All posts in the topic Gathering input from one million people (Short link)

From: Steven Clift Date: Feb 07 15:23 UTC Short link

I started the building consensus online discussion with a couple thousand
people online.

I am trying to imagine what an online input feature on the next WhiteHouse.Gov
or you name the world leader might look like.

Assuming the topic is set and people are reacting to a set of questions with
minimal framing text:

1. How would you gather input from one million people online?

2. How would you report the results?

3. Would you support two-way interactivity among participants? If yes, how?

4. How would you ensure that the highest quality contributions are noticed?

5. How would you apply demographics to your analysis and deal with
representativeness?

6. How would you analyze open ended responses?


Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
    

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Sent via mobile: +1 612 203 5181

From: Steven Clift Date: Feb 12 13:24 UTC Short link

Here is my rough cut at how you might engage one million people over a month or
two - say from WhiteHouse.Gov and other government websites. (Or if it is
inconceivable that government will ever ask for input after the votes are cast,
across a network of media or other high traffic civic/political sites.)

Distributed Online Survey  The Widget

I recommend producing a small survey widget that is embedded across the home
page of all major government websites and available for inclusion on any
website or blog. A widget is a small piece of code that allows someone to
include syndicated content/applications from another website within their
website. (It is how one displays a YouTube video on another site.)

Each day for at least one month a new question selected by a panel of online
participants from public submissions would be presented across the network.

Project goals:

1.	Promote mass participation
2.	Acquire opt-in e-mail addresses for further engagement opportunity publicity
3.	Produce quantifiable results while engaging many with a low time commitment

Upon completing the syndicated survey question, people would be taken to a
central website where they can without registration be:

1.	Given the opportunity to answer why? with a comment

2.	Shown five to ten second tier questions select for that day/week that they
can answer

3.	Be given the opportunity to securely share demographic data for use in
either weighing a potential display of the results based on census data or if
not saved with the answers, to at least measure outreach to diverse groups in
society

4.	Provided an option to rate other comments and view comments (default view +1
or above - Slashdot style, which was recently adopted by YouTube to allow the
audience bury useless comments below the visibility threshold)

5.	Asked to provide their e-mail address and postal code for a project
e-newsletter and other important updates

6.	(Random) prizes should be available for those providing their e-mail address
(S. Korea has offered prizes on government-funded voter education websites)

In addition, upon rating X number of comments, participants would be invited to
register and join the online group receiving and rating proposed questions
submitted by the public. Assuming that most questions are too biased for direct
use (E-Democracy.Orgs experience with online candidate debate questions
submissions), these super users would be empowered to amend/re-craft the best
question topics into a neutral format appropriate for question display across
the large syndicated network.


How would you engage one million people online? Please share your outline.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
    

From: Miles Fidelman Date: Feb 12 15:01 UTC Short link

Steven Clift wrote:
> Here is my rough cut at how you might engage one million people over a month
or two - say from WhiteHouse.Gov and other government websites. (Or if it is
inconceivable that government will ever ask for input after the votes are cast,
across a network of media or other high traffic civic/political sites.)
>
>
Looks like a good start .

A few comments/questions:

1. You might want to start a bit smaller, for testing purposes - say a
mid-sized city.  Work the bugs out before taking the thing national.

> 3.	Be given the opportunity to securely share demographic data for use in
either weighing a potential display of the results based on census data or if
not saved with the answers, to at least measure outreach to diverse groups in
society
>
>
This piece will be critical.  Otherwise it will be easy for advocacy
groups to game the system.  Now how to get people to share demographic
data, and how to validate that data, is going to be really tricky.

> 4.	Provided an option to rate other comments and view comments (default view
+1 or above - Slashdot style, which was recently adopted by YouTube to allow
the audience bury useless comments below the visibility threshold)
>
>
Probably need some kind of way to rate the raters, and do demographic
profiling/rating of the ratings.

> 5.	Asked to provide their e-mail address and postal code for a project
e-newsletter and other important updates
>
> 6.	(Random) prizes should be available for those providing their e-mail
address (S. Korea has offered prizes on government-funded voter education
websites)
>
> In addition, upon rating X number of comments, participants would be invited
to register and join the online group receiving and rating proposed questions
submitted by the public. Assuming that most questions are too biased for direct
use (E-Democracy.Orgs experience with online candidate debate questions
submissions), these super users would be empowered to amend/re-craft the best
question topics into a neutral format appropriate for question display across
the large syndicated network.
    

>
>
> How would you engage one million people online? Please share your outline.
>
> Steven Clift
> E-Democracy.Org
>
>
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From: Steven Clift Date: Mar 06 15:16 UTC Short link

I thought folks might be interested in this post from the UK about a possible
large scale online engagement effort - so assuming something real might happen,
what advice does the world's largest collection of e-participation experts
have?

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org


From:
http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/2008/02/government-plan.html


Government plans major discussion about British Statement of Values

Thanks to the Our Kingdom for noting that Justice Minister Michael Wills has
now confirmed in a recent speech there will be a programme of events and online
discussions leading up to a Citizens Summit about a proposed British Statement
of Values later this year. This is one of three strands to implement the Green
Paper Governance of Britain proposals I wrote about here.
The speech is interesting both for the details it give of this process, and
asides on the balance of representative and participatory democracy.

After speaking about the Constitutional Renewal Bill - which will "surrender or
limit a wide range of powers currently exercised by the executive, transferring
them to Parliament" and the British Bill of Rights and Duties, Michael Wills
said:

    The final strand of the programme is the formulation of a British Statement
of Values. Our national identity matters. Most advanced democracies have
developed ways to express formally their view of who they are as a nation. This
country has throughout much of its history vigorously discussed what it meant
to be British. It was only in the years after the Second World War that we went
through a period of introspection, lacking in self-confidence when such
discussions were often regarded with embarrassment. We are now far more
successful and self-confident as a country and the government believes the time
is right to find a way to express who we believe ourselves to be in a way that
is inclusive and commands broad support.

    If we don't do this, others will. National identity matters to people. If
there isn't a national process to discuss it, in ways that are inclusive of
everyone on these islands, then there is a risk that this territory will be
colonised by sectarian and sometimes even poisonous views.

    For us, here the process of discussion and deliberation is as important as
the outcome. That's why we are doing this through an innovative constitutional
process. Shortly, we will start a series of discussions up and down the
country, accompanied by print material and online forums, on what it means to
be British, what's best about it, what best expresses what's best about it.
This will all be fed into a citizens summit - a representative sample of
perhaps 500 people, selected randomly, for example, from the electoral
register, but filtered, in much the same ways as opinion polls filter their
samples, to ensure it is demographically representative. And informed by these
consultations and by presentations directly to them, they will deliberate - and
we hope decide - on four main questions: should there be such a statement of
values, if so what it should be, how it should be expressed and finally what it
should be used for.
    Their decision will then go to Parliament for a final decision.

Writing at Our Kingdom, Guy Aitchison highlights the Minister's caution about
the benefits of edemocracy:

    Wills discusses the transformational role of the web, but with a mixture of
enthusiasm and apprehension. He celebrates the ease with which constituents can
now contact their MP, but is uneasy that new forms of technology and
communication might challenge the representative principles upon which our
democracy is based. The electronic plebiscite, he warns, is just a click or two
away and we should be very careful about embarking on a slippery slope towards
plebiscitary democracy. He imagines what might happen if an unscrupulous
billionaire wanted a policy change and set about a nationwide campaign of mass
emails and advertising to convince voters to support it online. Could MPs be
trusted in such a situation to meet Burkes ideal of the representative, using
their unbiassed opinion, mature judgement and enlightened conscience?
    Willss misgivings, Id 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?

However, Michael Wills does end with a general commitment to great engagement
with citizens, saying:

    In these circumstances of the changing societal base for our democracy and
the advent of new technologies which, indeed can be a benign force enhancing
democracy, this government is convinced that we need to work more vigorously to
re-engage citizens in the representative democracy we all share - and from
which we all benefit.
    Hence the surrendering or limiting of the power of the executive, the
development of new mechanisms 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.

See my original post for references to Gordon Brown's ideas on engagement,
including citizens juries.
The Ministry of Justice has rather a good Governance of Britain web site with
news feeds that you can add to your own site, and a what others are saying
section  fed by del.icio.us bookmarks. If you tag your blog posts
"for:governanceofbritain" you may get included on the site. You can read here
how that was developed using Wordpress by Simon Dickson, working with the MoJ's
own blogger and UKGovwebBarcamp organiser Jeremy Gould.

It's comforting to know that when the Ministry does start to roll out online
discussion it has some in-house expertise.
Declaration: I did done some early work for MoJ with Drew Mackie, running a
workshop with staff to help design the programme. We used a game like this to
simulate the process, and I think it helped wok through how the mix of online
and events might work.
    

From: Michael Allan Date: Mar 06 20:36 UTC Short link

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.
    

--
Michael Allan

http://zelea.com/