Something to watch:
http://www.threshold2008.org/

tom.kaneko wrote:
> I think the best way to understand this process is to see it.  I'll
> try to get a draft model of this process online by the end of this
> month, at which point I will let you all know.

Ditto.  I must get back to work, too.  We'll compare notes again later.

Meantime, we must catch up with Brian.  His CivicEvolution is already
up and running.  But it has one flaw.  Whereas your "formal consensus"
formalizes disagreement, and my "delegate cascade" formalizes
agreement, his "meta-consensus" formalizes neither!  Let's hurry and
catch up with him, before he sees his mistake...

Michael Allan wrote:
> Your process seems to depend on *quantity* of agreement.  It allows
> one proposal (P) to be rejected and replaced by a very different one
> (Q) soley on the basis of which has the *most* agreement.  So my
> original questions still apply: How does the process formalize each
> proposal, and the agreement to each?
Yes, I should have addressed this question directly.  I will now be
describing the consensus process I envision working on the internet,
and steer away from the 'Formal Consensus' process used in real life
meetings.  The truth is that my model does not formalise any proposal
at all.  In fact this process is never ending, and goes through
endless cycles of refinement.  This may mean that the focus proposal
could ping pong between P and Q until someone comes up with a creative
solution, or the objectors agree to disagree.  This also allows for
the proposals to evolve as circumstances in the real world change.
Users will never be faced with a page saying "this issue is closed".
Further, the level of agreement is not formalised either, but only the
level of disagreement, because only objections are noted along with
the proposal, not the level of agreement.  I concede that in many
cases, even good proposals will have several objections, but I find
this desirable because it dissolves the myth of absolute rights/
authority of decisions.

And how can people act on unformalised decisions, you ask?  They can,
and they do, I have seen it happen effectively.  I would look into the
weird 'war' of Scientology vs Anonymous.  Anonymous is a bizarre
anarchic organisation in which the 9000 or so self-declared members do
not know each other's identity, are decentralised, have no hierarchy,
but make decisions and act on them promptly and responsibly. It is an
interesting case for the consensus process I am developing, and indeed
one from which I derive my rosy assumptions about the potential for
responsibility and morality on the internet.

Michael:
> Yes, I see your intent.  But what causes them to focus on Q, and to
> reject P?  What does Q have, that P lacks?  If only 2 participants had
> agreed to Q, for example, would it still become the new focus?


Q will become the new focus even if only 2 participants agree, just
because it has been suggested, but the level of disagreement for Q
will soon result in the proposal being reverted back to a proposal
that resembles P.  All versions of proposals will be archived, and be
ready to call up if and when they are desired.

The intention is to get as many people as possible to read through the
proposals, and amend them as they see fit, which through leaps and
bounds should lead to the most agreeable position.  The only evidence
which alludes to the support of the proposals are the number of page
views and the number of edits.

Of course, throughout this process, discussion would be essential in
resolving disagreements, but will not be used as a tool to gather
support and agreement.

Throughout this process I have focused on the disagreement side of
decision making, because I see the consensus process as one that
resolves disagreement and conflict, as opposed to one that endorses a
popular proposal.  Agreement is assumed in the absence of disagreement.

The reason why I have steered away from formalising proposals, is
because i want the process to resemble the consensus processes that we
use in everyday life.  The pattern tends to be proposal ("let's do
this!") - disagreement ("No, because...") - amended proposal ("so how
about we...") - disagreement ("yes, but...") or agreement ("ok").  I
think users will find this approach more familiar and natural.

I think the best way to understand this process is to see it.  I'll
try to get a draft model of this process online by the end of this
month, at which point I will let you all know.

Kind regards,
Tom Kaneko

tom.kaneko wrote:

> We have different premises when it comes to building consensus...
> So in your scenario, applying [my process] logic goes along
> these lines:
> * 3 agree to P
> * 7 individuals will make their objections known, but avoiding
> repetition.
> * a new draft, Q, is drawn up after discussion and compromise, and the
> old draft P is thrown out for the time being.
> * 3 individuals make their objections to Q known, and the proposal is
> refined again until consensus is achieved, or something as close to it
> as possible.

So I take it Tom, this situation cannot occur in your process (not
formally, anyway):

  * 3 agree to P
  * 4 agree to Q
  * 3 agree to neither proposal, or are undecided

Instead, the alternative proposal (Q) is handled in this way:

  * 3 agree to P
  * 7 do not agree, or are undecided (4 of them actually agree to Q,
    but their agreement is not formally acknowledged)

Then Q is formally acknowledged, and P is rejected:

  * 4 agree to Q
  * 6 do not agree, or are undecided (3 of them actually agree to P,
    but their agreement is not formally acknowledged)

> I guess this is a more linear process to the one you are describing.
> Note how proposal P is rejected as soon as Q is drafted, which keeps
> the group's focus on the one proposal.

Yes, I see your intent.  But what causes them to focus on Q, and to
reject P?  What does Q have, that P lacks?  If only 2 participants had
agreed to Q, for example, would it still become the new focus?

Your process seems to depend on *quantity* of agreement.  It allows
one proposal (P) to be rejected and replaced by a very different one
(Q) soley on the basis of which has the *most* agreement.  So my
original questions still apply: How does the process formalize each
proposal, and the agreement to each?  You say that a "new draft, Q, is
drawn up".  So maybe each proposal is a separate draft text?  But how
is the quantity of agreement formalized, for each draft?

How is the rejection of alternative proposals formalized?  You say
that the "old draft P is thrown out for the time being".  Where does
it go, exactly?  Is the quantity of agreement it had aquired (3
participants) still formally acknowledged?  Or is that, too, thrown
out?

Speaking of a small minority generating the most content (as well as often
being the loudest voices online), what online techniques do folks recommend to
broaden the legitimacy/influence of the exchange on
decision-makers/journalists? What kind of "digg" are a large percentage of
users actually willing to do to bring often silent support to the surface? Any
demonstrations or research?

With Issues Forums, we often have 10-20% of registered participants posting
each month. This is apparently 3x+ more participation as a percent than you
find on typical user-generated content systems (search Google for
"participation inequality jakob"). However, despite this higher rate of
participation, comments we receive (often from elites in the community) focus
on the notion that only a few people dominate the discussion. While we have
numbers to dispute this, this is still the pereception we face.

And we do have some "usual suspects," so other than having things like "new
member" weeks to ease in more contributors, something else is needed to more
firmly establish the legitimacy of the forum that measures support or a least
recommendations on the best submissions. I am just skeptical that more than 1%
of members would actually rate, vote for, or recommend posts.

Has anyone cracked the more casual participation nut in smaller scale online
exchanges? Is there anything that can be transferred from e-learning or even
corporate working groups online?

Steven Clift

Hello Tom

I very much agree that there needs to be multiple, overlapping scales of
participation. I just finished Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody", in
which he talks about the power law distribution of online activity.  A
very few people produce most of the content and the majority of the
people produce very little content.  However, all participants are
essential to the healthy functioning of the community - wikipedia,
flickr, whatever it is.

In the context of policy development and analysis, I too assume the
power law will describe participation.  Most people in the effected
community will not have the interest, time or desire to commit to a long
process.  As wikipedia illustrates, you only need a core of dedicated
people to actually produce an article, or a proposal.  It is crucial
however, that the process is transparent and that anyone can enter the
process.  Note that enter the process doesn't mean crashing and
disrupting an existing team.  Depending on the circumstances new members
might join existing teams or they might form allied teams or even
competing teams.

I envision multiple layers or scales of participation which I will
describe from the most involved to the least involved:

1) Proposal development team: participants make a commitment to a
multi-step process involving dialogues on the idea, goals, an action
plan, impacts, and how to move the plan forward.  This team develops a
set of key points for each step through dialogue and deliberation.  This
team can be completely private, semi private such that the key points of
its proposal are made public during the process, or public such that
anyone can read the dialogue, but they cannot disrupt it.

2) Proposal review team: participants commit to a single dialogue to
explore the proposal generated by another team, deliberate it, and issue
a review in the form of a set of key points.  Another example at this
level might be a dialogue to develop some common ground in the community
and publisj a set of principles about the issue.

3) Proposal review dialogue: participants can discuss and deliberate a
proposal, add feedback, rate it, sign a petition in support. This
dialogue would be open to anyone, it will reflect a more typical forum
than a small discussion group.  This dialogue could be run simultaneous
with the proposal development process in team #1 and provide valuable
feedback to the proposal development team.

Another aspect of this architecture has to do with the scaling that was
mentioned in an earlier post.  The teams in #1 and #2 could form the
base of a pyramid in which the upper levels exist to collect and
synthesize the ideas of an array of lower teams addressing the same
issue.  This hints at the possibilities for scaling this approach beyond
the local community.

We must learn to walk before we run. Before we worry about scaling up to
address national and global problems, our communities need to learn how
to engage in deliberative stakeholder governance.  Successfully solving
local problems through dialogue and deliberation is an essential step.

Re: power to the individual, People will only participate if they
themselves had the power to affect the proposal strongly.  I think that
voting in elections and wikipedia are two strong arguments against this
statement.  In wikipedia, the typical active participant makes a few
very minor changes to an article, but they know they have helped improve
it.

The impact of participation correlates to the quality and quantity of
participation.  And I believe most people can accept that, at least on
reflection. Two quick anecdotes:

1. Sending an email to your representative, the white house or the EPA
carries virtually no significance.  The recipient knows it didn't take
any commitment to create and treats it accordingly - as they should be
treated.
2. An acquaintance  once lamented that he wanted a site where he could
register all of his "values" on all of the issues and they should be
paid attention to by the decisions makers.  I remarked that this was a
recipe for disaster because I didn't want decision makers listening to a
bunch of uninformed opinion, mine or anyone elses.

Finally, the essential problem with wikipedia is that it is not
transparently deliberative.  They are striving toward fact, and the
underlying process is only important if the answer doesn't look right.
Administrative policy decisions on the other hand, always involve more
than fact, they also involve values and messy humans and as such there
is never a perfect fact to be reached. The process and the opportunity
to participate are as important as the resulting policy proposals.

I am following a different approach toward online consensus with the
CivicEvolution platform.  My design direction and choices are best
captured by the concept of meta consensus and its treatment by John
Dryzek in Deliberative Democracy and Beyond

Here are 4 key points for me:

#1 Decision should be rendered on the basis of reasons that are capable
of reflective acceptance by participants

#2 participants should be amenable to reflecting upon and changing their
preferences and views.

#3 Such decisions can achieve a workable meta-consensus

#4 that meta-consensus can be translated into administrative power.

Dr. Janette Hartz-Karp and I are exploring these possibilities with the
view that workable meta-consensus is not simply arriving at the right
answer, or the best answer—it is the result of a process that provides
voice and efficacious, reciprocal engagement to all participants as it
generates common ground, authenticity, trust, and eventual buy-in. This
gives stakeholders a voice, capturing the wisdom of those affected,
encouraging consensus and buy-in—critical to creative and effective
solutions.

Consensus seems to me in our discussions to imply an agreement on the
particulars, whereas consent implies to me a willingness to go along
with a group decisions, or at least not actively oppose it.  This
consent can be for a variety of reasons and I think that makes meta
consensus more achievable.

And it dawns on me just now that we might even conflate two discussions:
1) How do we gather input from one million people, and 2) How do we
build consensus online. Consensus of 10 is very rare, while
meta-consensus of far bigger groups is common.  As I was discussing this
with someone last week, I realized more fully what this implies to me.
I have made design choices with CivicEvolution to empower teams to try
to find common ground, but also to empower teams to develop proposals
that can impact communities in their real world functioning and try to
implement these proposals as pilot programs.  Instead of convening 1000s
to try to get the right answer, we can empower teams to convene like
minds and others to brainstorm solutions and move them forward on a
small scale at first.

We can move our communities forward in small increments powered by the
creativity and passion of small teams working toward shared goals in the
community.  As these teams make proposals and progress and pilot studies
and pilot implementations we can learn what might work and what the
community will support.

An added benefit is the cultural change that occurs in an online group
when its members are dedicated to developing actual solutions instead of
winning arguments.  I believe this cultural change will extend between
groups that are addressing similar issues in communities.

In this scenario, legitimacy is derived from real world impacts and
community support, not mathematical models of statistical participation
online.

tom.kaneko wrote:
> I think I have the picture, is there a further specific question?

Your process, then, allows for this situation:

  * 3 agree to proposal P
  * 7 do not agree, or are undecided

Suppose that one of the 7 is thinking about P, and gets an idea.  She
discusses her idea with the others.  Soon it emerges that the idea
amounts to an alternative proposal (Q), which is very different from
P.  It also emerges that 4 of the participants agree to it.  The
situation is now this:

  * 3 agree to P
  * 4 agree to Q
  * 3 agree to neither

Does the process allow for this situation?  Is Q formalized as a
proposal, just as P is?  Is agreement to Q formalized, just as for P?
If so, how?  How does the process formalize each proposal, and the
agreement that accrues to each?

tom.kaneko wrote:

> 2.  ... instead of voting, any individual with objections to a
> proposal has the power, to block a proposal outright.  This power
> keeps the consensus building process in check, by making sure that
> all objections are dealt with. ...

Hi Tom,

I have some questions about the process.  Suppose it involves 10
participants, for example.  Suppose they reach a point where 3 agree,
after some discussion, to a proposal that was put forward (P).  The
remaining 7 do not agree to P -- not yet, anyway -- but discussion
continues.  Do I have the right picture, so far?

I hope people do not mind me reigniting this debate again, but I could not help
myself!  I have done much research on the process of Consensus, and I see the
following link to be near to an authority as one can get on the subject:
http://www.ic.org/pnp/ocac/


There are a few concerns I have with the favoured models in this thread.  If I
may be bold as to say the following.

1.  Voting.  There have been a number of suggestions about using voting systems
to legitimate a consensus policy.  Although this sounds fair and democratic at
its face, may I remind you that the existing models of consensus in fact does
not use voting as a process for achieving consensus.  This is a very important
point.  Voting for and against proposals have the effect of pitting majority
against minority, introducing competition, and reducing cooperation - a key
stone of consensus building.  Majority vs Minority voting also dilutes the
power of the individual to speak out and make a difference, as the status-quo
is perceived to have power over all marginal objections.  The very idea of
consensus is compromised by this.

So how can we legitimate a consensus policy?  We don't need to, because a
consensus is consensus.  If governments object to a consensus policy, then they
have the right, indeed the responsibility to make objections to it.  Those
objections will be upheld, and modifications to the policy will be made,
therefore achieving consensus.  I believe the power of objections can replace
the need for voting.

2.  Participation and the power of the Individual.  In consensus decision
making, instead of voting, any individual with objections to a proposal has the
power, to block a proposal outright.  This power keeps the consensus building
process in check, by making sure that all objections are dealt with.  There are
also cases in which an individual might choose to stand aside, after their
objection is found to be unresolvable, in order that the proposals can go
ahead, with the reservation noted.  Such an arrangement might be called
"Consensus minus one", and some groups formalise the position of 'devil's
advocate' in the consensus building process, to encourage constant scrutiny
over policies.

The power that is given to the individual is very important, especially in the
context of the internet.  People will only participate in 'e-consensus' if they
think they will be heard, and their contribution results in change.  I believe
the best approach is one taken by Wikipedia, where person A creates a topic,
then on seeing the original draft, person B is horrified, and makes changes as
she sees fit.  Person C comes along to correct spelling errors and improve the
formating, Person D fills in the citations. etc etc.

Such an approach sets no limit on the level of participation an individual can
take, while at the same time errors and biases are detected and corrected.

3.  Abuse.  There may be some who are concerned at the possibility of abuse in
such an open system.  I much prefer the prospect of having the the power to
deal with abuse as they happen, rather than creating restrictions to prevent
them, which will inevitably limit the scope for creativity.

I would welcome any feedback on these thoughts, as I am taking this very
seriously, and intending to have a beta version of a consensus building system
by the end of the year.

My Project,
I am at the moment embarking on a solo project to come up with a system of
consensus building online.  If anyone could point me in a better direction
where a group is working on such a project, please let me know.

Kind Regards,
Tom Kaneko

Check out:
http://planforafton.editme.com/

Why:
http://planforafton.editme.com/why
Why are we doing this?
At the January 14, 2008 community workshop, residents were asked to list
what they felt were the greatest challenges facing the City of Afton.
Participants were allowed to vote on each others statements. The top
vote getter was the following statement:

Express our valid differences of opinion while maintaining civility to
one another.

The standard process for assembling a comprehensive plan does not always
lend itself well to public participation. Residents who may not be
actively involved, but nonetheless have passionate opinions and valuable
input, are typically asked to attend meetings at inconvenient hours. At
those meetings, the information they are given is limited, as is their
input. All too often the loudest voices triumph and many valuable
thoughts leave the room locked in the frustrated minds of the disaffected.

For this plan update, we have chosen an entirely different approach. The
two all-day workshops we have held thus far were designed to accommodate
the modern busy schedule. We created an environment that allowed for the
maximum amount of public input in a non-confrontational and completely
transparent way. Most participants thanked us for the effort and a few
even remarked that they had fun participating.

In Afton we are fortunate to have a group of residents that are highly
connected. Every participant in the process thus far has been able to
provide us with an email address, reaffirming to us that most Afton
residents have on-line access. We opted to take advantage of this and
continue the public engagement process on-line. By doing this, we hope
to accomplish the following:

*
Increase Community Involvement – We had a good turnout for both public
workshops and had quite a few new faces at each. Having the entire draft
plan on-line for this phase of the process is going to allow us to reach
even more residents and provide them with a quality opportunity to give
feedback and guidance.
*
Increase Transparency – We know we need to build confidence in what we
are doing. For governments, transparency equals confidence, particularly
because if we are not going in the right direction, you will let us know
and we can react to that. We know by putting this document on-line we
open ourselves up to vastly more criticism than if we were to sequester
it to a select group. We are not trying to avoid feedback, but solicit
it. We need you to be confident that this plan is responsive to you.
*
Tap Local Knowledge – A lot has changed since the last plan update ten
years ago. While as planners we have a unique background that we share
with the process, we do not have the local knowledge residents of Afton
posses. We have enjoyed hearing stories and learning new things about
Afton, but our ability to interact with everyone is limited. We hope
residents will not be shy in offering their insights through this format.
*
Build Community Support – At the end of the day, this planning process
accomplishes something valuable only if the final document has broad
community support. If it does, elected and appointed officials will have
clear guidance on a number of important issues. Then we can confidently
move forward to accomplish a shared vision.

If you know of someone who does not have on-line access but would like
an opportunity to participate in this phase of the process, please ask
them to contact Charles Marohn at 866-900-3064 so that we can provide
them with a mechanism to give feedback.
Thank you for your efforts! We promise your time will not be wasted.

Thanks for the follow-up!  Much appreciated!

eRulemaking at the Crossroads, v2.0 - A dg.o2008 Pre-Conference Workshop
http://tiny.cc/F0a6X

Sunday May 18, 2008 - 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Overview

The topic of eRulemaking has gained prominence in the Digital Government
research community as well as the federal government. In 2006, a dg.o workshop
examined "eRulemaking at a Crossroads". Over the past seven years, spurred by
funding from the NSF's Digital Government program and other US agencies,
government officials, citizens, activists, business leaders, and a wide range
of scholars at Pitt , CMU , USC-ISI , and Cornell , have converged around the
specific problem of building tools to manage the flow of public comments into
the U.S. federal government. At the same time, the Office of Management and
Budget has overseen the development of government-wide eRulemaking Initiative,
now 5 years old, which created Regulations.Gov , a portal for reviewing all
open rulemakings, and a Federal Docket Management System (FDMS). Meanwhile, a
special committee of the American Bar Association is preparing a report on the
"Status & Future of Federal e-Rulemaking". A vigorous debate still continues
about the utility of mass public comment campaigns and alternate means for
promoting citizen engagement. As a result, despite considerable scholarly and
practitioner interest, eRulemaking is once again at the crossroads.

The target audience for this workshop is a mix of government officials, as well
as researchers from law, public administration, political science, computer
science and other related disciplines. We anticipate presentations or system
demonstrations by the individuals or groups with accepted white papers. Much of
the workshop will be devoted to discussion.

Call for Participation

All presenters at dg.o2008 international research workshops are required to
submit a 2-page white paper to the workshop organizer by April 15, 2008. White
papers must adopt the ACM's 'proceedings' templates that are being used by all
participants in dg.o2008. The ACM's proceedings templates are for use in
Microsoft Word and LaTeX2e. Strict adherence to SIGS style is expected. The
template can be downloaded at:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html. Anyone can register to
attend the workshop without having to prepare a paper or presentation.

Organizers

* Dr. Stuart W. Shulman, University of Pittsburgh
<email obscured>

* Tom Bruce, Cornell University
<email obscured>


For more information on the dg.o 2008 conference, please visit:
http://www.dgo2008.org/

Apologies -- the camera was shut down between the end of the second morning
panel and the start of Tim's talk.  If folks were watching the second panel
and then tried to watch Tim without hitting "refresh," it looked as if the
camera stayed off.

The good news is that videos of the whole day are now at
http://www.is-journal.org/symposia.php. Tim is "Part III."

Best, Peter Shane

Here is more on the UK possibilities:

Subject: [UKIE-EDem] The Internet and Representative Democracy a UK debate
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:08:57 +0000
From: Anthony Barnett <<email obscured>>
To: <email obscured>

Hi everyone,

Over at openDemocracy the OurKingdom team has been working with
Michael Wills at the Ministry to Justice to consider how the internet
can help representative democracy and assist citizen initiatives such
as the summit he is planning and about to announce. We have called
the discussion 'Networking Democracy'. Some of you - eg Steve - have
already participated in the initial exchanges. It started the public
phase this evening. You can see the intro to it where we are hosting
comments here:
http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/2008/03/24/networking-democracy/

And you can read the initial exchanges here:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/networking-democracy

We hope there will be a free discussion of the issues - eg here -
especially those we inexcusably did not get round to inviting like
Stephen :-(

Anthony

Member profile for Anthony Barnett:
http://groups.dowire.org/contacts/anthonybarnett

Greetings,
  I was going to watch Erickson's presentation, but they shut down the
feed just before it got started.  Darn!

  Will there be a transcript available?

Steve Magruder, forums administrator
Louisville History & Issues -- www.historyandissues.org

Steven Clift wrote:
> Subject: 	[Liftoff] Webcast: Online Consultation and Public Policy Making
> Date: 	Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:03:02 +1300 (NZDT)
> From: 	Tim Erickson <<email obscured>>
> Reply-To: 	<email obscured>
> To: 	Liftoff - Issues Forums Builders <<email obscured>>
>
>
>
> Hello friends:
>
> Just wanted to pass along the word that there will be a live webcast of the
entire "Online Consultation and Public Policy Making: Democracy, Identity, and
New Media" symposia taking place tomorrow at the Moritz College of Law,
Columbus, Ohio.
>
> My interest in this webcast, is that I'm on the agenda as the lunch time
speaker, which may also mean that my presentation will be webcast as well (as
if I needed the extra pressure of millions of online viewers tuning in to the
symposia).

Subject: 	[Liftoff] Webcast: Online Consultation and Public Policy Making
Date: 	Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:03:02 +1300 (NZDT)
From: 	Tim Erickson <<email obscured>>
Reply-To: 	<email obscured>
To: 	Liftoff - Issues Forums Builders <<email obscured>>



Hello friends:

Just wanted to pass along the word that there will be a live webcast of the
entire "Online Consultation and Public Policy Making: Democracy, Identity, and
New Media" symposia taking place tomorrow at the Moritz College of Law,
Columbus, Ohio.

My interest in this webcast, is that I'm on the agenda as the lunch time
speaker, which may also mean that my presentation will be webcast as well (as
if I needed the extra pressure of millions of online viewers tuning in to the
symposia).

 :-)

For more info about the symposia and how to join the webcast:

 http://www.is-journal.org/symposia.php

I'll be talking about "Building Democracy Through Local Issues Forums."

 - - - - - - - - - - -

Online Consultation and Public Policy Making: Democracy, Identity, and New
Media
March 14, 2008 | 8:15 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. | Barrister's Club| Moritz College of
Law

E-Goverance: The Internet now offers the world an unprecedented capacity to
foster the sharing of information and to facilitate sustained, many-to-many
communication.  The networking of citizens with their governments, with each
other, and with the organs of civil society has created unprecedented
opportunities for popular engagement in the public sphere. To attend any part
of this conference, please reserve your seat by contacting Adrienne Montalvo,
Executive Editor, at <email obscured> by March 12, 2008. Please indicate whether you
would like to reserve a lunch.

The Symposim will feature researchers from Australia, England, France, Israel,
Italy, Korea and Slovenia, as well as the United States, addressing a variety
of e-democracy issues from a diverse interdisciplinary background and both
theoretical and applied research.

This is an active workshop for members of the International Working Group on
Online Consultation and Public Policy Making, some presenting and others
discussing the principal papers. Audience members, including students, are
welcome to attend, but reservations must be made in advance.

Principal presenters include:

  * Steven J. Balla, Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy
and Public Administration, Elliott School of International Affairs, George
Washington University
  * Patrizia Bertini, Independent Practitioner and Researcher, European
Internet Accessibility Observatory
  * Andrew Chadwick, Head, Department of Politics and International Relations,
and Founding Director, New Political Communication Unit, University of London
  * Sungsoo Hwang, Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs, Graduate School of Public
and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
  * Laurence Monnoyer-Smith, Associate Professor of Communication Sciences,
University of Technology at Compiègne, France
  * Kerrie Oakes, Ph.D. candidate in Public Administration, Griffi th
University, and former Policy Offi cer, Queensland eDemocracy Policy Team in
Australia
  * Oren Perez, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University,
Ramat Gan, Israel
  * Alicia Schatteman, Ph.D. candidate, School of Public Affairs and
Administration, Rutgers University.

Best wishes,

Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org

Tim Erickson
Hamline Midway
Info about Tim Erickson: http://forums.e-democracy.org/contacts/timerickson

This topic's messages may be viewed at:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/48wvYUakkIM5bHNKtRppBl

Bumped into:
http://earth1.epa.gov/triinter/programs/stakeholders/on-line_dialogue.htm

This is so rare in the U.S. (shouldn't be) I thought I should point it out.

Steven Clift wrote:

> ... so assuming something real might happen, what advice does the
> world's largest collection of e-participation experts have?

I'd advise, in reply to Michael Wills, that his concessions might not
be needed.  He said:

> ... Hence the surrendering or limiting of the power of the executive
> ... to make policy development a collaborative venture between
> government and citizens, instead of a top-down exercise which can
> only be accepted or rejected at elections with no in-between
> options, and giving citizens greater opportunity directly to monitor
> and scrutinise the delivery of policy.

From the understanding I've gained (last month or so), I doubt the
necessity of a power transfer.  Executive power and authority - and
the whole formal structure of government - could remain the same.

Guy Aitchison (Our Kingdom), echoes the concerns that are behind
Wills's concessions:

> Wills's misgivings, I'd suggest, reflect a much broader anxiety on
> the part of government towards the power of the web - something
> memorably brought home to them last year with the huge success of
> the anti-road charge e-petition. For government, the challenge is to
> use new technologies for deliberation and engagement between
> elections, whilst ensuring that, what has been called, the
> "mainframe" remains intact. Is this possible given that the
> mainframe belongs to a previous age?

I believe the answer is 'Yes, the mainframe can remain intact'.  To
see why, consider that government makes several kinds of decisions:

   i. affecting the interests of the governed community

  ii. affecting other parts of society, such as economy and culture

 iii. purely administrative, affecting government itself

It may be possible to remove community decision-making (i) from
government, without also removing other decision-making (ii and iii).
The transfer to communities might be entire (all type i decisions),
yet nevertheless involve no transfer of power or authority.
Communities would gain nothing but the ability to *reach* independent
decisions, in matters where their own interests were at stake (and
possibly in other matters, if they chose).

Government would then be free to act on those decisions (where its
action was needed), but only if it chose.  And there would be a
dialogue, of course, between government and community.  The two would
negotiate.  But at no point need the community surrender its right to
make decisions, nor the government surrender its right to wield power.

As regards authority, the authority of government would probably be
enhanced whenever it chose to act on a community consensus.  And so
would its effectiveness - the wheels of government being apt to turn
more easily in the direction of a consensus.  (At other times, its
authority and effectiveness would remain what they are today, more or
less.)

The structural changes would occur entirely in communities.  They
would gain an institution for decision-making - the embodiment of
whatever process is developed for this purpose.  It would exist side
by side with other institutions in society, such as legislatures,
courts, universities and business firms.  But it would not operate
according to the same rationale as those other institutions - not
according to power, nor jurisprudence, nor science, nor wealth - but
according to the rationale of communities, which is one of free and
open discourse.

(The exception to the rule of 'no structural change outside of
communities' might be the political party.  There is reason to believe
that parties would no longer be needed, once communities have their
own decision-making institution.  It would be employed for ballot
nominations, and for the expression of interest.  Parties would be
weakened by this change.)

If the structural power changes feared by Wills aren't needed, if
fixes to government, in general, aren't needed, then - contrary to
what we suppose - the system was never broken.  Rather, it was the
community that was broken.