The other day, someone on Twitter passed along this announcement about a new budget consultation in Seattle, WA:

I admit it doesn’t take a lot more to get me interested, so I clicked right through. Here’s a bit of a checklist I usually apply when I scan online consultations such as this one (listed in no particular order):

• Is it clear who is the convener? Sort of. Yes, it does say Seattle City Council in the top header but I’m not sure that’s obvious enough. Plus, the page doesn’t  include any contact information nor does it link back to the council’s homepage.
• Does it say what the site is about? Sort of. Something about balancing the budget and providing input, though very little detail is provided.
• Does the site educate participants about the issue at hand? No. The site does not provide background information or other related resources. How big a deficit are we talking about? Has the council or any of its committees already done any preliminary work? Are there any areas that are out of scope in terms of this consultation? Anything participants should consider before they chime in?
• Is the promise to the public clearly defined? No. Unfortunately, it is not clear at all if and to what degree the participants’ input will inform the decision-making process. Will their ideas be considered? Will there be follow-up afterwards?
• Is the timeline defined? No. The site does not specify any key dates, phases or milestones. When will the comment period close? When will the new budget be decided?
• Are the community ground rules defined? No.
• Are the rules for moderation defined? No.
• Can the convener be easily contacted? No. The site does not provide any contact information.

At first glance, that’s a pretty weak performance. If I were to grade it, I’d give it a straight F. However, further digging painted a somewhat brighter picture.

From the press release:

Seattle City Council seeks resident feedback during 2011 – 2012 budget process

SEATTLE – The City of Seattle faces a $67 million general fund deficit for 2011, meaning there are some very difficult budget decisions to be made in the months to come. As the City Council works to balance the Seattle’s 2011-2012 budget, considerable input from residents is needed to develop a budget that best reflects the needs of our city.

Here we learn about the extent of the 2011 budget deficit ($67m), and a rough timeline is outlined when the budget decisions will be due (over the next few months). The press release mentions three ways for citizens to get involved: the IdeaScale website, which I reviewed above, an online comment form, as well as a series of three public meetings.

The press release makes two promises to the public (emphasis mine):

Visit our new Ideascale page at seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com. Here you can share, comment and vote for ideas on how to balance the budget, with the most essential ideas rising to the top. We are continuously reviewing this feedback and will respond to the most popular ideas.

Submit your thoughts about the budget using our online comment form. Emails received will be tallied and shared with each Councilmember to keep them updated on issues important to you.

That’s starting to look a lot better already.

Finally, the press release contains a link to the homepage of the council’s budget committee, which prominently features this invitation:

Friends and neighbors;

As we work to balance the City’s 2011-2012 budget, we need considerable input from you to put our spending priorities in order. With your help, we will develop a budget that best reflects the needs of our city.

The Seattle City Council is providing many ways for you to participate in this year’s budget process. Share with us your thoughts on which services you expect city government to deliver by:

• Attending one of our three public hearings held in north, south or central Seattle.
• Visiting our Ideascale page at seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com.** Here you can share, comment and vote for ideas on how to balance the budget, with the most essential ideas rising to the top. We are continuously reviewing this feedback and will respond to the most popular ideas.
• Emailing us your thoughts about the budget using this form. Emails received will be tallied and shared with each Councilmember to keep them updated on issues important to you.
• And of course, calling and post mail is always an option for contacting Councilmembers with your feedback.

Stay informed. This site contains multiple resources that will help guide you through the budget process.  Seattle’s budget document is actually the size of a large city phone book, serving as a candid picture of the City’s priorities and a road map for the future. You are an important part of an open and transparent budgeting process. We hope you will join us in this important exercise.

On the same page, a more detailed schedule is provided, though it doesn’t say explicitly when the period for public input will end.

The site also references A Guide to Seattle’s Budget Process (PDF), which contains a nice overview of the basic numbers (revenues, expenses). In it, another two ways to participate are mentioned:

• Video (live meeting coverage on cable or online, recorded meetings online)
• Audio (live meetings via phone)

All in all, it looks like most of the necessary information is available, it may just need some organization across the various web properties.

In closing, here’s my recommendation to the Seattle City Council:

• On the IdeaScale site, provide the necessary context by prominently referencing the budget committee homepage, the calendar and the guidebook.
• Across all sites, be even more explicit about how participants’ input will be used and what impact they can or cannot expect to have.
• Outline any important dates related to the consultation (mainly, when the opportunity for public input will end).

We’ve added this project to ParticipateDB and will watch how it evolves.

A few days ago, a new site was launched that helps track activity across the 23 federal agencies that are using IdeaScale for their consultations on Open Government: OpenGov Tracker

This webpage makes use of the IdeaScale API to aggregate data for all agencies which are making use of that platform. USDA and Health and Human Services also have public feedback sites; however they are not using IdeaScale and so unfortunately, are not included here. We encourage you to visit their sites, too!

Totals reflect all ideas including those submitted to the “Site Feedback” category. The “Top Ideas Across Government” section only highlights ideas in the categories of Transparency, Participation, Collaboration, and Innovation– eg., those related to the Open Government Plans themselves.

The site was created by Robbie Schingler and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, who both work at NASA.

This is a most excellent example of how participation tools can expose some of the quantitative information about an ongoing consultation (IdeaScale itself does some of the basics, though does not offer a convenient view across all 23 projects).

It’s especially nice to see how metrics are being made actionable. The section “Needs Some Love” lists those agencies that haven’t received a lot of input yet along with the call to action: “They need some love. Please help!”

This metrics dashboard is a nice addition to my tracking thread on GovLoop where we also try to keep an eye on qualitative data.

There is of course a lot more that the perfect dashboard could include but this is definitely a refreshing step forward.

Please leave a comment below if you know of any tools that offer this kind of eye candy out of the box.

As was already mentioned at last week’s Open Government Directive Workshop event in DC (see video, starts at around 1:14:20), the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has announced it will offer IdeaScale to federal agencies free of charge in order to help them comply with the tight deadlines presented in the Open Government Directive. From the press release: Further Opens Government, Launches Online Public Dialog Tool for Agencies

WASHINGTON – To help federal agencies fulfill President Obama’s Open Government Directive, the U.S. General Services Administration has introduced a public dialog tool to federal agencies at no cost. GSA hosted more than 70 government officials last week from more than 20 agencies to introduce the tool, answer questions, and gather feedback.

“To help agencies answer President Obama’s call for a more citizen-centered, open government, GSA is making sure those agencies have the necessary tools to meaningfully engage the public,” said David McClure, Associate Administrator for GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Communications. “By leveraging a single solution governmentwide, GSA can simplify the public engagement process for both agencies and the citizen, helping to build and offer uniformity and consistency in how the public engages with their government and move toward making the process as efficient as possible.”

On Dec. 8, 2009, President Obama issued the Open Government Directive requiring federal agencies to launch an open government Web page that incorporates a public feedback mechanism by Feb. 6, 2010. To help agencies meet this benchmark, GSA is providing this tool at no cost to agencies, along with technical, management, and policy support. Agency officials will be able to devote their attention to running, moderating, and analyzing public input.

GSA’s public dialog tool will allow agencies to provide citizens a forum to share ideas, give feedback, and engage in Web-based discussions with their government.

GSA’s Office of Citizen Services, which fosters public engagement by using innovative technologies to connect citizens to their government, will continue to develop additional tools and practices to help agencies provide more opportunities for the public to engage with their government.

CNET News has more details: Feds get new tool for online public feedback

The new tool, which was built by a company called Ideascale, is very cheap to work with and implement, said Bev Godwin, the GSA’s director of new media and citizen engagement. All told, she added, it is expected to cost the GSA just $3,000 and will be free to each agency that wishes to use it.

[...]

Although the tool will display real-time results of the most popular publicly-submitted ideas on each agency’s Web site, there are no guarantees that those ideas will ultimately be implemented. But the point, said Dave McClure, who heads up the GSA’s Office of Citizen Services, is that the tool empowers the spirit of the Open Government Directive, by giving the public an easy way to submit ideas and become involved in the decision-making process.

[...]

All told, McClure said, 21 out of 24 “major” federal departments have signed on to use the tool, which is not mandatory under the Open Government Directive’s guidelines.

As you may remember, IdeaScale was used during phase 1 of the Open Government Dialogue back in May of last year. Three issues were widely noted then:

• Little participation by the convener/host
• Lack of moderation
• Information cascades/herding: like most other tools in this space that allow idea generation and up-or-down voting to happen in parallel (while also exposing the leader board, often as the default view), IdeaScale tends to favor those ideas that gain an early advantage (see my detailed tracking notes on Flickr)

It will be very interesting to see if and how these issues will be addressed during upcoming projects.

To see how IdeaScale has already been used in practice, check out the IdeaScale entry on ParticipateDB. A handful of e-participation projects using this tool have already been captured. Looks like quite a few more will have to be added shortly.

Over the past few days, the site that’s hosting the Open Government Brainstorm has been overrun with off-topic ideas and spam (most noticeably, there has been an avalanche of requests to “release President Obama’s birth certificate in order to prove his US citizenship”). See this snapshot of the tag cloud I took yesterday:

Steven Clift just posted an idea that suggests a tried-and-true way of how to better deal with this situation:

Move Off-Topic Submissions – Add an Out-of-Scope button to move off-topic posts to their own space

Since a few people seek to dominate any public space hosted by government regardless of the topic, re-establish some equity by allowing participants to flag submissions as “off-topic.” With 10 off-topic votes, instead of deleting such posts, simply move them to a proper tab for all *who wish to see* can view them. An online consultation should make engagement more efficient. The online consultation manager should be able to freeze this feature should a minority of users attempt to game the system by flagging clearly on topic posts as off-topic.

Why Is This Idea Important?

When government spends tax dollars (or lends their support to partners like NAPA) to host structured sessions to gather online input, it is a waste of resources if relatively few individuals seek to hijack the public space for their pet issue which is clearly off-topic from the promised theme or agenda. Such submissions should be channeled rather than deleted (which would be a potential violation of the first amendment in what appears to be a legally public forum).

Here’s the comment I left:

Leaving off-topic ideas and spam unmoderated also forces those participants who come to this site with a sincere intention to contribute to dig through layers and layers of unrelated material. This makes participating more cumbersome and a lot less productive (and less fun). Any convener of e-participation effort of this kind would be well advised to being more mindful of their participants’ precious time. In that sense, moderation and community management become a courtesy.

Aside from off-topic discussions and spam, I’ve also noticed an increased use of foul language, general rudeness, and name calling.

I’d argue that taking a hands-off approach to managing an e-participation effort such as the Open Government Brainstorm (especially in light of these spam attacks) is a violation of a couple of rules laid out in the Core Principles for Participation that were released a few weeks ago (see the  expanded text for reference). For example, the third principle advises to avoid “hostile, disrespectful or stilted conversations,” (which, of course, doesn’t usually happen on its own without any management).

In my view, it is the convener’s responsibility to design and manage a process, online or offline, that maximizes each participant’s chance of having an impact, and there’s a cost involved in not doing so: By tolerating abusive behavior and by allowing the quality of the conversation to degrade, a large portion of the participants’ overall time and effort (which in large-scale efforts such as this one can easily exceed tens if not hundreds of person months) will be spent on low-quality, low-impact activities (e.g. browsing duplicate entries) when the real opportunity lies in enabling participants to share the best they got.

As mentioned a few days ago, the past week saw the first round of the Open Government Dialogue, a three-phased e-participation initiative launched by the White House that aims to gather public input for the crafting of the Open Government Directive. From their May 21 announcement:

Today we are kicking off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking on the White House website. In a sea change from conventional practice, we are not asking for comments on an already-finished set of draft recommendations, but are seeking fresh ideas from you early in the process of creating recommendations. We will carefully consider your comments, suggestions, and proposals.

Here’s how the public engagement process will work. It will take place in 3 phases: Brainstorming, Discussion, and Drafting.

Beginning today, we will have a brainstorming session for suggesting ideas for the open government recommendations. You can vote on suggested ideas or add your own.

Then on June 3rd, the most compelling ideas from the brainstorming will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase. On June 15th, we will invite you to use a wiki to draft recommendations in collaborative fashion.

These three phases will build upon one another and inform the crafting of recommendations on open government.

The first phase, Open Government Brainstorm, was convened by the National Academy of Public Administration and used IdeaScale, a crowdstorming or idea generation tool for large groups.

Based on my own Open Government Dialogue site activity tracking data from the past ten days, I did the following quick analysis:

1) Activity over time (incl. registered users)

Table: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planspark/3583067924/in/set-72157618585823580/

Graph: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planspark/3582188431/in/set-72157618585823580/

(Note that the “votes” curve uses a different scale in order to make it fit into the graph.)

2) Average user activity over time

Table: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planspark/3583071264/in/set-72157618585823580/

Graph: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planspark/3583198476/in/set-72157618585823580/

(Note that the “votes per user” curve uses a different scale in order to make it fit into the graph.)

What’s interesting is that up until 05/23 (two days into the initiative, at only several hundred registered users) average user activity was very high but dropped sharply over subsequent days as thousands of new — and much less active — users signed up.

For example, on May 23 at 8.32am (about 36 hours into the project), I measured the highest average activity per user:

• 2.5 ideas / user
• 3.0 comments / user
• 82 votes / user

As of today, May 31 at 12.08pm (almost a full 10 days into the project), average activity per user is much lower:

• 0.2 ideas / user
• 0.6 comments / user
• 11.7 votes / user

I see a real potential here how such user adoption and user activity information could be used in real-time to manage and optimize individual as well as overall participation levels, to distribute attention more evenly (e.g. away from the most highly-rated items) or to encourage collaboration among participants.