The Participation Company
Possibly not of global relevance (yet), but since it is my home town I thought I’d give it a quick shout-out: Earlier today, Offenes Köln (Open Cologne) was officially announced. It’s a grassroots project by Marian Steinbach in Cologne, Germany that aims to make information, documents and data related to local government available (and accessible) to [...]
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Steven Clift just alerted me to a new report from the IBM Center for The Business of Government: A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation (PDF), authored by Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University. I admit I haven’t fully read it yet, but a couple of issues jumped out that I wanted to point out really quick. 1) Terminology [...]
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It’s that time of year, and SXSW Interactive (that week-long mass pilgrimage of web, film, music and — for the first time this year with a conference track of their own — education innovators to beautiful Austin, TX) is almost around the corner. Since there’s a good chance I’ll make the trip out there yet once again, I [...]
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Like last year, we’re taking a quick moment to look back at the topics that stood out over the past twelve months. Here are our top 10 most popular posts of 2011: February 14: Calgary Budget Consultation: 13 Design Principles February 21: CRS Report on Open Government Initiative March 7: How To Create Policy on a Wiki March [...]
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I’m probably the last person to see this, but the Canadian Government provides a comprehensive directory of consultations from various departments and agencies. From the English language version homepage: Welcome to the Consulting With Canadians site! The Government of Canada is committed to finding new and innovative ways to consult with, and engage Canadians. Consulting [...]
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The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) have put out a joint response to the recent White House call for input. It’s very solid, so please make sure to read it in full: Strengthening the Public Participation Elements of the Open Government Plan (PDF). Especially noteworthy is a list of [...]
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Via Alex Moll on Twitter, I just came across OpenGov.gr, the website for the Greek Open Government Initiative. From the English language version: Opengov.gr has been designed to serve the principles of transparency, deliberation, collaboration and accountability and includes three initiatives: Οpen calls for the recruitment of public administration officials. Top level and mid-level openings [...]
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In December, the White House issued a request for input regarding the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan. Their list of seven questions included one on e-participation. To jog your memory, here it is once again: What are the most effective forms of technology and web tools to encourage public participation, engage with the private sector/non-profit and [...]
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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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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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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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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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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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Update 09/29 at 2.18pm: According to this tweet from Macon Phillips, there have been “500k signatures from 300k ppl on 6500 petitions.” In the post below, I forgot to mention that petitions must gain 150 signatures before they can be included in the public listing. I’ve updated the post accordingly. The White House e-petition site [...]
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A couple of months ago, I pointed to Greg Michener’s article in the Christian Science Monitor that proposed the Open Government Partnership (OGP) “could provide the US another means to promote democracy and free trade”. Today, David Eaves expands nicely on this angle: The Geopolitics of the Open Government Partnership: the beginning of Open vs. [...]
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Moments ago, the White House unveiled their new online petition service, We The People: We The People is Live! Welcome to We the People on WhiteHouse.gov. This tool provides you with a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. If a petition gets enough [...]
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As I mentioned earlier, I was a little surprised to see ExpertNet make the U.S. National Plan. The ExpertNet RFI online consultation was inconclusive, to put it nicely, with many key questions left unanswered. There was no formal closure or follow-up, so we don’t know what input was considered, if any. Whatever it is that will be [...]
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A couple of weeks ago, I shared a few questions related to the public participation aspects of the new We The People e-petition site. Earlier today, the White House went into some detail answering all six of them: What the People Want to Know About We the People In the same post, White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips [...]
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The newly-announced We The People e-petition initiative by the White House has been getting a lot of coverage (for example, see here, here, here, here, here). I spent Saturday reading through comment threads on various sites to look for additional feedback, criticisms and concerns related to the public participation process, some of which I’m listing [...]
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Over on Google+, Popvox CEO Marci Harris points to an article on The Hill from Friday that shows where the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is apparently headed with regard to public participation: Sen. Baucus seeks deficit-cutting ideas — but only from Montanans Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the 12 members of [...]
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