White House Petitions: The Need For Robust FAQs

September 2, 2011

As was hinted at late Wednesday night, the White House yesterday announced a significant new Open Government initiative: online petitions! From the official announcement: Something exciting is coming to WhiteHouse.gov. It’s called We the People and it will significantly change how the public — you! — engage with the White House online. Our Constitution guarantees [...]

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Top Posts July 2011

August 1, 2011

Here are July’s most popular posts: What Is Public Participation? Public Participation: It’s the Law! New York Times Budget Puzzle Onwards to a record-breaking August.

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New York Times Poll: “What Should Congress Do?”

July 29, 2011

Someone on Google+ shared this very cool feature the New York Times is offering on their website today. It’s a graphic interface for a poll asking readers to indicate their position in the current debate about the US debt ceiling: The Debt Crisis: What Should Congress Do? The instructions are given as follows: Congress must raise the debt ceiling by Tuesday [...]

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Open Government Partnership: Geo-Political Big Picture

July 20, 2011

The Christian Science Monitor last week featured an article from guest blogger Greg Michener, a Canadian currently based in Brazil, that explores how the Open Government Partnership “could provide the US another means to promote democracy and free trade”: The Open Government Partnership – a new direction for US foreign policy? (note: the article first appeared [...]

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NCDD Summer Fund Drive

July 20, 2011

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) is hosting their first-ever summer fund drive. From the announcement: Since 2002, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has served as a hub, a resource clearinghouse, and a facilitative leader for our dialogue and deliberation community. Together we have been the catalyst for extraordinary connection and [...]

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Call for Chapter Proposals: Sustainable eParticipation

July 20, 2011

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 [...]

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Open Government Partnership

July 19, 2011

I was traveling last week (great trip!) and am still trying to catch up on the newly-announced Open Government Partnership. From their website: The Open Government Partnership is a global effort to make governments better. We all want more transparent, effective and accountable governments — with institutions that empower citizens and are responsive to their [...]

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ParticipateDB Could Use Your Input

July 19, 2011

Over on the ParticipateDB blog, we ask: What’s Next for ParticipateDB? If you’ve been following the project and find it a useful addition to your list of online resources, please let us know what we can and should do to make the site better. A few good ideas have already been added in the comments. Thank [...]

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Deliberative Democracy Exchange 2011

July 11, 2011

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 [...]

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Give A Minute NYC Launches as Change By Us

July 10, 2011

For those who have been following the Give a Minute project (our coverage here, here, here), they just launched in New York City, NY under a new name, Change by Us. According to the blog, a beta version had already launched back in April. The about page explains the site’s focus: users can share ideas, join or create [...]

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Public Participation: It’s the Law!

July 9, 2011

Via @demsoc on Twitter, I found this gem in Local Government Lawyer, a UK-based legal publication that focuses on lawyers working for and advising local authorities: Judge quashes one of first selective licensing schemes over “perfunctory” consultation Apparently, a local government in the UK had decided to implement certain changes to their housing regulations that were negatively [...]

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In Defense of the Twitter Town Hall

July 8, 2011

On Wednesday, Umair Haque, well-known columnist and blogger for Harvard Business Review, shared a few thoughts on the then about-to-go-live Twitter town hall with President Barack Obama: AskObama Is a Meaningless Marketing Stunt His piece read roughly like this (selectively paraphrased for illustrative purposes): “… a tiny dose of digital dumbification… grumble grumble… a cynical [...]

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Top Posts June 2011

July 8, 2011

Once again, here are last month’s three most popular posts: What’s Next California: What Should The Observers Be Monitoring? White House To Seek Input (Again): A Few Basic Tips to Make It Work What Is Public Participation? Thanks for the comments, everyone!

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Three Op-Eds On “What’s Next California”

June 24, 2011

I was invited to contribute one of three short op-eds about the upcoming Deliberative Poll “What’s Next California?” for Zócalo Public Square, an online magazine on civic issues based in Los Angeles, CA. You can read all three of them here (scroll to the bottom for mine): Hurdles Remain, But It’s a Start The second of [...]

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White House To Seek Input (Again): A Few Basic Tips to Make It Work

June 15, 2011

As part of the newly-launched Campaign to Cut Waste, the White House on Monday announced an initiative that aims to “get rid of at least half” of an estimated 24,000 federal websites. From a public participation perspective, here’s the part that’s interesting (emphasis mine): As one of the first steps of the Campaign to Cut Waste and as [...]

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SFOpen 2011: Ask the Candidates about Public Participation

June 14, 2011

On Thursday, I will attend SFOpen 2011, a forum discussion on Open Government with nine of the candidates currently running for the office of Mayor of San Francisco. The event is sponsored by Change.org, GovFresh, WordPress, and various others. From the event site: SFOpen 2011 brings together the 2011 San Francisco Mayoral candidates for a discussion [...]

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What’s Next California: What Should The Observers Be Monitoring?

June 14, 2011

Following my previous post about the upcoming Deliberative Poll here in California, I have been invited to attend the event as an observer. From the invitation email: I am writing to invite you to observe an exciting civic engagement event this summer that will help chart the course for California’s future. On June 24-26, a [...]

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dg.o 2011 First Conference to Use #edem IRC

June 13, 2011

The 12th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2011) kicked off yesterday in College Park, MD. Their topic this year is “Digital Government Innovation in Challenging Times”. While I have yet to attend dg.o in person, it’s been on my radar for a while now, and their 2011 edition looks interesting once again. For example, [...]

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CityCamp SF 2011: Looking for Recent Examples of Public Participation in the Bay Area

June 6, 2011

I had a great time co-instigating the first CityCampSF last year, and wanted to give a shout-out to the upcoming sequel: CityCampSF Saturday, June 18, 2011 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM San Francisco Department of Technology Atrium 1 So. Van Ness Second Floor San Francisco CA RSVP: http://ccsf2011.eventbrite.com From the event description: CityCampSF is municipal employees, journalists, [...]

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Another Nice Thing About the New Utah.gov

June 2, 2011

The newly-relaunched Utah.gov is getting rave reviews from across the Open Government community. Here’s one more reason to like it: Not only do they list all upcoming public meetings and public hearings online, they also allow citizens to create their own “Public Notice Widget”, a custom notification filter. Not sure if this feature was part [...]

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