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 the general public by way of aggregating, enhancing and presenting government information from various sources from the “Ratsinformationssystem” (city council information system), the official platform of the City of Cologne.

Open Cologne appears to have been inspired by Frankfurt Gestalten, whose creator Christian Kreutz I interviewed a while back.

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

First off, I like this explanation of the term “citizen participation” (page 6):

What is Citizen Participation?

Citizen participation can be broadly defined as the processes by which public concerns, needs, and values are incorporated into decision-making. Citizen participation happens in many places (e.g., civil society, electoral, legislative, and administrative arenas) and can take many forms (e.g., methods may range from information exchanges to democratic decision-making). [...]

Citizen participation may be indirect or direct:

• Indirect participation, such as voting or supporting advocacy groups, occurs when citizens select or work through representatives who make decisions for them .
• Direct participation occurs when citizens are personally and actively engaged in decisionmaking

It appears that the term “citizen participation” as applied here is more narrow than civic engagement but considerably broader than public participation.

That’s why I don’t quite agree with the statement that “many of the assumptions behind the IAP2 and other organizing principles for citizen participation do not always hold” (page 7), as the side-by-side comparison of “Assumptions and Realities about Citizen Participation” (page seems to slightly confuse the terminology.

For example, the table lists as an assumption that “[p]articipation is focused on decisionmaking and helps direct government allocation of resources” and  contrasts this with the reality that “[p]articipation can be done for reasons other than decisionmaking. Even when focused on decision-making, participation might not (and often need not) address resource allocation issues.”

It’s true that “citizen participation” (as defined above) may not always focus on directly engaging citizens in decision making. “Public participation” as defined by IAP2, on the other hand, is always about decision making and the various levels the public can be directly involved. Furthermore, IAP2′s framework is not limited to resource allocation issues.

For more on this, see our previous posts on terminology (here, here) or browse the dictionary.

2) Mapping tools to IAp2 Spectrum impact levels

On pages 10-12, the report provides a number of examples of online and offline tools as they map to certain levels on the IAP2 Spectrum. This is something I’d love to work on in more detail at some point, especially to help categorize the many online tools out there. It’s been tried several times before but I haven’t quite seen it work.

The challenge, as I see it, is that most group processes or tools don’t map neatly to one level on the Spectrum or another. For example, Deliberative Polling and AmericaSpeaks 21st Century TownMeeting can fall on the Involve or Collaborate part of the Spectrum but only if the decision maker is on board. If, on the other hand, the process is used without a clear link to a decision making process then the Spectrum does not apply.

Both the 2007 CaliforniaSpeaks project (21st Century TownMeeting) and the 2011 What’s Next California project (Deliberative Polling) are examples where either process has been applied for opinion research and advocacy purposes but where the outcomes did not have any concrete impact in terms of decision making.

* * *

At any rate, the main focus of the report is on evaluation and metrics and looks quite useful. Hope to dig in later tonight.

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 thought I’d take a quick look at the schedule. Here are some of this year’s sessions in the areas of politics, open government, crowdsourcing and the like that look particularly promising:

Friday, March 9, 2012

• Rethinking Civilization for the Social Age

Saturday, March 10, 2012

• Crowdsourcing a Revolution: Can We Fix Healthcare?

Sunday, March 11, 2012

• How Is Internet Helping People Make Their Own Laws
• We the People: Creating a Consumer’s Bill of Rights
• Fixing Broke(n) Governments Through Serious Games
• Public Lab: Mapping, DIY Activism & Civic Science
• But Hasn’t Politics Always Been Social?
• What Civil Society Can Learn from Social Web
• A New Culture of Learning: Gaming, Tech, Design

Monday, March 12, 2012

• Sunspots: The Promise and Pitfalls of Gov 2.0
• Utah.gov: Breaking the Mold for eGovernment
• Future of Cities: Technology in Public Service
• Play Time?: Kids and Game-Based Learning
• The Next Frontier of Public Services
• Artists in Labs: Participatory Design at Eyebeam
• Democracy 2.0 in the German Parliament
• How Social Media Imperils Political Parties
• Open Innovation: Millions of Us Solving Problems

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

• Do People Really Want Participatory Government?
• 2012: Social Media’s New Role in Politics

Obviously, there’s lots more to look forward to (and I’m not just talking about the sessions). Hope to see everyone there!

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 12: SXSW Future 15: Designing Successful Online Consultations
• March 28: New Guide from NAPA: Tools for Online Idea Generation
• April 21: Micro-Participation In Online Consultations
• May 7: What Is Civic Engagement?
• October 13: Tree Bressen: The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Consensus Process
• October 19: Occupy Research Wiki
• November 28: 2012 Event and Conference Radar

Thanks for all the smart, timely comments we’ve received here and elsewhere. Always much appreciated!

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 With Canadians provides you with single-window access to a list of consultations from selected government departments and agencies.

Look at some of the consultations in progress and get involved.

We would like your feedback regarding this site. Please take a few minutes to complete a brief User Survey. Your views are important to us and will be considered in assessing the value of this site to Canadians.

Please feel free to submit any additional comments regarding this site that might allow us to serve you better.Contact-Us.

Would be nice to have this in the US.

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 resources that show in detail the benefits of “planned, structured participation”, namely:

• Raising the level of civility and trust in public discourse
• Reducing government costs through closer public oversight and better understanding of citizen needs and attitudes
• Creating more realistic budgets, either by raising “tax morale,” building support for spending cuts, or both
• Generating new policy ideas and tapping the problem-solving capacity of citizens
• Breaking through legislative gridlock on high-profile policy questions

You are invited to sign the document in support. From the blog post:

Though we didn’t have the time to put a draft out to the whole field before the deadline as we would have preferred, we welcome you to add your feedback here via the comments field. And if you or your organization support what we submitted in the joint statement, please add a comment signing on with your support! We’d love to show the White House that groups in our field are indeed “seconding” the statement.

Sign here.

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 in the public sector are available on the Internet. Applications are submitted on-line using a platform available on the opengov.gr website. See the latest Open Calls here (in Greek).

Electronic deliberation. Almost every piece of draft legislation or even policy initiative by the government, are posted in a blog like platform prior to their submission to parliament. Citizens and organisations can post their comments, suggestions and criticisms article-by-article. See the latest Electronic deliberations here (in Greek).

Labs OpenGov. An open innovation initiative that brings together ideas and proposals from citizens, the public and the private sectors. Labs.OpenGov.gr attempts to release the power of decentralised knowledge and explore new ways to tackle modern public administration problems. See the latest Labs events here (in Greek).

The online deliberation site runs on WordPress using at least one plugin (for up-or-down voting).

A couple of screenshots below (using Google Translate).

This particular “Public Consultation on the creation of new corporate structure” ran from November 22 through December 7, 2011. Two documents related to the consultation are available for download (PDF). The results are available for download as well (Excel) and include the list of full-text comments including number of positive and negative votes received.

If any of our Greek readers familiar with this site could share some additional information, that would be great. For example, how popular is this offering? How are comments being processed? The usual stuff. Ευχαριστώ!

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 academic communities, and provide the public with greater and more meaningful opportunities to influence agencies’ plans?

The following response was intended to be a group collaboration between various practitioners, researchers and other thought leaders in the field of e-participation and online engagement, mainly from the U.S. but welcoming contributions from abroad. Despite the very short notice, Intellitics was able to host an informal call on December 16 that drew 14 attendees and expressions of interest from several others. Thank you to everyone who showed up.

We enjoyed a refreshing conversation. Due to the holidays, however, there simply wasn’t enough time to draft and finalize a collective response, especially since some of the people involved were busy preparing statements from their respective organizations, namely the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) and the International Association for Public Participation–United States of America (IAP2 USA). All in all, the January 3, 2012 deadline was a bit unfortunate, to put it mildly.

Not knowing just how strictly the deadline will be enforced, I have decided to go ahead and submit something now rather than wait for our little group effort to run its course. Below, I provide a few initial thoughts as my personal response to the White House request. I seriously hope that the conversation doesn’t end here and that the White House Open Government team will still be open to receiving input in a few weeks from now when a coordinated group response is more likely.

First off, I think the question is a particularly important one. Why? Because if current trends continue, and there is little reason to doubt that they will, public participation will continue to move onto the web just like everything else: from the way we work, to banking, to commerce, to entertainment, to education, to the way we connect socially. Increasingly, we rely on the web to deliver and receive these important functions in our lives, and I expect the same to hold true for community problem solving and decision making and the many ways people participate in the political process. That’s why this question not only deserves a thorough one-time response now but warrants a continued dialogue and exchange between the administration and the experts and innovators in this emerging field.

One of the insights a continued dialogue might reveal early on is that the question ought to be reframed slightly. There is no one single “most effective” e-participation tool available yet and probably won’t be for the foreseeable future. Rather, there are hundreds of tools — whether built specifically for particular e-participation scenarios or being used simply because they are available — which, by and large, all have their strengths and weaknesses and tend to be more or less appropriate depending on the purpose and the circumstances.

Given that the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in support of public participation is still fairly new, this is hardly surprising.

The key thing to understand here is that the effectiveness and overall benefit of any particular tool depends a lot on the context: the objectives, the immediate project parameters and numerous other factors, many of which have nothing to do with technology. Hence, a better way to frame the question might be to ask for the known or likely success factors for applying technology rather than focusing prematurely on specific tools.

Whether involving the public in person, online or both, the most important thing to get right in public participation is the overall process. Without the basics properly in place, no tool will ever be adequate. Those basics include but obviously aren’t limited to the following items:

• What are the decisions to be made?
• To what extent can, should and will the public get to influence the decisions?
• Who is the public?
• What is the timeline?
• Etc.

As I pointed out in my brief talk at SXSW 2011: Even the best tools won’t save you if you get the process wrong! Luckily, we have a global community of practice to build on whose countless decades of experience have produced well-established good practice guides and ethics for designing public participation processes, most notably from IAP2 but also other organizations in the field.

Once an e-participation effort has been scoped, during the planning and design stages, it should become more clear which tools or category of tools are potential candidates. Factors to be considered when choosing a tool for, say, a generic ideation or policy deliberation project might include the following (in no particular order):

• Cost
• Optimal group size / scalability
• Multi-language support
• Facilitation and moderation capabilities
• Ease of use (participants)
• Ease of set-up (administrators)
• Training requirements
• Maintenance needs
• Reporting capabilities
• Proprietary vs. open source software
• Self-hosted vs. cloud solution
• Participant acquisition potential
• Integration with face-to-face processes
• Integration with other technology
• Bandwidth requirements
• Data retention / archiving options
• Support for (quasi-)anonymous participation
• Identity support
• Cross-platform and cross-browser support
• Support for mobile devices
• Branding options
• Customization options
• Fee structure
• Contractual aspects
• Legal aspects
• Accessibility aspects
• Etc.

It’s easy to see how any odd combination of the trade-offs inherent in this short list might have a seemingly weaker tool win out over a more robust one under certain conditions.

Another interesting question that should certainly inform the tool selection process is to what extent any of the perceived shortcomings of any given tool might be remedied by applying a certain structure or manual/human interventions, e.g. framing, scheduling, or facilitation. For example:

• Scalability issues might be overcome by dividing the participants into smaller groups or by breaking up the topic into a series of shorter cycles, each focusing on one sub-topic at a time.
• Lack of moderation capabilities might be overcome by providing participants with more thorough training upfront and by applying higher levels of hands-on facilitation.
• Lack of certain critical features might be overcome by using a combination of tools.

In closing, I’d like to point out that despite these caveats I believe a set of tangible guidelines could be produced to inform the administrations e-participation efforts, and we wouldn’t even have to start from scratch. A lot of research is available to inform this discussion. It will be a matter of pulling together the right resources and sufficiently engaging the experts. This will require significantly more time than was given in the original request. However, based on what I’ve been hearing, there seems to be a great deal of interest among this community of e-participation practitioners, researchers and other interested parties to continue the conversation. Let’s see if the White House will take us up on this offer.

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 White House has in mind.

With apologies for being a bit late (the deadline for submitting input ends tomorrow, January 3), here’s the comment I just left:

The White House is asking specifically for input on public participation, not participation in general.

The latter is fairly broad and may include all kinds of citizen activities (e.g. reporting an issue, building an app, doing cool things with data). The former, on the other hand, is a fixed term that’s very narrowly defined in that it always requires a decision making process and a decision maker willing to involve the public in that decision.

My preferred definition explains the term as follows:

“Public participation is the process by which an organization consults with interested or affected individuals, organizations, and government entities before making a decision. Public participation is two-way communication and collaborative problem solving with the goal of achieving better and more acceptable decisions. Public participation prevents or minimizes disputes by creating a process for resolving issues before they become polarized. Other terms sometimes used are ‘public involvement,’ ‘community involvement,’ or ‘stakeholder involvement.’” (James L. Creighton)

This is the specific area for which the White House is trying to identify best practices and metrics.

While public participation and civic engagement share some of the challenges regarding measuring and metrics (e.g. qualitative aspects, long-term impact), some issues matter more to one than the other (e.g. inclusiveness).

Various posts have previously tried to deal with the terminology issue, for example:

• What Is Public Participation? (March 24, 2008)
• Talking About Participation (October 30, 2009)
• Public Participation: Four Common Misconceptions (September 25, 2010)
• What Is Civic Engagement? (May 7, 2011)

Of the few public replies I’ve read so far, this one gets the focus on decision making mostly right: Outcomes First: Best Practices and Metrics for Public Participation

This is not a question about who owns the best terminology (public participation, public involvement, community engagement all work). It’s about being able to clearly understand the scope of the questions the White House is trying to answer. Otherwise, the input won’t be on target.

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:

1) The matchmaking piece between experts (however defined) and opportunities to contribute: For some time now, I have suggested the creation of a national participation calendar (http://bit.ly/h7mwmv, http://bit.ly/6h18sc), so maybe this is something that ExpertNet could help accomplish.

2) The consultation piece once a group of participants has been assembled: There is already a broad range of tools available today to support these kinds of processes (see http://ParticipateDB.com). Depending on the circumstances, some are more appropriate than others, yet success will to a large extent depend on “soft factors” unrelated to the technology. My question is whether ExpertNet should build or buy a solution or whether it should rely on existing tools on an as-needed basis.

(Full disclosure: My company created ParticipateDB, and we’re developing a tool in this general e-consultation category.)

Just as a reminder, the range of processes Expertnet would potentially aim to support basically came down to this key question:

2. Fact-based advice or deliberative policy creation? The original draft focused on seeking verifiable, fact-based advice from citizen experts. However, later statements have hinted at a significantly broader scope that would allow officials “to pose questions to the public about any topic we’re working on.” Given the nature of many of the topics mentioned (job creation, preventing homelessness among veterans etc.), ExpertNet would have to support policy consultations that are much more deliberative by nature. This has huge design implications.

This general idea of a more agile approach whereby citizen expertise is solicited following a variety of processes and using a variety of existing tools was supported by several other participants. Here is Tim Huegerich (Google cache):

The benefits of using already established, external platforms for responses
TimHuegerich Dec 30, 2010 9:23 am

1. Easy and cheap – less work and expense for setting up ExpertNet
2. Allow the external organizations to perform moderation, etc., sidestepping concerns about how to moderate without the appearance of “Big Brother” trampling free speech.
3. Furthers the original principles:
   • Participation must be easy. (by allowing participation through platforms than citizens are already familiar with)
   • We are not building a new Facebook. (the original proposal does not really come to terms with this principle because it assumed that a community would form around the new platform to moderate responses, etc. – this alternative is much more consistent with the principle)
   • Innovation requires experimentation. (By allowing various partner platforms to compete in generating useful responses, this proposal encourages experimentation and innovation.)

David Karger also made the same point (on Januar 23, 2011), saying that “… I will argue as I have elsewhere that instead of building a [government-sponsored social networking site] we should look to leverage an existing system.” (Google cache).

They really did get a lot of smart answers during the Expertnet consultation, didn’t they?

To this date, there has never been an official follow-up or debriefing, so we can’t know for sure whether the current experiment is intentional or even related. But last week, the White House announced on their blog that they would be using social knowledge site Quora to solicit input on a number of questions: We Want to Hear from You on Quora: Announcing the Startup America Policy Challenge

From the post:

Yesterday, the White House announced $2 billion in public and private resources to help entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. In the spirit of open and participatory government, we also announced the Startup America Policy Challenge. We’re calling on entrepreneurs and the broader public to share their ideas on how to accelerate entrepreneurial innovation in the areas of healthcare, energy and education. Aneesh Chopra, US Chief Technology Officer, kicked off the challenge in a post on Quora and asked a few questions to get the dialogue going.

[...]

All Americans are invited to reply. But I’m especially interested in hearing from entrepreneurs in these areas – and so is President Obama’s Cabinet, particularly Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

You don’t have to be a policy wonk to respond, and you don’t need to describe a detailed policy solution—there are others in government and in academia who will help us with that, as part of the Startup America Policy Challenge. Just tell us what’s on your mind.

So have a good idea? Let us know…

Screenshot 1: Top of page

Screenshot 2: Question metadata

Let’s look at participation metrics to date for the three questions posted:

Education: In the U.S. education system, what can the government do to best enable the use of new learning technologies?

• 18 answers
• 12 comments
• ca. 70 votes
• ca. 6,000 word count (not including comments)
• ca. 325+ average word count per answer
• 516 views
• 53 followers

Energy: In the U.S. energy system, what can the government do to best enable the use of new clean energy technologies?

• 22 answers
• 29 comments
• ca. 50 votes
• ca. 6,000 word count (not including comments)
• ca. 250+ average word count per answer
• 609 views
• 65 followers

Healthcare: In the U.S. healthcare system, what can the government do to best enable the use of new health information technologies?

• 8 answers
• ca. 40 votes
• ca. 3,500 word count (not including comments)
• ca. 425+ average word count per answer
• 297 views
• 37 followers

At a glance, it looks like overall participation rates are still fairly modest so far. However, individual responses are much more detailed as compared to the roughly 125 average word count per comment we saw during previous online dialogues on Change.gov and the Open Government Dialogue (see our metrics update from June 2009).

Quora provides a few distinct features that allow participants to collaboratively improve their answers over time. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to measure the level of activity various answers have seen or whether they have been modified, but it is something that occurs regularly on the site. This an other design choices, such as the limitation to allow only one answer per participant, can greatly help improve quality and reduce overall word count.

As far as I’m aware, no end date has been defined by which input has to be submitted in order to be considered, nor has it been made clear what will happen with the input. Also, I’m not seeing the conveners (Aneesh Chopra and team) actively engage.

Having said that, this is a promising approach that will further advancing the idea of harnessing citizen experts. Assuming that the policy questions at hand are actually ripe for public input, using an existing tool is one way to get there relatively quickly. Given the intended audiences (technology entrepreneurs) and the type of input the White House is after (policy ideas), Quora appears to be an appropriate choice of tool.

If Expertnet were ever to be built as its own tool (which may or may not be necessary), it is experiments like this that will inform its design. Hopefully, we’ll see many more of these.

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 engagement (originally planned for Q2/2012).

We’d like to open it up to others who are interested in the topic, not just IAP2 USA members. Ping me if you’re interested, and I’ll share dial-in information:

Friday, December 16, 2011
at 9am Pacific (60 minutes)
Online note pad

This will be a casual conversation. We’ll do a quick round of comments followed by discussion. Any output will be OK to share and could inform whatever formal or informal responses are being worked on, by individuals or organizations.

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 for Public Participation. We will identify best practices for public participation in government and suggest metrics that will allow agencies to assess progress toward the goal of becoming more participatory. This effort will highlight those agencies that have incorporated the most useful and robust forms of public participation in order to encourage other agencies to learn from their examples.

In a follow-up post today, United States CTO Aneesh Chopra is asking the public for further assistance on this item and to “provide input and ideas on best practices and metrics for public participation”: Seeking Your Input on the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan

All seven questions are great conversation starters, but one specifically deals with online participation:

What are the most effective forms of technology and web tools to encourage public participation, engage with the private sector/non-profit and academic communities, and provide the public with greater and more meaningful opportunities to influence agencies’ plans?

Plenty to discuss! Deadline for submissions is January 3, 2012.

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 all the stats mentioned in the meeting, I think that the most relevant ones were about the Administration’s We The People petition website which has now received 1.5 million signatures on nearly 20,000 petitions. 82 petitions have crossed the minimum threshold of 25,000 signatures, at which point the Administration has committed to issuing a formal response. 32 petitions have received a formal response already in the last 2.5 months and they are aiming to respond to roughly one per day in the months going forward.

Yesterday, the White House shared their latest update (though the growth chart shown at the top somehow does not include November data): We the People Update

We the People is averaging nearly 20,000 new users and 31,000 new signatures every day. Our most active day for new users and signatures was the day of our launch, but we certainly haven’t slowed down: more petitions were created on October 26 than any other day since We the People has been active. [...]

They had around 800,000 registered users at the end of October, maybe around 900,000 by now.

At less than three months into the project, these numbers are quite impressive, making We The People the most successful Open Government initiative in the participation column to date.

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 We the People has been live for one week, and an initial look around (here, here) showed there is a lot to like.

Seven days in, let’s take a look at metrics (note: these numbers only take into account petitions that are currently being displayed on the site, any possible removals since launch day cannot be considered).

First, a growth chart to illustrate adoption rate:

The latest numbers:

• Number of petitions submitted with 150 or more signatures (this is the first threshold petitions must meet in order to be displayed publicly): 100
• Number of signatures total (not including petitions that have not met the 150-signature threshold yet): 453,712
• Number of petitions with 5,000 or more signatures (this is the second threshold petitions must meet in order to qualify for further consideration): 30 (or 30%)
• The 100 petitions have been assigned to one of the 39 available issues 249 times, see screenshot (note: petitioners can choose up to three issues to describe their petition, see screenshot)
• Only three issues have not been used yet (Postal Service, Women’s Issues, and Urban Policy).
• The top 10 most commonly assigned issues:
  1. Civil Rights and Liberties (37)
  2. Human Rights (27)
  3. Government Reform (13)
  4. Economy (13)
  5. Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement (12)
  6. Environment (12)
  7. Budget and Taxes (11)
  8. Health Care (10)
  9. Job Creation (10)
  10. Foreign Policy (8)
• The top 10 most popular petitions:
  1. Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol. (42,629 signatures)
  2. Abolish the TSA, and use its monstrous budget to fund more sophisticated, less intrusive counter-terrorism intelligence. (23,329 signatures)
  3. Forgive Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy and Usher in a New Era of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Prosperity (22,855 signatures)
  4. Call an Investigation into Allegations of Prosecutorial & Judicial Misconduct in the Case of Sholom Rubashkin (21,503 signatures)
  5. Edit the Pledge of Allegiance to remove the phrase “Under God”. (14,820 signatures)
  6. Allow Industrial Hemp to be Grown in the U.S. Once Again (13,479 signatures)
  7. Legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana. (12,926 signatures)
  8. Direct the Patent Office to Cease Issuing Software Patents (12,253 signatures)
  9. Stop Interfering With State Marijuana Legalization Efforts (11,793 signatures)
  10. End the destructive, wasteful and counterproductive “War on Drugs” (11,711 signatures)
• The top 10 petitions combined have received 187,298 signatures (or 41.3% of all signatures)

That’s pretty much all I can extract from the site. Let me know what’s missing, and I’ll add it. Thanks!

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. Closed

[...] analysts and journalists are, I think, misunderstanding the nature of the partnership and its broader implications should it take hold. Presently it is generally seen as a do good project, one that will help fight corruption and hopefully lead to some better governance (both of which I hope will be true). However, the Open Government Partnership isn’t just about doing good, it has real strategic and geopolitical purposes.

In fact, the OGP is, in part, about a 21st century containment strategy.

[...]

[...] And I’d go further, it is a effort to forge a new axis around which America specifically, and a broader democratic camp more generally, may seek to organize allies and rally its camp. It abandons the now outdated free-market/democratic vs. state-controlled/communist axis in favour of a more subtle, but more appropriate, open vs. closed.

The former axis makes little sense in a world where authoritarian governments often embrace (quasi) free-market to reign, and even have some of the basic the trappings of a democracy. The Open Government Partnership is part of an effort to redefine and shift the goal posts around what makes for a free-market democracy. Elections and a market place clearly no longer suffice and the OGP essentially sets a new bar in which a state must (in theory) allow itself to be transparent enough to provide its citizens with information (and thus power), in short: it is a state can’t simple have some of the trappings of a democracy, it must be democratic and open.

The post lists the 46 participating countries (eight founding governments and 38 others who have made a commitment to join soon) and notes those that are most notably absent: China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.

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 support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.

A few first impressions:

1. Overall clean look and feel
2. Friendly, inviting language
3. Easy sign-up process (requires first name, last name, email address and zip code)
4. Sub-three-minute video tutorial
5. Quite comprehensive, but well written (i.e. easy to understand) terms of participation, featured prominently on the homepage
6. A solid set of frequently asked questions (FAQ), including most of what I had suggested: the issue of scope, i.e. which issues are considered valid, is explained in the terms of participation, only the question of evaluation was left out here.

So far, so good.

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 launched, it’s hard to say what ExpertNet will look like.

The announcements yesterday did not reveal any new details, either:

• The White House blog calls ExpertNet “a platform to communicate with citizens who have expertise on a pertinent topic.”
• The U.S. National Plan calls it a platform that will “enable government officials to better communicate with citizens who have expertise on a pertinent topic. It will give members of the public an opportunity to participate in a public consultation relevant to their areas of interest and knowledge, and allow officials to pose questions to and interact with the public in order to receive useful information.”

That’s still pretty vague. In fact, it’s less detailed than the initial proposal as outlined in the ExpertNet RFI back in December 2010.

There is certainly room for better matchmaking capabilities between government agencies that seek citizen expertise and the citizens who want to contribute. This kind of expert networking is a function that an ExpertNet might serve quite well. However, in terms of the various online consultation capabilities that would likely be required (“pose questions to and interact with the public in order to receive useful information”), I doubt that building a unified tool from scratch will be a particularly good use of scarce resources.

There are already plenty of tools available, including — full disclosure – our very own. Taken as a whole, these tools support a wide range of use cases. In seeking and incorporating citizen expertise, government officials should be advised to follow good process and focus on outcomes. They should be encouraged to use whatever combination of tools best fits the job.

I guess we’ll have to see what happens next. Elsewhere in the U.S. National Plan, a commitment is made to “identify[ing] best practices for public participation in government.” As a first step in this direction, maybe the White House — now that some key personnel changes earlier this year have been digested — could provide the long-awaited ExpertNet consultation follow-up and explain what they’ve heard and how the public’s input has been considered.

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 also picked up on the trust issues I had outlined in my previous post:

We know there are more questions out there. One common theme we’re hearing is distrust about how seriously the petitions will be reviewed and considered. That’s an understandable skepticism and one that is best addressed with action, so we invite everyone to judge for themselves once we’re up and running.

Making the effort to answer the skeptics and ensure that the participation process is transparent is certainly a good and necessary first step in building that trust. Nice work!

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 below. Try if you can spot any themes.

1. Youtube: A Big Change Coming to WhiteHouse.Gov

• Will they actually listen, or is this something to distract people?
• This could be totally amazing or totally useless, depending on how the petitions work and if anything is done because of the most popular ones.
• Sounds like a good idea to give people another way to try to influence govt besides rants, blogs, complaining letters, etc. Will attention really be paid to a good idea coming from outside DC?
• Is this just a mechanism by which tax dollars will be used to pay for the collection of information about “likely voters” in preparation for the 2012 campaign?
• The biggest hole in this idea is that because it’s based online, completely public, foreigners can create and sign petitions. This negates the opinions of the true citizens of this country whose government’s policies affects the greatest.
• … and even if they redirect IP’s, it won’t stop those who are not citizens of the US inside of this country who are using the computers to get access to the site. (illegal immigrants for instance).
• A new way to voice your concerns or a new way for the govt. to data mine? [...]
• [...] We found yet another way to spend your money on useless programs. [...]
• trying to gain respect back from the american people eh… AIN’T GONNA WORK!!!!
• ….so Obama is so scared of what the unfiltered (in person) American people will say! He has created an online filter system. Who monitors this? Van Jones?The whole thing will be a liberal lie. Producing Liberal mcfacts.

2. Hotair: White House introduces new online petition website for some reason

The post itself gives this assessment:

If, as I suspect, the site is really just a ploy for his campaign so that they can direct Obama donors there and crank out talking-point petitions for him about how “the people” demand tax hikes on the rich or whatever, then it’s very much true to form. Petitions are supposed to be grassroots populist measures aimed at getting the government to act; if this is a campaign device then it’s really the opposite, a way for the head of government to get his supporters to act on his behalf so that he can get reelected. In fact, tea-party groups are already looking into this as a type of lobbying venture paid for with taxpayer money. I doubt it’s illegal, but it tells you a lot about how far the 2008 magic has faded that Captain Charisma might now be relying on Internet petitions to try to influence Congress.

A few comments head in the same general direction:

• Depending on whether they like the petition or not, you end up on one of two lists: “donors” or “enemies”.
• Or, it could be an email harvesting platform… it needs to be looked out how the information submitted is used… will his campaign cross reference email addresses with his campaign?
• Exactly, how will the email addresses who petition on something like Fast and Furious be used? Just look at what is happened to Gibson Guitars… I would be afraid to petition against Obama with my real email address…
• Time to collect email addresses for the 2012 campaign I guess.
• This is another example of Obama trying to make Congress seem irrelevant to the masses.
• [...] if you go through the site and to the email link page you’ll see there is no privacy policy (they ask for your email address & zip code). Looks like another DNC data-mining operation….
• [...] Astroblogging on the taxpayers’ dime.
• I always thought the government organized things called elections to see what the people wanted. So if requiring an ID disenfranchises poor citizens, what does needed a computer and an internet connection do?
• This has nothing to do with “petitions”. This is social media networking/marketing gathering as many emails and names as possible and using those lists for fund raising. Pretty obvious just like those GOP “surveys” I chuck in the trash every other week.

3. Politico: White House: Send us your petitions

The article quotes a number of people in the government, politics & technology space:

• Joe Newman (a spokesman for the Project On Government Oversight): “Encouraging citizens’ participation is never a bad thing, [b]ut part of me is very skeptical that they’ll be able to handle the number of petitions that come in and give it any sort of thorough review.”
• Patrice McDermott (director Open The Government): “The other test is that range of issues [...] Is it going to be only issues that are only of political benefit to the White House, or — who designs that, and how’s it going to be limited, and will it change over time?”
• Patrick Ruffini (a partner at the Republican-leaning digital media firm Engage): “It’s just more people that they can communicate with [...] It’s the government equivalent of, ‘you may win an iPad,’”
• Kirsten Kukowski (RNC spokeswoman): “[...] more campaign tactics coming out from the official White House”

Again, a few comments:

• [...] Who in the right mind would ever believe for a “NewYork Second” that this Administration would pay attention to anything that any non Ivy League educated American would put forward to them. [...]
• [...] Pure gimmick. For one, they are not going to “consider” ANYTHING that they would rather avoid for political reasons [...] Besides, these “petitions” are so easy to fake and rig”. [...]
• You can bet your bottom dollar that this is just a political gimmick to make the public feel better. So, it’s my opinion, that you would be wasting time in participating.
• A symbolic gesture at best, even if a few coherent petitions with enough genuine signatures are selected for “action”.

* * *

Despite the fact that many of these comments are buried in a sea of noise (follow the links to Youtube or Hotair to appreciate first-hand the quality and tone of the conversation), I believe that most of the concerns expressed are very valid indeed and that they deserve to be addressed by the White House, ideally in the same venues where they’ve been raised.

In public participation, so much depends on trust. Just looking over this small and non-representative sample of comments, it’s obvious that the White House lacks trust among many citizens and potential participants. In order to increase trust, difficult as that may seem, the White House is well-advised to not let these comments go unchallenged or unanswered.

There are a number of recurring themes (with regard to impact, privacy, ethics etc.), so answers to those comments should probably be added to the official FAQ I suggested on Friday.

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 the deficit-reduction supercommittee, is asking people from his home state to suggest ideas for cutting the deficit, and has provided a form on his website that only Montanans can use to send him ideas.

The suggestion form on Baucus’s site is “designed specifically for Montanans to submit ideas to help reduce the deficit.” The form asks for detailed address and contact information from each submitter, and only allows entries from one state, Montana.

Marci writes:

Surprise! The Senator from Montana doesn’t care what you think unless you are from Montana.

Don’t get mad — that’s the way it’s supposed to work. It doesn’t matter how “super” a legislator is, he or she still has to get elected by the people back home. Sorry to break it to you, but with the Debt Supercommittee (and almost any issue that has to move through the Senate Finance Committee), Montanans are more important than you are.

Politicians care narrowly about their constituents (something many citizens don’t seem to realize when trying to influence Congress). However, in this case the constituents are not limited to any particular district or state. Here’s the comment I left moments ago:

From a public participation perspective, this is clearly not the way it’s supposed to work. The supercommittee works on behalf of Congress, and the stakeholders — people affected by or interested in this issue — come from all states. If the committee wants to allow input from citizens, that’s great, but they must provide everyone with an equal opportunity to do so. Relying on the committee members’ own infrastructure, which obviously is biased towards their states, doesn’t quite cut it.

It’s hard to tell how much room there is for this committee to engage in meaningful public participation, anyway (though it certainly would be fun to try now, wouldn’t it), but flaws like this should be avoided.