward.

At the moment, however, there is no easy way to get this kind of debate to happen. Our social fabric is fragmented, and opportunities for debate are few and far between. There is little space for groups to deliberate about complex, pressing issues and even less space for them to share their views with each other. The internet is at best a partial solution: there is no substitute for face to face discussion.

Processes such as Who Sees What offer a clue as to how problems like this can be overcome. We call this kind of approach ‘connected conversations’. Unlike many forms of public engagement, connected conversations are not about settling issues or reaching consensus. They simply let citizens engage in public discussion with friends, family or colleagues in their existing networks and then link these discussions together. Rather than seeking to generate a collective decision, they reflect that tackling the biggest issues means making many small decisions and then finding the links between them. They are, in effect, talking shops – and we are proud to describe them as such.

Democs, their process for self-facilitated small-group conversations, is outlined on the Who Sees What website:

Democs (Deliberative Meeting of Citizens) is a discussion tool developed by the New Economics Foundation to help ordinary people discover, discuss and decide about complex political issues. Democs comes in the form of a conversation kit which breaks down all the key points about a topic into discrete information cards. Players sort through the cards, choose the ones that they think are important and identify the themes that link them. At the end of the process, participants are asked how they would like policy in this area to work.

[...]

Democs ‘games’ are played by 6-8 people and take up to an hour and a half. Because all the information needed is on the cards, anyone can organise a Democs game and play it at home, at work or even down the pub! When the kit is launched this Autumn, you’ll be able to request a hard copy of the kit free of charge, or download it and print it out and run your own game. Afterwards, you can send us your results so we can include them in the survey.

Very nice! Watch this 10-minute video to see Democs in action:

Who Sees What – discussion game from Stephen Whitehead on Vimeo.

Small-group processes are essential to dialogue and deliberation, yet often neglected or underutilized online. With the first few basic elements of our small-group functionality now in place on Zilino, we can’t wait to explore and emulate some of the many different flavors of these kinds of processes, including such inspiring examples as World Cafe or Democs.

In my previous post, I mentioned that wiki-based policy crafting has been tried before. Well, I thought what better opportunity to reach deep into the archives and dig up a few related examples from around 2007/2008 (including some that tried to tackle slightly different problems, such as issue or debate mapping, but still all fairly similar).

Campaigns Wikia

“[I]t’s time for politics to become more intelligent, and for democracy to really involve the people. Broadcast media tells you what to think and doesn’t let you get involved. It’s time to focus on what you need, what you care about, and the messages you want to get out.” And: “This website, Campaigns Wikia, has the goal of bringing together people from diverse political perspectives who may not share much else, but who share the idea that they would rather see democratic politics be about engaging with the serious ideas of intelligent opponents, about activating and motivating ordinary people to get involved and really care about politics beyond the television soundbites.”

http://campaigns.wikia.com

Debatepedia

“Debatepedia is the free wiki encyclopedia of A-to-Z debates and pro and con arguments. It is the home and future of sound reasoning. Debatepedia is a project of the International Debate Education Association’s (IDEA) and Debatemedia, Inc. Debatepedia enables anyone (you included) to click “edit” and engage in a collective endeavor of documenting and structuring unique pro and con arguments on any topic, even topics that you initiate. Debatepedia is quickly becoming an indispensable resource for debaters, students, citizens, and even politicians to uncover salient arguments in important public debates and develop rational positions and perspectives. At its highest level, Debatepedia will help improve the quality of decision-making itself.”

http://debatepedia.com

Future Melbourne Wiki

“Future Melbourne has been developed using a transparent and collaborative process. [...] When the formal public consultation period arrived, the wiki was a perfect fit for the project as it enables wide-scale collaboration unrestricted by time or geographical constraints.”

http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au

More Perfect

“Imagine an entirely new approach to democracy where everyone is able to participate. Imagine a way to enable more direct public involvement and participation, creating a marketplace of ideas where the public can collaborate with each other on the matters that affect their daily lives. Fundamentally change the way policy makers and citizens approach the creation of laws today. That’s our vision.”

http://www.moreperfect.org

Politicopia

“Politicopia gives people a solid handle on the Utah Legislature. Users create summaries of bills, pro and con arguments, comments, links, and more.  [...] This is an experiment in open democracy.”

http://www.politicopia.com

* * *

Note that several of these sites are either inactive and spam-ridden (Campaigns Wiki), defunct (More Perfect) or have changed considerably over the last few years (Politicopia). If you’re that interested, Archive.org’s most awesome Wayback Machine may still remember what things looked like back in the day.

Any other examples worth mentioning, successful or otherwise? Please, by all means, add them in the comments before they become  completely forgotten. Thanks!

About a week after I put out an open research request to help collect a list of participatory politicians, I remembered a post of mine from way back when that provides a great example of the kind of activity I’m looking for. This came up during the June 2005 ODDC face-to-face meeting on “Deepening Online Deliberation”, which was held in Minneapolis, MN.

Blogging your way to a decision!

Yesterday, Griff Wigley shared a compelling use case regarding blogging for politicians: To blog your way to a decision! Ray Cox, a state representative from Northfield, MN and one of Griff’s clients, has successfully applied this technique in the past.

How it works: over a certain period of time leading up to a vote, the politician would post blog entries whenever anything had had a significant influence on his point of view. A first post might briefly describe the issue, give the due date and his initial take on it. Every time the representative was approached by, say, a lobbyist or an interest group he would then blog about how that changed his opinion – or not.
In addition, the politician actively engaged in dialogue with his readers (via comments and email) and would regularly follow up on reader input, thus signaling sincere willingness to learn.

From Griff’s experience, people tend to gravitate towards a story-telling format like this. Especially for more complex issues, the trade-offs can be illustrated over time as they evolve. Instead of being confronted with a final outcome, the constituents can follow a developing story that relates to their representative on a very personal level.

One of the key benefits to this approach is that the decision making process becomes a lot more transparent and participatory to the constituents. In the end, even those who strongly disagreed with Mr. Cox’s final decision could at least understand and respect how he had reached his conclusions.

I can see how this could be applied quite similarly to other decision making or management processes, for example by a CEO inside a company that is undergoing substantial changes/challenges.

Pretty solid.

I have fond memories of that ODDC workshop. About time there was a follow-up, yes?

We know there are a lot of (online) tools for participation available today, and we find out about more examples of how they are being used almost every day.

About three weeks ago, someone asked me if I knew of any politicians strongly committed to voter participation who “have started to use these techniques sincerely and effectively.”  I thought my answer wasn’t good enough (frankly, I couldn’t come up with any examples), so here’s a call for a bit of community research.

Some of the use cases I think would qualify:

• Inform constituents about decisions or votes that have already been made
• Collect constituent feedback with regard to certain policy proposals with the goal of helping the politician make a more well-informed decision
• Collaborate with constituents on crafting a policy proposal
• Allow constituents to decide a certain issue with the politician being committed to carrying out that decision

In essence, any kind of examples of politicians using social media and other online tools to engage their constituents in their decision-making processes is what I’m looking for.

If you have any leads, please leave a comment below, shoot us an email or use hashtags #edem or #opengov on Twitter. Thanks!

The European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP), a Bremen, Germany-based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote better decision-making through public participation, just shared a new paper titled Making citizens’ voices heard — and listened to. Thoughts on public participation in Europe (PDF).

I found this definition of public participation useful (page 3/4):

Public participation, thus, is the deliberative process by which interested or affected citizens, civil society organizations, and government actors are involved in policy-making before a political decision is taken. It is collaborative problem-solving with the goal of achieving more legitimate policies.

Authors Patrizia Nanz and Simon Dalferth conclude (page 13/14):

Public participation has the potential to revitalize the political system and alleviate the disenchantment of citizens with politics. In this paper we have presented an approach to complement European representative democracies with effective participatory practices. We have discussed the advantages and shortcomings of public participation. We recommend that three steps be taken for public participation to come to fruition: a framework for public participation needs be adopted, a systematic methodology must be developed and a rigorous and continuous analysis of costs and benefits established.

If these steps are taken, public participation has the potential to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of European governance. By fostering deliberation among citizens over the nature of problems and the best way to solve them, participatory practices produce a pool of (transnationally) shared arguments which – disseminated by mass media – contribute to the emergence of a wider public sphere, in which policy choices of member states and the European Union are exposed to public scrutiny (Nanz, 2006). Through public participation, the process of political decision-making in the EU would be opened up both to the input of citizens’ concerns and to public scrutiny of the larger citizenry.

Good stuff. I look forward to meeting some fellow European public participators at the January 8 meetup.

Update 11/14: For more background, see this accompanying NYTimes story: O.K., You Fix the Budget

Yesterday, The New York Times launched Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget, an easy-to-use online budget simulator that challenges participants to balance the US federal budget both short and longer-term. From the website:

Today, you’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it online.

At first glance, this tool looks a lot more mature than the example I reviewed earlier this year (see: Los Angeles Budget Challenge: When Surveys Won’t Take No For An Answer).

The budget simulator assumes a projected budget shortfall of $418 billion (2015) and $1,355 billion (2030). It consists of a total of 32 measures, including 22 spending cuts and ten tax increases. Each measure lists the dollar value in projected savings to the deficit in 2015 and 2030. As participants select their preferred measures, an interactive graphic keeps track of and visualizes their choices. Seven of the 32 items allow the participants to choose between two or three different alternatives (e.g. raising the Social Security retirement age to 68 or 70 years), each yielding a different savings impact.

I plugged all 32 measures and their respective dollar impact into a spreadsheet for some quick analysis. To keep things simple, for the seven measures where the tool gave options only the alternatives with the biggest savings impact were considered.

Below a few observations that I found noteworthy.

1) Total impact

The maximum savings impact from all 32 measures combined is $1,142 billion in 2015 (273%) and $3,172 billion in 2030 (234%). That means the tool allows roughly 2.5 times more savings than necessary (Los Angeles was less than 1.5 times). This is good! All things being equal, the higher this factor the more viable combinations can be found to balance the budget.

For reference, a factor of <1 means the budget is impossible to balance. A factor of 1 means there is no choice (no measure can be avoided in order to balance the budget). A factor of >2 usually means there are at least two entirely different solution approaches possible.

2) Total impact by type

Balancing budgets usually comes down to only two types of measures: spending cuts and revenue increases. This example includes 22 spending cuts with a total impact of $473 billion in 2015 (113% of deficit) and $1,751 billion in 2030 (129% of deficit) and ten tax increases with a total impact of $669 billion in 2015 (160% of deficit) and $1,421 billion in 2030 (105% of deficit). That means a balanced budget can be achieved in either year working purely the cost or the revenue side (something that wasn’t possible in the Los Angeles example where less then 75% of the projected deficit could be balanced by relying on one of the two types alone).

3) Short-term vs. long-term impact by type

It appears that in aggregate, spending cuts and tax increases impact the 2015 and 2030 deficits differently. While all ten tax increases together save 160% of the 2015 deficit, they only cover %105 of the 2030 deficit.  Vice versa, while all 22 spending cuts save %113 of the 2015 budget, they cover %129 of the 2030 deficit.

Out of the 10 measures with the highest impact towards 2015, eight are tax cuts. Out of the 10 measures with the highest impact towards 2030, only 5 are tax cuts.

4) Top measures by impact (2015)

The following nine high-impact measures with regard to balancing the 2015 budget can be avoided by choosing all other 23 remaining measures:

• The Bush Tax Cuts: Allow expiration for income below $250,000 a year: $172B (41.1%)
• Eliminate loopholes, but keep taxes slightly higher: $136B (32.5%)
• Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanist to 30,000 by 2013: $86B (20.6%)
• Bank Tax: $73B (17.5%)
• Estate Taxes: Return the estate tax to Clinton-era levels: $50B (12.0%)
• Payroll tax: Subject some incomes above $106,000 to tax: $50B (12.0%)
• Millionaire’s tax on income above $1 million: $50B (12.0%)
• National sales tax: $41B (9.8%)
• Reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance: $41B (9.8%)
• All remaining 23 measures: $443B (106%)

This is an important thing to look at when reviewing budget simulators, and the Budget Puzzle does pretty well. The shorter this list, the fewer of these high-impact measures are actual choices or can even become hidden mandates (one of my main criticisms of the Los Angeles example). If reality dictates little choice, at least the budget simulator has to present these conditions transparently.

5) Top measures by impact (2030)

The following five high-impact measures with regard to balancing the 2030 budget can be avoided by choosing all other 27 remaining measures:

• Health Care Cap Medicare growth starting in 2013: $562B (41.5%)
• Tax Reform Eliminate loopholes, but keep taxes slightly higher: $315B (23.2%)
• Tax Reform National sales tax: $281B (20.7%)
• Existing Taxes The Bush Tax Cuts: Allow expiration for income below $250,000 a year: $252B (18.6%)
• Social Security Raise the Social Security retirement age to 70: $247B (18.2%)
• All remaining 27 measures: $1,515B (111.8%)

Again, pretty good. No apparent automatisms here.

6) Impact by category (2015 / 2030)

Another way to look for potential bias is to examine each of the six budget categories for size and short vs. long-term impact (in parenthesis the percentage of the budget deficit each category covers):

• Domestic: $147B (35.2%) / $166B (12.3%)
• Military: $191B (45.7%) / $349B (25.7%)
• Health Care: $86B (20.6%) / $836B (61.7%)
• Social Security: $49B (11.7%) / $400B (29.5%)
• Existing Taxes: $304B (72.7%) / $502B (37.1%)
• Tax Reform: $365B (87.3%) / $919B (67.8%)

Again, it seems that the measures offered are pretty balanced overall. Or at least I’m not able to detect any obvious bias towards any one category.

7) Quoting your sources

Obviously, budget simulators can only provide a very simplified picture of the world in order to remain usable and still fit on one page. At least the Budget Puzzle mentions the sources upon which its numbers and calculations are based:

Sources: New York Times analysis of data provided by Alan Auerbach and William Gale; Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget; Tax Policy Center; Congressional Budget Office; Sustainable Defense Task Force; Cato Institute; Economic Policy Institute; National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; Joint Committee on Taxation; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Social Security Administration

8. Straightforward handling, transparent display of results

It’s nice that the entire tool fits on one page pretty much. Each choice a participants makes is immediately reflected in the visualization at the top. None of the 32 measures are inter-related, meaning whether a participants selects a measure or not will not affect the impact any of the other measures have. I mention this because I’ve seen this happen elsewhere, and it makes for a confusing or even misleading user experience.

* * *

I can’t speak to the quality of the data, the relevance and completeness of the measures offered, the accuracy of the predicted impacts etc. It would be nice to get a few testimonials from trusted experts from across the political spectrum to confirm the budget simulator is valid.

But all in all, a very nicely done tool to engage citizens around the complex issue that is the federal budget deficit.