The international Conference for e-Democracy and Open Government (CeDEM), is celebrating its tenth anniversary next year. The conference: ... brings together e-democracy, e-participation and open government specialists working in academia, politics, government and business to critically analyse the innovations, issues, ideas and challenges in the networked societies of the digital age. Tracks include: E-Democracy and E-Participation [...]
IAP2 USA just announced their 2016 Skills Symposium, February 21-25, 2016 in San Diego, CA. We are excited to present our new one-day digital engagement training course. Digital Engagement in Public Participation This entry-level course covers benefits, tools, design considerations, and cutting-edge practices in using information and communications technologies in support of public participation, for [...]
The RegulationRoom team at Cornell University just launched their first local policy discussion on SmartParticipation.com. From the email announcement: Lately, experts and advocacy groups have been weighing in heavily on NYC traffic congestion. While this is good, it’s also important to hear from the people who deal with congestion daily—commuters, pedestrians, bicyclists, professional & private drivers, [...]
Last November, I started a list to help keep track of the ever-evolving debate around participatory budgeting and its promise and merits, particularly in the United States: Participatory Budgeting: Arguments Pro and Con The goal is to compile a comprehensive list of arguments pro and con Participatory Budgeting (PB). The term participatory budgeting here refers to [...]
Today, the United States released their third Open Government National Action Plan (see also our previous posts here and here). Once again, the plan includes a number of items related to public participation, one of the three open government pillars contained in the original memorandum and directive back in 2009: U.S. Public Participation Playbook (page [...]
I look forward to speaking at Arizona State University's upcoming By the People conference on participatory democracy, civic engagement and citizenship education, December 3-5 in Tempe, AZ (see our earlier mention here). My talk will take a stab at the following: The secret of successful digital engagement: It's not (just) about the technology! As the need for participatory governance [...]
International Facilitation Week is upon us, October 19-25, courtesy the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). For the third year in a row (see here, here), we're involved in organizing an online unconference for practitioners from around the globe interested in sharing and learning about facilitation in virtual environments. Topic brainstorming is set to kick off [...]
Following two events earlier this year (see here), The GovLab will host another online conference on crowdlaw this Thursday, September 24. From the Eventbrite page: The GovLab is organizing its third global online conference on #CrowdLaw, that will bring together practitioners to share their experiences and learn from others about crowdsourced legislative and regulatory lawmaking. [...]
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) New Zealand just launched a new Online Engagement Guidance as part of their very comprehensive web toolkit. This resource was developed under leadership from Amelia Loye, Director of engage2, an Australian based community engagement firm. From her blog post: Our vision in creating the guidance was to collate all of our various [...]
Last week, the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) announced the launch of a public consultation process regarding a set of public participation principles the organization has developed over the past year. The complete version of the principles is available for download (PDF) and also includes a set of principles and good practices on public participation in [...]