Over the past few weeks, our student intern has been busy working on his final thesis. He’ll be sharing a series of discussion starters on the “contextual aspects of e-participation” here on this blog starting this week.

Please have a look and make sure to give him feedback in the comments. Thanks!

Our local IAP2/NCDD group is doing another lunch webinar this Friday, June 4 at 12 noon:

About the Stakeholder Score Webinar

Environmental sustainability efforts not only reduce company risks, but are emerging as a source of competitive advantage. Sustainability is increasingly central to the operations and ongoing reporting of companies, and increasingly corporate executives are seeking meaningful ways to involve relevant constituencies.

Stakeholders engaged in a constructive manner can help companies identify and resolve a wide range of risks and new opportunities. The Stakeholder Score — a free best practice guide and evaluation tool — is designed to address exactly these issues. The Score consists of thirty-nine questions, each addressing one factor that can improve a company’s stakeholder engagement process. Broadly, the questions focus on such issues as:

• What are the key sustainability issues on which companies need to engage with stakeholder groups?
• What are the most effective engagement methods?
• How should stakeholder engagement be addressed in CSR reports?
• How can you benchmark stakeholder engagement?

The Stakeholder Score can be used by corporate social responsibility practitioners to guide their stakeholder engagement and CSR reporting, or it can also be used by any stakeholder who wants to evaluate a company’s engagement program. The Score was developed in collaboration with The Environment Council, a UK-based nonprofit organization.

In this webinar, you will hear from Corinna Kester, author of the Stakeholder Score. She will give an overview of how stakeholder engagement is used by corporations and will discuss the Stakeholder Score and how it can shed light on the quality of a company’s engagement.

The webinar is open to guests. Leave a comment if you’d like to attend, and we’ll send you the dial-in information. Thanks!

For some time, I’ve been suggesting the creation of a national public participation calendar and project directory as a key component of the Open Government Directive:

• May 2009: Open Government Dialogue: “Create an Open Government Project Directory and Knowledge Base”
• January 2010: Open Government Needs Public Participation Calendars

Based on this post on NextGov, it looks like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving in that direction: EPA Web site paving the way to transparency

As more agencies deploy online score cards that publicly chart the progress of specific missions, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Web site for tracking rulemaking could be a model, some government transparency activists say.

EPA launched its site, the Rulemaking Gateway, on Thursday to inform the public of the status of high-priority regulatory actions, such as proposals to control greenhouse gas emissions in heavy-duty vehicles and revise vehicle fuel economy labels.

[...]

EPA has committed to releasing rulemaking plans earlier than in the past. As soon as an agency regulatory policy officer determines it is appropriate to start developing a rule, information will be posted on the gateway, officials said. A regulation could appear on the site months or even years before a file is created on the governmentwide rule-tracking site Regulations.gov.

[...]

The gateway is tightly tied to Regulations.gov to increase public participation in the rulemaking process, said Madia, a federal regulatory policy analyst at the group.

[...]

The EPA Web site will show updated proposals monthly, as decisions are made. Time-sensitive information, such as announcements about public meetings, will be refreshed daily.

You can check out EPA’s new Rulemaking Gateway here.

Things are starting to look really interesting…

Update 2010/02/15: Added feeds for Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the list below, added National Archives to Pipes feed.

The Open Government Directive, issued on December 8, 2009 stated:

1. Publish Government Information Online

[...]

e.  Within 60 days, each agency shall create an Open Government Webpage located at http://www.[agency].gov/open to serve as the gateway for agency activities related to the Open Government Directive and shall maintain and update that webpage in a timely fashion.

f.  Each Open Government Webpage shall incorporate a mechanism for the public to:

i. Give feedback on and assessment of the quality of published information;
ii. Provide input about which information to prioritize for publication; and
iii. Provide input on the agency’s Open Government Plan (see 3.a.).

That day is today!

Here are three sites that track which of the agency.gov/open pages are already live or have feedback options in place:

• http://projects.propublica.org/transparency/
• http://www.sunlightlabs.com/open/
• http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/open/tool_agency_poc.shtml

As was expected, most of these sites are using IdeaScale for input gathering and discussion. Some of you may remember this tool from phase 1 of the Open Government Dialogue (see here, here).

Below is a list of RSS feeds available from the various idea gathering and discussion forums (scroll down for link to the ultimate combo firehose feed):

1. Federal Communications Commission

In a post on the White House blog today, Aneesh Chopra, Federal Chief Technology Officer and the Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, follows up on some of the questions that went unanswered during the FAQ on Tuesday: Answering Your Questions on the Open Government Directive

Russ Gaskin of Washington, DC commented: [W]ould like an example of what citizen participation might look like under this directive.

Russ, I expect citizen participation initiatives to build on the outburst of creativity and experimentation we’ve seen in this space in the first 10 months of this Administration.

For example, Open for Questions gave Americans across the nation a direct line to the Administration to ask exactly what they wanted to know about the Administration’s efforts to get the economy back on track. Openinternet.gov enriched the official record on net neutrality with more than 22,000 comments.   Across the country and online, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been seeking the best ideas for the next generation of school reform through his Listening and Learning Tour.  A Health IT Online Forum is currently drawing on the expertise of stakeholders on the front lines of healthcare delivery to uncover new strategies to accelerate the adoption of Health IT.  And, just yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy launched the Public Access Policy Forum to better understand how the Executive Branch might best enhance public access to peer reviewed papers arising from all federal science and technology agencies.

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the unprecedented three-phase public consultation process  (brainstorming, discussion, drafting) that shaped the Open Government Directive itself.   You can learn more about the Open Government Initiative public consultation process and other innovations in participatory decision making in the Open Government Progress Report to the American People and in the White House Open Government Innovations Gallery.

At the same time, I hope that all of you will engage in the agency public consultation processes that will shape their Open Government plans. I know that Washington does not have a monopoly on the best ideas and want your ideas for how we can make participation opportunities more meaningful for citizens.

Earlier this year, a number of organizations in the participation field collaborated on several occasions to provide the White House with detailed input on exactly this question — how to make participation meaningful. The following two efforts were probably the most notable:

• The Public Engagement Principles (PEP) Project was launched in mid-February 2009 to create clarity in our field about what we consider to be the fundamental components of quality public engagement, and to support Barack Obama’s January 21st memorandum on transparency and open government.  The following principles were developed collaboratively by members and leaders of NCDD, IAP2 (the International Association of Public Participation), the Co-Intelligence Institute, and many others. — PEP website, PDF download (1.6MB)
• Strengthening our Nations Democracy II. On August 2-4, 2009, “experts and advocates for strengthening our nation’s democracy” came together to create new momentum and plans for bringing together the emerging democracy reform movement behind a common set of priorities. At the second Strengthening Our Nation’s Democracy conference, participants shared what they have been learning from their work across the country, and rolled up their sleeves to create collective recommendations and action steps. — PDF download (1.1MB)

Unlike the eight Open Government Data Principles, a set of guidelines developed two years ago by the Open Government Working Group (see meeting notes) which are reflected in the Open Government Directive almost verbatim, the above mentioned recommendations on participation were not explicitly included in the Directive. It remains to be seen to what degree they’ll be found in the Open Government Plans that are now being crafted at the agency level.

Being eagerly awaited by many in the field, the Open Government Directive was released this morning: Open Government Directive (PDF, 84 KB)

Here’s a summary of snippets that deal with participation and engagement:

Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society.

[...]

3. Components of the plan

[...]

b. Participation: To create more informed and effective policies, the Federal Government should promote opportunities for the public to participate throughout the decision-making process.  Your agency’s Open Government Plan should explain in detail how your agency will improve participation, including steps your agency will take to revise its current practices to increase opportunities for public participation in and feedback on the agency’s core mission activities.  The specific details should include proposed changes to internal management and administrative policies to improve participation.

i. The Plan should include descriptions of and links to appropriate websites where the public can engage in existing participatory processes of your agency.

ii. The Plan should include proposals for new feedback mechanisms, including innovative tools and practices that create new and easier methods for public engagement.

[...]

e) Public and Agency Involvement: Your agency’s Open Government Plan should include, but not be limited to, the requirements set forth in this attachment.  Extensive public and employee engagement should take place during the formation of this plan, which should lead to the incorporation of relevant and useful ideas developed in that dialogue.  Public engagement should continue to be part of your agency’s periodic review and modification of its plan.  Your agency should respond to public feedback on a regular basis.

3. Components of the plan

b. Participation:  To create more informed and effective policies, the Federal

Government should promote opportunities for the public to participate

throughout the decision-making process.  Your agency’s Open Government

Plan should explain in detail how your agency will improve participation,

including steps your agency will take to revise its current practices to increase

opportunities for public participation in and feedback on the agency’s core

mission activities.  The specific details should include proposed changes to

internal management and administrative policies to improve participation.

i. The Plan should include descriptions of and links to appropriate

websites where the public can engage in existing participatory

processes of your agency.

ii. The Plan should include proposals for new feedback mechanisms,

including innovative tools and practices that create new and easier

methods for public engagement.