White House Request for Input: Understanding Terminology and Scope

January 2, 2012

In a blog post the other week, Code for America helped promote the White House’s most recent request for input, asking: How do you measure participation? The post approaches this question with an understanding of “participation in its broadest sense”. Not to be too nit-picky, but that’s probably not the focused area of exploration I believe the [...]

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Top Posts December 2011

January 1, 2012

2011 finished strong, with December being our second best blog month of the year (our third best ever). Here are the three most popular posts: November 28, 2011: 2012 Event and Conference Radar December 6, 2011: White House Seeking Guidance on E-Participation July 22, 2010: What Is Public Participation? As usual, thank you for commenting here or elsewhere. [...]

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New Book on Online Consultations

December 29, 2011

Peter M. Shane, Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, just announced the arrival of a new book he has co-edited with Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication in the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds: “Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation [...]

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ACUS Recommendations on E-Rulemaking

December 22, 2011

The Assembly of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recently adopted recommendations regarding Agency Innovations in E-Rulemaking (PDF) after having reviewed the websites and e-rulemaking initiatives of 90 agencies. The Conference studied the websites and e-rulemaking initiatives of 90 agencies, each of which had reported completing an average of two or more rulemakings during each [...]

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Expertnet Prototyping Using Quora: Participation Metrics at Week Two

December 21, 2011

Early on during the Expertnet consultation last year, I shared the following (sadly, the Expertnet wiki is locked due to its paid subscription having expired, but Google still has most of it cached): re: Notifying Experts tbonnema Dec 18, 2010 12:43 am It looks like ExpertNet is trying to solve at least two distinct problems: [...]

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Participedia Relaunch

December 20, 2011

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 [...]

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Tom Atlee: Eight Characteristics of Citizen Deliberative Councils

December 19, 2011

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 [...]

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2012 IAP2 USA Board Involvement

December 16, 2011

Last year, after having been actively involved in its creation, I decided to run for a seat on the Board of Directors of IAP2 USA. Here are the goals I had in mind then: And here are a few of the things I’d like the new Board to focus on during the first year: Establish IAP2 [...]

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Roundtable Promises Meaningful (Online) Conversations

December 14, 2011

Reading Clay Johnson’s response to the White House’s request for input, I came across Roundtable, a new take on building an online environment for “meaningful conversations” currently under development. From their blog: At Roundtable we’re all about empowering meaningful conversations – between thought leaders, between friends, and between curated communities of strangers. There is little [...]

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Discuss White House Request for Input: Friday, December 16

December 14, 2011

As you know, the White House is asking for input on public participation best practices and metrics, including for e-participation. I’m informally pulling together a few fellow IAP2 USA members to discuss how we might want to answer the technology part. We might take this opportunity to kick off our community of practice around online [...]

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Five Design Categories for Online Deliberation

December 8, 2011

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 [...]

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White House Seeking Guidance on E-Participation

December 6, 2011

Back in September, when the United States released its U.S. Open Government National Action Plan (PDF), I listed the initiatives it contains in the area of public participation: Open Government Partnership: Public Participation in the US National Plan One item I found particularly appealing. Under ”New initiatives”, the plan states that the U.S. will: Develop Best Practices and Metrics [...]

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Top Posts November 2011

December 5, 2011

Event calendars are popular! Our small list has quickly grown to 24 entries and easily made the list of top posts for November: What Is Public Participation? 2012 Event and Conference Radar Occupy Research Wiki Thanks!

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Paired Dialogue: you+me+politics and RedBlue

December 5, 2011

Over the weekend, I came across you+me+politics, a new online dialogue research project coming out of New York University. From their about page: For our midterm assignment, our class was tasked with creating a conversational space centered on a specific piece of content. Our group decided to focus our work around something controversial. So often, online conversations [...]

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We The People: Latest Adoption Metrics

December 3, 2011

It’s been a little over two months since we last took a look at We The People adoption metrics. Lucas Cioffi, NCDD Board member, on Thursday attended a meeting on the Open Government Partnership (OGP), specifically the U.S. Action Plan. He was able to score the following metrics: White House Meeting on OpenGov Action Plan Of [...]

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Social Cities of Tomorrow: Exploring New Paradigms for Participation

December 2, 2011

Here’s another interesting conference that touches upon participation and technology: Social Cities of Tomorrow, February 17, 2012 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. From their background page: A new take on community and participation models Our focus on collective issues, resource management and governance does not mean that we simply follow in the footsteps of community or [...]

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Origins of the Samoan Circle

November 30, 2011

The following appeared in Public Involvement Techniques: A Reader of Ten Years Experience at the Institute for Water Resources (PDF, pages 265-270), a collection of articles on public involvement from 1983, prepared by James L. Creighton, Jerome Delli Priscoli and C. Mark Dunning for the Institute for Water Resources, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: The [...]

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IAP2 USA Launches Monthly Practitioner Calls

November 29, 2011

A quick advertisement this morning. This is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to work on when I signed up to be a member of the Board last year: Monthly Practitioner Call Kick-Off: December 5, 2011 As part of our 2012 goals around community of practice, we’re launching a monthly practitioner call — [...]

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2012 Event and Conference Radar

November 28, 2011

Update: This post is being continuously updated. Check the comments section for the change log. It’s that time of year again, and so I’ve started to add a few 2012 events to my calendar, both the kind I hope to attend in person as well as the ones I’ll likely have to follow remotely. The [...]

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Participatory Budgeting in the US and Canada: March 2012 in New York, NY

November 27, 2011

Josh Lerner (Co-Director, The Participatory Budgeting Project) shared this conference announcement via the NCDD listserv: International Conference: Participatory Budgeting in the US and Canada March 2012 New York City, NY From the email: In a time of widespread budget crises and plummeting trust in government, politicians and community members are searching for more democratic and accountable [...]

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