Lathrop & Ruma (eds.): Open Government: Transparency, Collaboration and Participation in Practice. O’Reilly, 2010.

Years from now, people will look back at the Open Government movement and attribute its beginnings to the release of this book. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The movement has been live and at large since well before this book, and that it has reached the White House is a manifestation of the power of the movement’s ideas.

The book, however, brings a lot of substance to the public debate about open government and offers a range of highly interesting essays and case studies on many aspects involving transparency, participation and collaboration in the public sector. While especially the case studies are very US-centric, many of the central ideas and arguments are universally valid and the first half of the book (and a bit beyond, and towards the end) does an outstanding job at conveying a relatively full picture of the debate. The downside is that the book is a bit lopsided towards open data, and web 2.0/outreach type activities, and does not offer much in the way of e-participation for example. Articles on broader implications of open government are missing, such as analyses from a public management, political science or institutional theory perspective.

But this book can only be a start, and for that it is an excellent one. Readers will find many articles with eloquently presented ideas that are years ahead of how government works today, if not decades. Many examples illustrate the feasibility as well as the genesis of the ideas.

Verdict: A must-read for advocates, geeks, public sector thinkers and especially public officials and employees. An outstanding collection of essays and case studies that provide a substantial base for the open government debate. It is lacking in some areas and lopsided towards open data but that is a gap future publications can and should fill.

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) just announced a series of regional one-day events for later this Fall. The Bay Area event is scheduled for Friday, October 29, 2010 at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. From the website:

The events will build on what we learned in the past year and a half from our involvement in the White House’s Open Government Initiative, and through efforts like the creation of the Core Principles for Public Engagement. With the increase in national and local attention to open government and public engagement, members of the dialogue and deliberation community are focusing in on three priorities:

• Learning how to use online tools and technology more effectively, to help people discuss contentious issues and have a greater impact on policy decisions.
• Engaging and working with public officials, and working within government structures in more effective and sustainable ways.
• Educating more public managers about what constitutes quality public engagement and how to connect with public engagement organizations and practitioners.

Our fall one-day events will connect practitioners, researchers, and public managers locally around these three priorities. NCDD feels that building knowledge and capacity in these three areas will better position members of our professional community to successfully navigate new opportunities that are emerging in open government and online engagement so they can make a greater impact in their communities.

This will be a great opportunity to meet fellow NCDD members from up and down the West Coast. Intellitics will be there.

Update 07/06/2010: Apparently, the site isn’t new at all (new to me, though). My bad. Still… nice work!

Once again, the UK leads the way and shows us what’s possible…

The newly launched TellThemWhatYouThink.org is a website that promises to bring citizens a lot closer to the consultations that affect them. From the website:

We collect government consultations into one place, so you can:

Search current goverment consultations for words and phrases

Set up alerts to tell you when consultations of interest are published

From the FAQ:

What’s this all about, then?

TellThemWhatYouThink.org indexes the details of government consultations from the various websites upon which they’re published and stores the information centrally, allowing them all to be searched and browsed in one place.

The site started because of a desire to be informed of any consultation that is relevant to a certain issue; for example, data sharing. Any department could publish a consultation calling for opinions about data sharing, but the only way to find out about them before this site began was to check each department’s individual website. With over 20 sites to check, this was a very time consuming activity!

As of this writing, consultations from 29 departments are being tracked. Neat-o!

I like this idea, obviously. A central consultation directory and calendar for the entire United States is something I had first suggested during last year’s Open Government Dialogue (and also later on as feedback on the Open Government Dashboard).

We’ll have to wait and see if something similar to TellThemWhatYouThink.org pops up over here eventually. I’m currently not aware of any such efforts.

Towards the end of last week’s Open Gov West conference/unconference in Seattle, WA a series of follow-up meetings on the West Coast was announced, the first of which is scheduled to happen in San Francisco, CA the week after next:

San Francisco OGW Meetup: April 12th 6-8 PM

We’re continuing the conversations from the Open Gov West conference by taking them on the road to meetups across the West Coast.

Open Gov West brought together a diverse range of government folks, electeds, nonprofits, citizens, and technologists on March 26th & 27th. Recomendations on open gov funding, standards, and policy were made, partnerships were launched, open gov ideas were formed.

Hear from San Francisco-based attendees of Open Gov West and hear their reports back from OGW, engaging local open government folks in the conversations and ideas that came out of the conference. Reportbacks start at 6:30 PM and finish at 7 PM. Doors open at 6.

Network with others involved with “gov 2.0″ and “open gov.” Explore ideas for applying lessons from OGW in San Francisco and meet great people to partner with on open gov projects.

This might be a good opportunity to discuss a potential Bay Area event of the same caliber. A bunch of people and I have already been tossing around ideas for doing something later this year with a special focus on participation.  Since neither IAP2 nor NCDD will be doing any major conferences this year there may be room for a sizable local/regional event.

I would like to see an open government event that includes participation as the core component that it is and not as an afterthought (though Open Gov West was certainly the best I’ve seen so far in that regard).

The two-day Open Gov West conference (and un-conference) in Seattle this past weekend, organized by Knowledge as Power, brought together a diverse crowd of open government thinkers and practitioners. A number of private sector innovators, academics and non-profit leaders joined public administrators and officials from the Seattle area as well as those visiting from British Columbia in a multi-faceted discussion on topics ranging from data liberation to public engagement. Day one of the conference followed a traditional format of speeches and panel discussions, while on the second day, a bar camp format was chosen to facilitate small-group dialogue in sessions put forth by conference participants in the morning.

Illustration: Our Open Gov West Twitter word cloud (click on the image for a link to the raw data)

The New York State Senate CIO, Andrew Hoppin, who was invited as the keynote speaker, presented his work which by many is considered a landmark effort in the field. While the event’s focus was on open government, and the majority of participants were active in the open data movement as well as the area of citizen engagement and IT services for public administration, some work on participation projects was also introduced. Travis Triplean for example of the University of Washington presented some research on process and systems design for large-scale consultation platforms, and Rob Hoehn of Ideascale was there to speak about that company’s experiences with the realization of the federal government’s open government initiatives across all departments. A common theme throughout the discussions at Open Gov West was how to work with governments and how to successfully engage a broad range of citizens. The fortunate presence of a considerable number of “non-techies” ensured that discussions produced ideas for very wholesome approaches to citizen engagement and public dialogue. The importance of face-to-face communication has not been rendered void by the increasingly dazzling number of iPhone apps and governmental blogs or 311 systems.

Photo: Intellitics founder and CEO Tim Bonnemann (left) and intern Sebastian Haselbeck (middle) at the wrap-up session at the end of day two

Overall, the event connected a very interesting group of people with each other. Many creative ideas were tossed around and one future collaboration or the other was kicked off. The event was organized quite well, and especially the first day was quite amazing. On the downside, the second day saw a sharp drop in the number of attendees, and many of the later sessions suffered from that and the way the sessions were introduced and distributed. An earlier promotion during the event of the OGW wiki would have yielded a powerful knowledge base around the event’s debates and could have served as a launch pad for ideas, networking and idea-gathering.

As we’re gearing up for our trip to Seattle, WA to attend Open Gov West this Friday and Saturday, I saw Travis Kriplean on Twitter ask whether sessions will be recorded.

Here’s my plea:

I encourage every attendee to bring their audio, photo and video gear and help record as many sessions as possible. I find that often at events like this too much value is lost by not systematically capturing the great content that people put out. Not only is this quite unfortunate for attendees who have to decide between sessions that run in parallel. It’s even more of a bummer for anyone who can’t make it to the event in the first place or will find out about it after the fact.

Sometimes, not everyone will be comfortable with being recorded and that should be respected. However, most of the time, capturing the sessions (from taking and sharing notes to snapping a picture of the whiteboard, from audio to video to live streaming) does not hurt anyone. It isn’t that hard to do, it’s simply that somebody’s gotta do it.

So, in the spirit of sharing and in an effort to help spread the spirit of this conference wide and far, please pack your gear and volunteer to make the content available on the web somehow. People will thank you!

And by the way, in case you’re still undecided about attending, check out the kind of research the above-mentioned Travis, for example, is doing: he explores “the design of systems and processes that support more effective large-scale dialog”. Pretty interesting, right? Thought so. Can’t wait to catch up with him at the conference and maybe do a quick interview for This Week in Participation.

See you all in Seattle!

Looks like I finally get to attend one of the many events on Gov 2.0 and Open Government:

Open Gov West

The greater Northwest and Cascadia region is buzzing with innovative technology and civic engagement organizations, and a number of governments throughout the area have already launched open government directives. Hosted by the City of Seattle and Knowledge as Power, Open Gov West is bringing these leaders together to facilitate regional collaboration and share best practices across open government initiatives. Join us March 26 & 27 at Seattle City Hall!

The two-day event follows a hybrid format: day 1 will be a traditional conference, day 2 an unconference “with a spine of pre-determined topics”.

It’ll be my first time in Seattle, and there are plans under way for an NCDD dinner (watch their listserv for updates) as well as a get-together of local IAP2 members.

If you’re involved with NCDD or IAP2, please consider attending the conference. The thing about most of these Gov 2.0/OpenGov/Transparency etc. conferences and unconferences lately is that the public participation community is usually not very well represented.  So this is a great (and inexpensive) opportunity to increase mindshare for this field.  It would be great to see a few participation veterans turn out so we can maybe do a session together.

In other exciting news, I’ll be accompanied by our newly hired student intern from Germany. We’ll properly introduce him once he arrives in the Bay Area later this week.

Should be a fun trip!

For some time, I’ve been suggesting the creation of a national public participation calendar and project directory as a key component of the Open Government Directive:

• May 2009: Open Government Dialogue: “Create an Open Government Project Directory and Knowledge Base”
• January 2010: Open Government Needs Public Participation Calendars

Based on this post on NextGov, it looks like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving in that direction: EPA Web site paving the way to transparency

As more agencies deploy online score cards that publicly chart the progress of specific missions, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Web site for tracking rulemaking could be a model, some government transparency activists say.

EPA launched its site, the Rulemaking Gateway, on Thursday to inform the public of the status of high-priority regulatory actions, such as proposals to control greenhouse gas emissions in heavy-duty vehicles and revise vehicle fuel economy labels.

[...]

EPA has committed to releasing rulemaking plans earlier than in the past. As soon as an agency regulatory policy officer determines it is appropriate to start developing a rule, information will be posted on the gateway, officials said. A regulation could appear on the site months or even years before a file is created on the governmentwide rule-tracking site Regulations.gov.

[...]

The gateway is tightly tied to Regulations.gov to increase public participation in the rulemaking process, said Madia, a federal regulatory policy analyst at the group.

[...]

The EPA Web site will show updated proposals monthly, as decisions are made. Time-sensitive information, such as announcements about public meetings, will be refreshed daily.

You can check out EPA’s new Rulemaking Gateway here.

Things are starting to look really interesting…

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.

Following up on my list of ten things to monitor, I’ve started a thread on GovLoop: Monitoring and continuous evaluation of OpenGov forums

Here’s my initial post:

As part of my ongoing efforts to monitor the various feedback channels that have been launched as part of the Open Government Directive, I’ll be tracking some basic metrics. I thought I’d share the raw data here on a regular basis so people can chime in and add any other insights they’ve come across.

23 agencies are using IdeaScale, which exposes the following in real-time:

• Number of ideas
• Number of comments
• Number of votes
• Number of registered users

So that’s nice. I’ll check in on the other two forums occasionally as well (here, here).

Aside from cold, hard numbers, I will be looking for examples that illustrate how various agencies are doing in terms of the other nine items on my list. Here it is again in short form:

• Expectation management
• Community ground rules
• Level of convener involvement/participation
• Quality of moderation
• Quantity of participation over time
• Outreach and diversity of participants
• Conclusion and impact
• Tech support
• Project communications
• Mood

I’m using this RSS feed for easy scanning but don’t expect to catch everything. Please share your impressions in the comments.

A set of screenshots will be available on Flickr.

I hope this will attract enough metrics junkies so that we’ll end up with a fairly complete picture in the end. It would certainly be great to see not only a breadth of data points but also to have a discussion about what should be measured and how. After all, the participation piece of the upcoming dashboard still hasn’t been designed in detail yet. Maybe this little exercise will create a few valuable insights.

Now that a whole lot of agency.gov/open websites are live and many agencies have indeed set up a ”mechanism for the public to [...] [p]rovide input on the agency’s Open Government Plan” it’s time to figure out what to watch out for over the coming weeks and months in order to evaluate the success of these initiatives.

As I noted back in January, my hope is that these new projects will address and improve upon three key issues that we saw during last year’s Open Government Dialogue (namely, lack of convener involvement, insufficient moderation, herding).

All in all, I’ll keep an eye on the following (in no particular order):

1. Expectation management: Is the agency clear about the scope of their participation initiative and their promise to the public? Do participants know what impact they can reasonably expect and when?
2. Community ground rules: Every agency should have these “rules of engagement” in place and be ready to enforce them if needed. Bonus points for friendly, easy-to-understand language!
3. Level of convener involvement/participation: Does the agency become actively engaged in the discussions?
4. Quality of moderation: Will the agency manage to keep discussions on topic and moderate distractions in a fair but timely manner?
5. Quantity of participation over time: How many participants will sign up? How much content will they produce? (luckily, IdeaScale exposes a few basic metrics in real time, such as number of ideas, comments, votes and registered users)
6. Outreach and diversity of participants: Does the agency manage to attract a broad range of participants from various backgrounds? Or do usual suspects dominate the discussions?
7. Conclusion and impact: This one will be especially interesting as there doesn’t seem to be an end date defined for any of these initiatives. In case of ongoing participation programs, does the agency at least share interim results? Looks like this effort is scheduled to go through March 19, 2010.
8. Tech support: Does the agency address technical support questions and resolve any issues in a timely manner?
9. Project communications: Does the agency offer ways for participants to stay in the loop (or get up to speed quickly) with regard to current state of the discussion, frequently asked questions, highlights, interim results, next steps etc.?
10. Mood: Overall, how happy is everyone with the process? What’s the energy level? Are things productive? Etc.

What else should be on the radar? Sound off in the comments.

Update 2010/02/15: Added feeds for Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the list below, added National Archives to Pipes feed.

The Open Government Directive, issued on December 8, 2009 stated:

1. Publish Government Information Online

[...]

e.  Within 60 days, each agency shall create an Open Government Webpage located at http://www.[agency].gov/open to serve as the gateway for agency activities related to the Open Government Directive and shall maintain and update that webpage in a timely fashion.

f.  Each Open Government Webpage shall incorporate a mechanism for the public to:

i. Give feedback on and assessment of the quality of published information;
ii. Provide input about which information to prioritize for publication; and
iii. Provide input on the agency’s Open Government Plan (see 3.a.).

That day is today!

Here are three sites that track which of the agency.gov/open pages are already live or have feedback options in place:

• http://projects.propublica.org/transparency/
• http://www.sunlightlabs.com/open/
• http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/open/tool_agency_poc.shtml

As was expected, most of these sites are using IdeaScale for input gathering and discussion. Some of you may remember this tool from phase 1 of the Open Government Dialogue (see here, here).

Below is a list of RSS feeds available from the various idea gathering and discussion forums (scroll down for link to the ultimate combo firehose feed):

1. Federal Communications Commission

There’s a flurry of conferences, unconferences and hybrids being planned that address Government 2.0 and Open Government, including — of course — the topic of participation. Here’s a list of events on our radar for the first half of 2010:

• February 5-7, 2010: Gov 2.0 Camp Los Angeles in Los Angeles, CA
• February 17, 2010: Open Government Directive Workshop in Washington DC
• March 6, 2010: Gov 2.0 Camp New England in Cambridge, MA
• March 26-27, 2010: OpenGovWest in Seattle, WA
• March 27-28, 2010: TransparencyCamp 2010 in Washington DC
• May 4-5, 2010: Open Government & Innovations Conference in Washington DC
• May 25-27, 2010: Gov 2.0 Expo 2010 in Washington DC
• June 3-4, 2010: Personal Democracy Forum ‘10 in New York City, NY
• June 5, 2010: PDF Unconference and/or ParticipationCamp in New York City, NY
• June, 2010 (exact date tbd): Gov 2.0 Camp Rocky Mountains in Denver, CO or Bolder, CO

Please leave a comment in the likely case we missed anything.

Update:

Added the next Open Government Directive Workshop, February 17 in DC.

Update 2:

Added the Open Government & Innovations (OGI) Conference, May 4-5 in DC.

Update 3:

Added Gov 2.0 Camp Rocky Mountains, June 2010 in Colorado

Over at Sunlight Labs, they have some design suggestions today around how federal agencies should approach their new /open website sections with regard to data.

Here’s the comment I just left (pretty much the same point I made on the OSTP blog a few weeks ago when they were seeking input on an Open Government Dashboard):

In addition to exposing the list of available data sets, agencies should publish — at the very minimum — a calendar of ongoing as well as upcoming consultations or any other participation initiatives they offer.

This would be a first step towards tracking the scope and quality of agencies’ public participation efforts.

Obviously, it would also make it easier for citizens to find the participation opportunities they are most interested in.

A lot of thought leaders in the area of public participation have freely and generously shared their advice over the past year, and agencies should draw on this knowledge as they continue to become more participatory.  The key success factors to meaningful, effective participation aren’t a secret, and over time I’m sure we’ll see smart solutions for consistently tracking, measuring and evaluating public participation efforts at all levels of government.

However, the very first step towards this goal is to simply give people (citizens, researchers and other participation evangelists) an easy way to find out about upcoming participation opportunities.

And who knows, making this information available may pave the way for other, more fancy ideas in this area.

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.

In a post on the White House blog today, Aneesh Chopra, Federal Chief Technology Officer and the Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, follows up on some of the questions that went unanswered during the FAQ on Tuesday: Answering Your Questions on the Open Government Directive

Russ Gaskin of Washington, DC commented: [W]ould like an example of what citizen participation might look like under this directive.

Russ, I expect citizen participation initiatives to build on the outburst of creativity and experimentation we’ve seen in this space in the first 10 months of this Administration.

For example, Open for Questions gave Americans across the nation a direct line to the Administration to ask exactly what they wanted to know about the Administration’s efforts to get the economy back on track. Openinternet.gov enriched the official record on net neutrality with more than 22,000 comments.   Across the country and online, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been seeking the best ideas for the next generation of school reform through his Listening and Learning Tour.  A Health IT Online Forum is currently drawing on the expertise of stakeholders on the front lines of healthcare delivery to uncover new strategies to accelerate the adoption of Health IT.  And, just yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy launched the Public Access Policy Forum to better understand how the Executive Branch might best enhance public access to peer reviewed papers arising from all federal science and technology agencies.

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the unprecedented three-phase public consultation process  (brainstorming, discussion, drafting) that shaped the Open Government Directive itself.   You can learn more about the Open Government Initiative public consultation process and other innovations in participatory decision making in the Open Government Progress Report to the American People and in the White House Open Government Innovations Gallery.

At the same time, I hope that all of you will engage in the agency public consultation processes that will shape their Open Government plans. I know that Washington does not have a monopoly on the best ideas and want your ideas for how we can make participation opportunities more meaningful for citizens.

Earlier this year, a number of organizations in the participation field collaborated on several occasions to provide the White House with detailed input on exactly this question — how to make participation meaningful. The following two efforts were probably the most notable:

• The Public Engagement Principles (PEP) Project was launched in mid-February 2009 to create clarity in our field about what we consider to be the fundamental components of quality public engagement, and to support Barack Obama’s January 21st memorandum on transparency and open government.  The following principles were developed collaboratively by members and leaders of NCDD, IAP2 (the International Association of Public Participation), the Co-Intelligence Institute, and many others. — PEP website, PDF download (1.6MB)
• Strengthening our Nations Democracy II. On August 2-4, 2009, “experts and advocates for strengthening our nation’s democracy” came together to create new momentum and plans for bringing together the emerging democracy reform movement behind a common set of priorities. At the second Strengthening Our Nation’s Democracy conference, participants shared what they have been learning from their work across the country, and rolled up their sleeves to create collective recommendations and action steps. — PDF download (1.1MB)

Unlike the eight Open Government Data Principles, a set of guidelines developed two years ago by the Open Government Working Group (see meeting notes) which are reflected in the Open Government Directive almost verbatim, the above mentioned recommendations on participation were not explicitly included in the Directive. It remains to be seen to what degree they’ll be found in the Open Government Plans that are now being crafted at the agency level.

Now that the Open Government Directive is finally out, it’s been interesting to sift through the reactions and read what people think about it.

As several people have noted (here, here), the Open Government Directive’s immediate focus — at least quantitatively — seems to be much more on transparency than on the other two pillars, participation and collaboration.

Not surprisingly, the transparency community is pretty happy (see, for example, GovFresh’s nice list of a dozen statements from some of the more well-known voices).

But what about participation? Here are three comments that seem to illustrate the overall mood pretty well, at least according to what I’ve been hearing.

Peter Levine, Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (2009/12/08): the Open Government Directive

Meanwhile, the “collaboration” and “participation” aspects of the president’s original memorandum were extremely promising. Real participation by citizens and real collaboration with nonprofits and communities would change government and enhance civic skills. But those sections of today’s Directive are very short and vague, and the concrete passages disappoint me. For instance:

“The Plan should include descriptions of and links to appropriate websites where the public can engage in existing participatory processes of your agency.”

“The Plan should include proposals to use technology platforms to improve collaboration among people within and outside your agency.”

“The Plan should include innovative methods, such as prizes and competitions, to obtain ideas from and to increase collaboration with those in the private sector, non-profit, and academic communities.”

I predict that organized stakeholders will dominate open online forums and will win most of the prizes and competitions, leaving most Americans with no new ways to participate. But I could certainly be wrong, and I hope I am. I also look forward to future initiatives, because I assume that the original Memorandum remains a promise that can inspire further action.

Brad Rourke, President, The Mannakee Circle Group (2009/12/09): White House Issues Open Government Directive

While the move was applauded by the transparency community (for instance, the policy director of the Sunlight Foundation referred to it as “enormous,” and indeed the list of commitments from agencies when it comes to transparency is already impressive), many in the civic participation field are less sanguine.

“I was underwhelmed,” wrote Fielding Graduate University professor emeritus W. Barnett Pearce in a post to an influential mailing list run by the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. “[I]t seemed very much like the ‘town hall meeting’ concept – the government shows/tells/lets us look on the website to see what they are doing, and then we can line up for our three minutes/send in our comments to their email inboxes or a listserve.”

There were a few positive comments as well.

Roger Bernier, senior advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2009/12/10 via the NCDD mailing list):

As a federal agency official promoting public engagement, I believe the Directive raises the bar on how we intereact with the public and could be a powerful tool for stimulating more active participatory processes. I say this because the Directive calls for changing management and administrative policies to increase public participation in agency activities and calls for the creation of new and easier methods of public engagement. Also, it recognizes the importance of agency employee engagement to help create an internal culture of participation as well as an external one.

So, a bit of a mixed bag. It seems that even though the participation community (NCDD and others) have been engaging with the White House extensively over the past few months, the real work is only about to begin.

I’d like to see a comprehensive list of all agencies that will be working on this over the coming months and their activities (incl. key people, meeting calendars, calls for public input etc.). As a field, we can’t assume that anyone at the agency level is aware of the recommendations or resources we’ve shared so far. Another coordinated effort will be needed to help put the participation piece on the right track.

Being eagerly awaited by many in the field, the Open Government Directive was released this morning: Open Government Directive (PDF, 84 KB)

Here’s a summary of snippets that deal with participation and engagement:

Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society.

[...]

3. Components of the plan

[...]

b. Participation: To create more informed and effective policies, the Federal Government should promote opportunities for the public to participate throughout the decision-making process.  Your agency’s Open Government Plan should explain in detail how your agency will improve participation, including steps your agency will take to revise its current practices to increase opportunities for public participation in and feedback on the agency’s core mission activities.  The specific details should include proposed changes to internal management and administrative policies to improve participation.

i. The Plan should include descriptions of and links to appropriate websites where the public can engage in existing participatory processes of your agency.

ii. The Plan should include proposals for new feedback mechanisms, including innovative tools and practices that create new and easier methods for public engagement.

[...]

e) Public and Agency Involvement: Your agency’s Open Government Plan should include, but not be limited to, the requirements set forth in this attachment.  Extensive public and employee engagement should take place during the formation of this plan, which should lead to the incorporation of relevant and useful ideas developed in that dialogue.  Public engagement should continue to be part of your agency’s periodic review and modification of its plan.  Your agency should respond to public feedback on a regular basis.

3. Components of the plan

b. Participation:  To create more informed and effective policies, the Federal

Government should promote opportunities for the public to participate

throughout the decision-making process.  Your agency’s Open Government

Plan should explain in detail how your agency will improve participation,

including steps your agency will take to revise its current practices to increase

opportunities for public participation in and feedback on the agency’s core

mission activities.  The specific details should include proposed changes to

internal management and administrative policies to improve participation.

i. The Plan should include descriptions of and links to appropriate

websites where the public can engage in existing participatory

processes of your agency.

ii. The Plan should include proposals for new feedback mechanisms,

including innovative tools and practices that create new and easier

methods for public engagement.

The other day, I mentioned on Twitter how I sometimes wish there were a glossary of the key terms and definitions that guide our conversations around participation.

With the Open Government Directive expected to be released within a few weeks, one challenge remains that people don’t necessarily mean the same thing when they discuss participation and participatory government. While some use the same terms for slightly different concepts, others rely on different terms for essentially the same ideas.

Here’s a list of just a few of the general concepts that seem to be commonly implied in these conversations (in no particular order):

• Participation as general citizen-related activities: this includes voting in elections, attending local city council meetings, writing a letter to the editor etc.
• Participation as general community activities: e.g. volunteering
• Participation as involvement in decision making: giving people meaningful ways to be part of and contribute to a decision-making process, maybe following IAP2’s Spectrum of Public Participation (PDF) or the recently released Public Engagement Principles developed by NCDD and others (our endorsement here)
• Participation as consensus building: getting everyone to agree on something
• Participation as interaction with government data: for example, citizens building applications or mash-ups using open government data

In order to be effective, the Open Government Directive will have to clarify  the concepts it tries to promote. Maybe we can expect some very specific language, who knows?

At any rate, more people using more precise language would be very helpful. Here’s one working definition we prefer.

Earlier today, the FASTForward Blog hosted a webinar discussion with Beth Simone Noveck, US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, and Andrew Rasiej, the co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, titled: Gov 2.0: The Collaborative Opportunities of Open Government

A recording of the webinar is available on the FASTForward Blog. I was lucky enough to get one question in (starts at around 45:50):

With regard to public participation, what are the next milestones for the Open Government Initiative as we’re going into 2010?

Here’s what Beth Noveck had to answer (transcript mine):

Number one, the creation of an Open Government Directive that will ask every government agency to develop its own Open Government plan, a plan that will ask agencies to develop strategic priorities around the release of data, the development of citizen engagement pilots and projects and the greater use of collaboration and the kind of collaborative problem solving and really the use of innovative policy approaches that we mentioned a bit of on the phone.

So I think that that’s very important and everything that will follow from that in terms of the institutionalization, organization  and best practice sharing, and idea exchange.

I think the second big milestone will be the move towards development of new platforms, in other words, making technologies more widely available across government as we learn what works and what doesn’t work so that people can take advantage of the new tools to do these things. So for example, there already is — completely ad hoc — a group who are sharing best practices and tools around employee brainstorming and innovation. So one agency was already doing it, asking employees for ideas and advice, several other agencies said “We’d like to do the same thing” and they spontaneously essentially come together to share code, to share ideas about how to do that. So institutionalizing those practices and platforms around a range of more open projects.

The last thing is really trying also to link up more effectively major presidential priority areas around specific open government projects. In other words, you’ve seen something like the VA’s project to reduce the backlog of veteran benefits applications. Similarly, other kinds of priority areas like that where there is really an imperative to get something done, whether it’s around STEM education (science and technology, engineering and math), or entrepreneurship, or climate change, in which I think the application of these principles of transparency, participation and collaboration and the tools that enable them can be brought to bear to enable us to address these problems more effectively and in new ways.

So I guess that means we can expect to see more e-participation pilots at various levels of government. Very exciting times indeed!