Not e-democracy specific, but I've been thinking and doing a lot with online tools for both neighbor to neighbor community building and neighborhood participation. - Steve From: Matt Leighninger <email obscured>> Date: Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:28 AM Subject: Promise and Challenge of Neighborhood Democracy To: mattleighninger <email obscured>> Dear Friends of the DDC: The DDC, Grassroots Grantmakers, and NeighborWorks America are pleased to announce the release of "The Promise and Challenge of Neighborhood Democracy: Lessons from the Intersection of Government and Community." This report grew out of a meeting that Grassroots Grantmakers and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium organized in Orlando last fall with help from the National League of Cities and NeighborWorks America.The discussion focusedonlessons fromPortland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and other cities that have experimented with creative ways to engage citizens in public decision-making and problem solving. We hope this report will be an important contribution to the growing conversation about how to recenter our democracy on the needs and priorities of everyday people. Please let me know what you think, and how we might help you use the guide to advance thediscussion of these themesin your networks! Matt Matt Leighninger Executive Director Deliberative Democracy Consortium (Washington, DC) 131 Chedoke Avenue Hamilton, ON L8P 4P2 Canada 905-972-0550 www.deliberative-democracy.net For a copy of The Next Form of Democracy, see www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com No Better Time: Promising Opportunities in Deliberative Democracy for Educators and Practitioners July 8-11, 2009 University of New Hampshire For more information, go to http://www.unh.edu/democracy/conference2009
From: Nelson, Gregory Date: Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:39 PM Subject: Phase III Extended: Open Government Update Dear all, As of Friday morning, June 26th, there are well over 100 drafts of open government recommendations that the public has written in Phase III of the public consultation process. The community of contributors grows by the hour, as word of this collaborative effort spreads. A number of you have told us that there is great excitement about the drafting process in your communities, but that it has taken time to raise awareness about this important effort. We've heard you and have decided to extend the time period for drafting and voting. Drafting of recommendations will now continue through 11:59pm Eastern Friday, July 3rd. Voting will stay open through the holiday weekend, until 5pm Eastern Monday, July 6th. Spread the word and join the movement to help make government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Write, read, and rate recommendations at http://www.mixedink.com/opengov/. The Open Government Team <><><><><><><><><><><><><> Greg Nelson Energy, Environment, and Technology White House Office of Public Engagement
It is great to see a barcamp/unconference event make a real attempt at virtual participation. Now all they need are virtual participants - it is free, so you should join us and pass this along to others. Go here and register as a virtual participant: http://pcamp.eventbrite.com (this will get you into their Skype network too) Watch the "virtual room" session video webcasts (folks will be able to use the Net to chat questions/comment in real-time) from here: http://www.livestream.com/pcamp Here is the schedule of webcast sessions and their leaders: http://mudball.net/pcamp09/schedule Times are Eastern US. To convert use: http://tinyurl.com/pcamptimes My Saturday session exploring ideas related to online participation in neighborhoods is at 5 p.m. Eastern/10 p.m. UK/7 a.m. Sydney (Sun). We will talk about these projects - http://pages.e-democracy.org/Social_media_in_local_public_life - and I'll disclose publicly for the first time some of my local "Participation 3.0" ideas. Most of the spontaneous session will be "open space style" and likely generate lots of tweets you can watch here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23pcamp09 Here are some of virtual presenters to check out: MARK ELLIOTT, COLLABFORGE At CollabForge, Dr. Elliott has led several successful public engagement projects for government agencies and NGOs in Australia. These include 2008’s Future Melbourne project, the world’s first city plan to be developed in a wiki. His methods are based on his pathbreaking doctoral research, in which he developed a comprehensive framework for understanding mass collaboration. More about Mark Elliott. Mark will lead a presentation on engaging citizens in collaborative planning and policy-making using participatory tools and methods. STEVEN CLIFT, e-DEMOCRACY.ORG – {virtual presenter} Steven Clift, founder of e-democracy.org, is a pioneer of online participation in democracy. Starting with the world’s first election information website in 1994 in Minnesota, today e-democracy hosts local issues forums in 15 communities across three countries. Steven will host two virtual sessions at PCamp. The first is an open brainstorm on building online participation at the neighborhood level. The second is an extended Q&A e-democracy’s 15 years of experience, tailored to participants who are new to the field. MARY JOYCE, DIGIACTIVE Mary Joyce is the co-founder of DigiActive, an all-volunteer organization facilitating grassroots digital activism, and was the Manager of New Media Operations for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Her session, entitled “Citizen Participation in a Networked World”, will explore the ways that citizens can influence policy based on the collaborative powers of social media, working from international examples. She will also join Gaurav Mishra in a session discussing the efficacy of social media activism. GAURAV MISHRA, VOTEREPORT.IN – {virtual presenter} Gaurav Mishra is the founder of 20:20 Web Tech, Votereport.in, and a leader in India’s Gov2.0 scene. Joining us all the way from India, he and his partner Selvam Velmurugam (joining from Seattle), will give an in-depth look at both the votereport.in project and the gov2.0 ecosystem in India. She will also join Mary Joyce in a session discussing the efficacy of social media activism. TIM HWANG, THE COOPERATION PROJECT From 4Chan to Facebook, Tim is an expert on the intricate mechanics of online participation. He now works as a researcher at the Cooperation Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Tim is also hilarious. He organizes ROFLcon. He plans to speak about the potential for gaming open government data. DEVENDRA KUMAR PUNIA, FORE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT – {virtual presenter} Dr. Punia is an associate professor at the Fore School of Management in New Delhi, India. He has been involved with e-government research and practice for the last ten years. Recently, he led an e-governance project in the revenue sector for the district administration. The question of using open source versus proprietary software was dealt with in a peculiar manner. Similar efforts in other states have yielded varying results, and the feasibility and use of open source is a big question mark for the citizen-oriented projects. Dr. Punia will share his experience of leading an e-governance project using open source software. STEF VAN GRIEKEN, NEW VOTING FOUNDATION – {virtual presenter} Picture 86Stef will give a presentation about the use of electoral compasses to identify key candidates for parliament in the Netherlands. The application matches candidates to voters based on the party program’s and individual political views. The success of these tools have been enormous in the Netherlands. Currently, for the parliament elections about 65% of the Dutch used a tool to find their favorite political party/candidate. . ED PASTORE, METAGOVERNMENT – {virtual presenter} Picture 88Ed will deliver a talk entitled “Making Direct Democracy Practical”. This presentation outlines the drawbacks of representative democracy in various contexts; and explores the historical criticisms of direct democracy, which has proven incapable of supplanting representative systems. It then details several emerging projects which are actively working to overcome the limitations of direct (or otherwise more inclusive) democracy by applying sophisticated web technologies. The finding is that massively-participatory democracy is not only practical but most likely inevitable. JOHN DUMBRILLE, GREENSANDBOX – {virtual presenter} Picture 89A former Greenpeace activist, John Dumbrille writes technical documentation and presentation materials for MonkeyMedia Software. This spring he co-founded bowegover.ning, a project for transparent governance in his local community. In his talk, “Unbundling Governance”, he will discuss the concept of self-governance, and why an independent, grassroots approach is important.
I am switching web hosts for the http://dowire.org site and that may or may not disrupt the flow of mail to the groups.dowire.org domain in the coming days. I'll let you know if anything comes up. Thanks, Steven Clift
If you'd like to mix it up *right now* and through the week with
others interested in e-participation, send your Skype handle to:
<email obscured>
In the SUBJECT simply write: Skype
More info: http://mudball.net/pcamp09/
Personal Democracy Forum The big Personal Democracy Forum conference is coming up next Monday and Tuesday. I'll be speaking on Tuesday, June 30at 3:45 p.m. in "State/Local Online Politicking: How Community Hubs Can Change the Scene" panel. More: http://www.personaldemocracy.com/conference #PDF09 Twitter: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23pdf09 They tend to live blog/webcast ... just watch their conference website for last minute options Participation Camp I managed to change my flight, so I will also be attending the free Participation Camp "unconference" in-person over the weekend - June 27-28. I'll be leading a couple of discussion sessions that will ALSO be able for live virtual participation via Skype. I am working up some big "electronic block club" ideas that I'll toss into a brainstorm on building online participation at the neighborhood level. The second is an extended Q&A on e-democracy’s 15 years of experience, tailored to participants who are new to the field. (With a new e-democracy initiative a minute it seems, why not learn from past experience!) More: http://mudball.net/pcamp09/ Virtual Participation Info: http://radical-inclusion.com/ (It starts now I guess, so go and register here http://pcamp.eventbrite.com/ for free.) #PCamp09 Twitter: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23pcamp09 If you plan to be at either event, drop me a note: <email obscured> or http://twitter.com/democracy Cheers, Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org P.S. I am sorting out lodging options in the next 24 hours - if you are as well or have a place I can land, let me know! Let's see if we can make NYC a bit less costly.
If you have your own examples, be sure to add them to the blog's comment area. A blog post at E-Democracy.Org: http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/355 June 17, 2009 Mugged not muffled. Written by Steven Clift When someone you know or a neighbor is a victim of crime, particularly violent crime, it hits home. In my own neighborhood Issues Forum covering Standish and Ericsson in Minneapolis where we have close to 10% of households interacting daily, Erik Mitchell shared: "All, I regret to report that my wife, Jenny, was mugged today on her way home from work. She was walking from the 38th Street LRT station … a group of approximately 5 females, high school age, approached Jenny from behind, struck her in the face, and stole her purse and the grocery bag she was carrying. We’re thankful that Jenny was not seriously hurt and that no items of significant value were stolen." - Full message (Picture) Over 30 posts later across a few topics – here, here, and here – have resulted in extensive community organizing, a public meeting on safety trends near our newer light rail line tomorrow, and this message from Jenny, who despite being mugged, now feels safer in part because of the role the online forum has played promoting awareness and action: "This is to thank everyone who sent me messages after my mugging on the pedestrian path by the 38th street LRT station. I was touched by your posts and emails. Walking home from work the next day, I felt safer thinking of all of you in your houses! I have a new appreciation for our neighborhood, and for this group especially. I hope to see everyone at the public safety meeting Thursday–I got the flyer today (thanks, Shirley!). Also, just an update for those of you who are curious–one of my neighbors saw the girls who mugged me, and he saw them rifle through my purse in his yard. They left my checkbook, so he was able to track me down. He also saw their faces, which he is telling to the sergeant in charge of the case. The transit police also called me and said they have the muggers on camera, and they are also passing on that info to the sergeant. I doubt they’ll find the girls, but there’s clearly a larger issue we need to address about crime in the area. I’m grateful to live in a neighborhood where incidents such as this get a response–thanks again for your thoughts and (especially) action. – Jenny Mitchell" If your neighborhood doesn’t have its own active online forum (be that an e-mail list, web forum, blog, social networking group, etc.) you are missing out! No one knows if only 1% or 20% of local communities are covered by similar active online spaces (would make a good research project). While the world is amazed at the use of Twitter in Iran, I would argue our democratic revolution online is happening locally right under our noses but instead of the dramatic stopping power of protest, we are in a civic building mode that is beginning to help us meet public challenges even if the results are not made for television. At E-Democracy.Org we are plotting ways to extend these online spaces across neighborhoods (our Issues Forums are started by local volunteers working with (hopefully), but not waiting for permission of government, neighborhood associations, etc. who simply don’t have our experience nor confidence when it comes to hosting truly two-way online communication) in the Twin Cities and beyond. If you want to help us or simply step up as a forum manager in your area, let us know: <email obscured> If you have stories about local online forums doing good in your community or neighborhood, please share your story via the blog comments: http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/355
From: http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/06/17/we-are-going-bid-recoverygov/ WE are going to bid on Recovery.gov Comments: 2 Written by Clay Date: June 17 2009 We've decided to do something crazy. On Tuesday afternoon, someone handed us a copy of the Recovery.gov 2.0 RFP and we thought: what if we try something truly radical here. What if we opened up the process of government contracting by bidding on this thing? We together-- not just we meaning The Sunlight Foundation-- are going to bid on redoing Recovery.gov to learn more about the process of government contracting, and to try and build what is perhaps the biggest federal transparency-related website. We aren't government contractors. We've never done it before. We haven't a clue what we're doing. We don't even know if we're eligible. But who cares? We know we have a talented technical team here, and we know we have a great community of people around us. And we know we can do better than a lot of the government contracting establishment for a lot less money. We need your help bidding on this and building a credible document. This is a short turnaround RFP -- it is due Friday, June 26th-- and together I think we can do something amazing. Let's write our response together, figure out what the best solution is, and give the Recovery board our ideal response. Together (and that's the only way it is going to happen) we can make something amazing happen. We're taking our bid and opening it up for anyone to edit on the Sunlight Labs wiki Maybe we'll fail, maybe we'll succeed. We have only a few days to figure it out, but whatever we have on the wiki page by Friday June 26th at 11am Eastern time, I will take, edit for formatting, spelling and grammar, compile, and deliver to the RAT board. Even if we don't fail, we will have created a standard by which we can judge the recovery.gov website when it is released. Will you help? Read the RFP and help build the bid I'll be in the #transparency room on irc.freenode.net to answer any questions and we can figure this out. Is this crazy? Completely. I'm sure some people even in our community will call us nuts. But trying to change a system is hard, and sometimes requires experimentation. I hope any and all will join us.
Links at: http://www.headshift.com/blog/2009/06/what-should-eu-governments-do.php by Lee Bryant This is a Headshift blog post by Lee Bryant, written on June 15, 2009 in Public and Third Sector . What should EU governments do with the web to transform public services? In November 2009, the EU Ministerial declaration on e-government will be published at the Malmo conference. Whilst this formal process is important, governments are not yet absorbing the lessons of the social web or realising its potential to transform public services in a period of scarce resources. In the UK, I think it is especially urgent to demonstrate that we can move beyond simplistic debates about more or less investment in public services and instead find innovative ways to harness people power to deliver better services. To encourage EU governments to act more quickly on this front, following on from our Public Services 2.0 workshop in Brussels, we have joined with other partners to launch (what we hope will become) a co-created declaration on public services to sit alongside the ministerial declaration. Please add your ideas or vote for others here. We will aim for a first draft by August, to be openly reviewed and commented in September and October in time to collect public endorsement and then present it at the Ministerial Conference. See here for more information.
On a related note, there is an interesting discussion on the on The Open House Project's Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/openhouseproject/browse_thread/thread/89ae99e6d1fbfa88?hl=en My reply: Yep. The only online public spaces which give individuals freedom of speech protections are those owned and operated by governments in the United States of America. That is why the hosting of blog comments on the OSTP - http://blog.ostp.gov - site is HUGE in terms of a profile government effort finally having the guts to host a legally "public forum" (IMHO) on government property. That said, I also believe decorum is something very very appropriate on tax-subsidized public spaces designed to provide input into the policy process. Otherwise it is a waste of money and time for all involved. The "community moderation" (or slashdot style post ratings by members of the public) technique the White House's OSTP is using to place the off-topic digital sabotage (my term) behind a click, but not censored by government or deleted, is a very important step. Without the equivalent of allowing the public to essentially crowd out counter-protesters like you might see happen on a sidewalk in front a government building, any profile government hosted form of interactivity will be rendered useless by a small minority who essentially act in such a way that no one will be heard. If the vast majority of easily visible content is not directly related to the topic at hand in the online format, why would anyone attempting to influence "open government policy in this case" ever participate and why would governments who are not under (current) legal obligations to create new public forums online ever do so again. If governments then bow out of hosting any online interactivity and are stuck with only old school in-person or paper-based forms of mediated *public exchange* then democratic participation in governance will be essentially dead as the rest of society moves its political interactivity online. FYI - One middle ground approach used by E-Democracy.Org since 1994 is to approximate a "public forum" by essentially promising not to remove posts if you agree to use your real name and follow some basic ground rules. We can suspend people for violating the rules - http://e-democracy.org/rules - essentially defining our own version of speech-based disturbing the peace, which U.S. governments do not have the luxury of defining as broadly or easily. (They might be able to ban/delete physical threats, while as an independent voluntary association we can sanction people for "name calling" while still leaving such comments up for all to see ... therefore intentionally allowing people to have an impact if they choose virtual disobedience while ensuring that a vocal minority does not destroy the public space itself). If you want to see our mostly state and local approach hit the grinder of national politics, join the start-up US Issues Forum - http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/us Sincerely, Steven Clift http://stevenclift.com
I'm a big fan of large scale, well managed, high quality e-conferences
that replicate many of things we love about in-person conferences. I
am drafting ideas here:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Social_media_in_community_service
While we can't all head to the pub after a day of conferencing going
nor completely avoid the day-to-day work when we are in the office,
I've felt for sometime that we completely fail when it comes to using
real-time online tools to connect peer to peer in groups. Why do we
settle for just connecting those who can afford to travel and leave
those on the front-lines who don't have permission to nob knob behind?
Anyway, I've been pondering the economics of hosting a large scale
multi-track e-conference on "Social Media in Public Life" where over
the course of a week there would be a mix of technologies and
approaches used for conference-style sessions and training as well as
peer-to-peer exchange. Some elements would be live and use video
tools with Twitter and other elements would use everyday online group
tools.
The "Public Life" tracks I see at this point are Community
Service/Non-Profit, Government 2.0, and News Online ... it is possible
that a primary source of conference funding *might* be accessible via
the Corporation for Community and National Service specifically for
community service-related sessions, while the other tracks would need
separate support to move forward. As an e-conference it of course
could be international if sponsors in other countries step forward to
help open the doors to their citizens (or we charge more). Since I
straddle all three of these tracks which honestly seem to isolate
themselves in their various in-person conferences and online
communities, I think there is a great untapped opportunity for some
synergistic exchange a couple hours each day over a well crafted "be
there" week. As leaders in "public life" all working to engage the
public in what we offer online, it is time to learn from one another.
Below is a message I've been circulating through community service
circles. I honestly don't know if E-Democracy.Org has any practical
chance of jumping through the competitive government funding hoops,
but if the idea resonates with you, be sure to let me know -
<email obscured> - and answer the survey below. - Steven Clift
Greetings,
I'd love to get your input on whether you'd be interested in participating
or presenting at an "e-conference" on Social Media in Public Life with an
emphasis on community service.
The quick survey is here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=QSYia1RDJnulTuMZBIr_2bYg_3d_3d
We also ask about follow-up in-person community service "unconferences."
Context:
E-Democracy.Org, a volunteer-based community service and civic engagement
organization, with local online "Issues Forums" across 15 local communities,
is considering putting in a bid to become one of the Corporation for
National and Community Service's national training providers. We've done
webinars - http://e-democracy.org/webinars - helped with unconferences -
http://e-democracy.org/unconf - and over the last 15 years I've spoken/lead
seminars across 27 countries on using the Internet in civic engagement -
http://stevenclift.com - ... so submitting (or joining a bid) to bring
social media training online is a good fit. We also fairly uniquely deliver
community service using volunteers via the Internet itself and most recently
in the low income/high immigrant/diverse neighborhoods of the Twin Cities -
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/172
We are more interested in "collabortition" than competition, so we've taken
an open source approach with our drafting. Details and links to the call and
an online group you can join to participate in our potential bid are all
available from:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Social_media_in_community_service
Please pass this on to those you think might be interested in attending or
presenting (our bulk of our budget suggests 30 paid e-presenters paid for 10
days of work with a laundry list of duties and deliverables released under
the creative commons).
Sincerely,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
<email obscured>
http://twitter.com/democracy
It is great to see some online interactivity take hold in governance. If you want to discuss lessons from this online consultation for other government/civic hosts visit: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/consult Steven Clift - http://twitter.com/democracy E-Democracy.Org and Democracies Online - DoWire.Org From: Nelson, Gregory Date: Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 6:03 PM Subject: White House Open Government Update (6/10/09) Dear All, The final Transparency posting for Phase II of the open government consultation - "Transparency: Access to Information" - now awaits your comments at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Transparency-Access-to-Information/ We greatly look forward to your feedback on the issues addressed therein - the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and OMB Circular A-130 on "Management of Information Resources." We are now turning our full attention to talk about Participation. We have already posted two new conversations on Participation in which we hope you'll let your voices be heard. Your engagement is vital to shaping forthcoming government-wide policy on open government. We posted both a wrap-up of the Participation-related ideas generated during the Brainstorm Phase (and the earlier MAX conversation among government employees) and our first Participation topic on Enhancing Citizen Participation in Decision-Making, to address how we can increase citizen participation in government decision-making. You can find those here: * Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Participation http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Wrap-Up-of-the-Open-Government-Brainstorming-Participation * Enhancing Citizen Participation in Decision-Making http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Enhancing-Citizen-Participation-in-Decision-Making Over the course of this week, we will post on three more Participation-related topics: * Promoting Civic Education - focusing on supporting civic literacy * Improving Use of Web 2.0 - focusing on updating policy and technology frameworks for adoption of innovations by agencies * Enhancing E-Rulemaking - focused on opportunities to improve the notice-and-comment process Following the Participation postings, we'll move on to our final Phase II topic: Collaboration. Keep an eye on http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/blog/ and http://blog.ostp.gov/ for all these future posts. As a reminder, you can still comment on the Transparency-related posts at the following links: * Transparency Principles http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Principles : How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize our policymaking? * Transparency Governance http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Transparency-Governance : How do we institutionalize transparency across all government agencies? * Transparency: Open Government Operations http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Operations : How do we improve government operations to facilitate transparency? * Transparency: Data, Data.gov and Metadata http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Data : How do we improve collection, storage, and dissemination of data government-wide? We've been very pleased with the discussion so far and we warmly invite your continued participation in this process. The Open Government Team <><><><><><><><><><><><><> Greg Nelson Associate Director White House Office of Public Engagement
I am working up some draft ideas in response to a call for proposals from the Corporation for National and Community Service for training partners: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Social_media_in_community_service Comments to: <email obscured>
From: Maureen Jennings <email obscured>> Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 5:29 PM Subject: O'Reilly Media and TechWeb Announce Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase To: <email obscured> Contact: Maureen Jennings <email obscured> 707.827.7083 http://twitter.com/maureenjennings O'Reilly Media and TechWeb Announce Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase New Event to Bestow Govie Awards and Host Apps for America 2 Competition Sebastopol, CA, June 3, 2009 — O'Reilly Media, Inc. and TechWeb, co-producers of the annual Web 2.0 Summit and Web 2.0 Expo events, today announce the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase, a one day event featuring government projects that leverage the Web as a platform. The event will highlight the projects leading toward transparency, participation and collaboration in government. Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase will take place September 8, 2009 at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase will feature 20 government 2.0 projects in five categories, selected by a panel of judges, and will bestow the first ever Govie Awards to the top project in each category. In addition, the Showcase will host the Sunlight Foundation's Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge, the winner of which will also receive a Govie. Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase is currently seeking submissions from architects, managers, leaders and catalysts of real-life Gov 2.0 projects that represent new thinking, demonstrate the value of Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 principles, and that have made an impact on government and the citizens and communities it serves. Participating speakers will each deliver five minute presentations on their innovative technology and its impact on government, and discuss their experiences with fellow presenters in a panel format. Prospective speakers are asked to submit their project in one of the following categories, conceived around core functions of government as: Process Provider Partner Protector Peacemaker Product-This last category is the Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge, hosted by Sunlight Labs. Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase previews the larger Gov 2.0 Expo scheduled for May 2010. The Gov 2.0 Expo is a companion event to the inaugural Gov 2.0 Summit, an invitation-only gathering of technology and government leadership. While the Gov 2.0 Summit is restricted in its attendance, the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase (like the Gov 2.0 Expo in 2010) is open to all interested parties, and is intended to bring the wider community of gov 2.0 advocates and practitioners together. Registration for the two events is separate. More information on submitting projects for consideration can be found at http://www.gov2expo.com/gov2expo2009. Registration will open mid-June. About TechWeb TechWeb, the global leader in business technology media, is an innovative business focused on serving the needs of technology decision-makers and marketers worldwide. TechWeb produces the most respected and consumed media brands in the business technology market. Today, more than 13.3 million business technology professionals actively engage in our communities created around our global face-to-face events Interop, Web 2.0, Black Hat and VoiceCon; online resources such as the TechWeb Network, Light Reading, Intelligent Enterprise, InformationWeek.com, bMighty.com, and The Financial Technology Network; and the market leading, award-winning InformationWeek, TechNet Magazine, MSDN Magazine, Wall Street & Technology magazines. TechWeb also provides end-to-end services ranging from next-generation performance marketing, integrated media, research, and analyst services. TechWeb is a division of United Business Media, a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion. 13.3 million business decision-makers: based on # of monthly connections
Recent posts from: http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/ Welcome by Richard 12. May 2009 14:39 Welcome to the new Digital Engagement blog at the Cabinet Office. The digital engagement team will be using this to talk about what we are up to, the technical challenges we are facing and to test out early solutions. Everything the Power of Information taskforce did on their blog we will do here, as we take forward their good work. Today is a bit of a big news day here on the team, so please forgive the lack of detail. We will be picking up on all the themes over the coming days and weeks. We have a progress update on Digital Engagement (see links below) and what we are doing against all the Power of Information Recommendations. We have split up the recommendations to make break them up by theme, but if you want to check them all they are in Annex A. While everyone should read the full report, the key themes are: * Open information - To have an effective voice, people need to be able to understand what is going on in their public services; government will publish information about public services in ways that are easy to find, use, and re-use. * Open feedback - The public should have a fair say about their services. We need more services like NHS Choices or www.publicexperience.com to provide direct feedback to the Innovation Council. * Open conversation - We will promote greater engagement through more interactive online consultation and collaboration. We will also empower professionals to be active on online peer-support networks in their area of work. * Open innovation - We will promote innovation in online public services to respond to changing expectations – bringing the concepts behind Show Us A Better Way into mainstream government practice. We will be talking more on what this all means over the coming weeks and months. Oh and we will be asking you on your thoughts on what a data site for the UK government might look like (recommendation 14) - so please start thinking about it. We have a new Director of Digital Engagement in the Cabinet Office - Andrew Stott. Andrew Stott was one of the original sponsors of the Power of Information work and has a background in IT and culture change in the civil service. All of this experience will be relevant in this new role. If you would like to follow Andrew on twitter he is @dirdigeng So a lot going on - watch this space. Report links Please read our report in the format that suits you. We have: PDF (795.89 kb) Open Office (513.55 kb) Microsoft Word (676.50 kb) XHTML (731.68 kb) - renders on Firefox and not IE. We're looking into it Tower 2009 by Richard 13. May 2009 22:20 The team will be a bit thin on the ground on Thursday as most of us are off to Tower 2009 - a joint Cabinet Office/Intellect conference on Government IT. The theme for Tower 09 is 'Putting Citizens and Businesses in Control': * empowering citizens in the digital age * frontline engagement * focus on the consumer/customer/user of public services to businesses * innovation and efficiency * public service reform Opening keynote from Tom Watson, and a really good line up all day. If you would like to follow the debate tomorrow we will be using #tower09 on twitter. As a result there may be a slight delay in comment moderation while we get back to the office. Please bear with us. Digital Engagement * About * Contact Information and how to make it useful by Richard 22. May 2009 18:31 Well ok, maybe not the whole topic in one blog post! What I would like to to do is start a conversation recommendation 14 – a UK version of data.gov The Power of Information Task Force flagged up that one of the main problems with UK government information is finding out what we have published, what form it is in, and how it can be used; we are looking at how we might do this. Any solution must support open standards and would ideally be open source, but there are a couple of other questions we are pondering at the moment: * What characteristics would be most useful to you – feeds (ATOM or RSS) or bulk download by e.g. FTP, etc? * Should this be an index or a repository? * Should this serve particular types of data e.g. XML, JSON or RDF? * What examples should we be looking at (beyond data.gov e.g.http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/data)? * Does this need its own domain, or should it sit on an existing supersite (e.g. http://direct.gov.uk) Let us know any and all thoughts – we will pick up twitter comments with #poit or #opendata. In the meantime, you can find some of the government's published data sources on this data wiki (thanks to Rewired State).
From: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Wrap-Up-of-the-Open-Government-Brainstorming-Transparency/ TUESDAY, JUNE 2ND, 2009 AT 10:05 PM Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Transparency Posted by Beth Noveck Last week the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) hosted the Open Government Brainstorm on behalf of the White House Open Government Initiative – the first of three phases in an unprecedented process of public engagement. The Brainstorm generated more than 1000 ideas to inform the crafting of recommendations on open government policy. Thank you to all who recognized the importance of this effort and participated thoughtfully. Phase I was designed to elicit a wide array of actionable suggestions for creating a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. As we look toward tomorrow’s start of Phase II – the Discussion Phase - we have culled a short list of topics for deeper and more focused conversation from among the suggestions you posted during this Brainstorm, from those ideas shared by government employees during a similar online conversation in March, and from proposals submitted to "From The Inbox." We read and considered all the proposals. We took the voting into account when assessing your enthusiasm for a submission, but only somewhat in evaluating relevance. The ideas that received the most organized support were not necessarily the most viable suggestions. Today, we want to share with you a little about what we’ve learned from you about transparency. Transparency is of vital importance. As the President emphasized in his Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act: "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, ‘sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.’ …At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike." There were plenty of great ideas that we read but that unfortunately did not make sense to bring into the next phase, including those with no relation to transparency policy, endorsing a product, or describing legislative action outside the purview of the Executive branch. We are bracketing suggestions for long-range change, such as proposals that require a constitutional amendment in favor of working with those that can lead to change in the shorter term. We are also temporarily putting to one side suggestions about transparency in specific agencies (ie. environmental or food safety transparency, creating Facebook pages for mail carriers, greater budgetary transparency in the Central Intelligence Agency). We will hold onto these proposals for subsequent conversations involving the decision-makers from the relevant agencies. Some ideas (ie. on regulations.gov or open source software) labeled with "Transparency" will fit better in our later discussions about Participation and Collaboration. Here are some examples of specific submissions, grouped by issue. We’ve attached a "mindmap" of the redacted transparency proposals so you can see a summary and overview of the themes that are emerging. We have also attached the National Academy of Public Administration’s analysis of the Brainstorm (pdf). 1) Transparency Principles: How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize our policymaking? * Adopt 8 Open Government Data Principles (complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, license-free); * Adopt Carter Center Plan of Action for the Advancement of the Right of Access to Information; * Crowdsourcing should be adopted as a principle and best practices around the use of crowdsourcing to evaluate data should be established; * Agencies should explain all policy decisions and the rationales behind them in readable language; 2) Transparency Governance: How do we institutionalize transparency across all government agencies and establish structures to ensure thoughtful and considered progress toward transparency? * Replicate Florida's model of an Office of Open Government; * Establish a Transparency Officer/Open Government Officer and interdisciplinary team in each agency whose job it is to inventory and proactively make data available to the public. Transparency officer must not be an information technology expert only but someone knowledgeable about legal frameworks, such as Privacy and Information Quality; * Create a data governance program/framework in each agency to evaluate data quality and priorities; * Seek public input on data to be made transparent; * Identify candidate agencies or programs as pilots for transparency; * Use Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) to bring together government and public researchers to collaborate on making data more accessible; * Confer transparency/open government awards. 3) Information Access: How do we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of access to government information? How do we improve the Government’s ability to disclose information pro-actively and bring down the cost and burden of compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)? * Impose penalties on agencies not following FOIA or tolerating excessive delays. Look at India’s approach, in which government officials become personally liable and must pay fines if they do not act in a timely fashion; * Use visualization tools to show timeliness of FOIA processing in real time and track which official has responsibility for the request at any given time, i.e. workflow management; * Post frequently requested categories of information; * Require agencies to accept FOIA and Mandatory Declassification (MDR) requests via email; * Simplify implementation of FOIA; * Implement requirement to post disclosed information in electronic reading rooms; * Paper duplication costs should be reasonable. Electronic duplication should be free. 4) Data and Metadata: What technological approaches might be used to improve access to Government data? What Government-wide approaches to data and metadata should we be undertaking? How can we improve the usefulness of Data.gov, the Government’s new platform for access to data? * Inventory and prioritize agency data for publication in open, downloadable formats; * Set agency targets: by a given date, X percent of non-sensitive agency data should be online; * Use Data.gov as a repository of newly declassified information; * Make contributed data subject to a waiver of copyright and database rights using the "CCO" scheme from Creative Commons; * Standardize discovery and method calls to data sets; * Offer a crawling program to identify data that agencies could make available; * Establish a monitoring program to ensure that sensitive data is not released; * Collaborate with private sector on conferences on visualization to design tools for Data.gov; * Adopt data dictionaries to ensure that terms have the same meaning across agencies; * Adopt better software for comparing relevance and meaning of documents to make government information more searchable; * More RSS data feeds and other points of access to government information; * Government should create permalinks on the paragraph level to make documents easier to cite; * Maintain a transparency dashboard to show progress toward transparency, e.g. the number of documents released; * Bring government services online and make them reusable by the private sector; if citizens own the services they should be able to build on top of them. This requires a "Services Oriented Architecture" approach (see: VA Loan Guaranty example); * Digitize all government research reports and make them available free via NTIS (the National Technical Information Service); * Convert Depository Libraries around the country into Regional Data Centers; * Make the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the off-site electronic backup data center for all agency e-record systems. 5) Open Government Operations: What are the strategies for making the workings of government more open and accountable? How do we balance openness and other constraints, like privacy and efficiency? * Create a "MyGov.gov" customized data feed/alert system that reaches across all federal agencies; i.e. create a "Citizens Portal"; * Publish a directory of who works in government. Agencies state there are legal issues and policies in place that prohibit them from posting their organization charts. Changing this might help increase transparency; * Publish a list of everyone who meets with the President; * Allow government employees to speak to journalists more freely to foster news-gathering; * Electronic voting machine hardware and software, from the machine in the polling booth to the collection systems used to collate results, should be subject to publication and verification; * Executive branch documents, such as the Federal Register and the Compilation of Presidential Documents, should be made available in downloadable and accessible formats; * Use innovative, new technology to create more transparent, effective, and efficient procurement strategies; * Require that all public agency meetings be webcast. Require that all Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) meetings be webcast; * Create weekly progress reports in which government employees rate and rank each other's announcements as a mechanism to select the best ideas to report to the Secretary; * Every agency should develop a "Web 2.0" communications strategy to set forth how it will use new media to accomplish its mission; * Identify common innovation platforms -- the basic frameworks needed across agencies for open government -- and invest in building those. While Phase I focused on idea gathering, Phase II focuses on defining the challenges in greater depth. We will be asking for your help with fleshing out the issues, potential solutions, and the pros and cons of proposed approaches. Tomorrow, June 3rd, we will invite your comments on the first blog post of the Discussion Phase. The first set of posts will focus on each of the five transparency themes (principles, governance, access, data, operations) listed above, followed by a series of posts on participation and collaboration. The goal of Phase II is to explore proposals for a Government-wide framework to achieve transparency, participation and collaboration. We want your help with translating good ideas into concrete, measurable and cost-effective solutions. Beth Noveck is Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government.
(Also see my call for "Promote Neighborhood E-Participation Across America" - http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/4772-4049 ) I've stuck in a last minute idea into the White House's Open Government brainstorm. This part of their consultation ends tomorrow, so if you like the idea please vote here (registration not required): http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/4764-4049 The text: Create "Democracy.Gov" as a citizen-centric starting point to navigate the official opportunities for executive and legislative branch participation with geographical personalization right down to the local level. The core of the system would be government submission of data on all elected officials at all levels - local, state, and federal. The site should also provide the main directory for government-hosted/sponsored online consultations like this one as well as cost-effective facilities (and links to those supported by third parties) to host such online public hearings. ... For you data hounds, one key output could be a public domain directory of all elected officials - the problem is that right now people can't easily look up their most local officials in national databases. This prejudices input to federal and state officials away from local democracy. Cheers, Steven Clift
I've noted that this is the weekend before PDF2009 - http://personaldemocracy.com - in NYC as well. - Steven Clift From: Matt Cooperrider <email obscured>> Date: Fri, May 29, 2009 at 7:29 PM Subject: Announcing Participation Camp - June 27th & 28th - New York City Today we announce a new un-conference focused on creating a truly participatory democracy. Participation Camp June 27th and 28th - New York City Learn more and register now at ParticipationCamp.org About Participation Camp Participatory government is a powerful ideal, but changing the system will not be easy. In the spirit of Transparency Camp, we're calling on open government advocates from all walks - including government officials - to come together and share their knowledge and strategies. PCamp09 will include featured speakers, participant-driven workshops, and hands-on projects. Get Involved Now We're all about participation, and we'd love to have your help making PCamp09 even better. We need organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and just good ideas. Learn more at ParticipationCamp.org or email us directly at <email obscured>. To continue to receive PCamp09 updates, be sure to subscribe on our site, or reply to this email and include the word SUBSCRIBE. More Open Gov Events Wednesday, June 3rd - OpenGovNYC's Summer of Gov Mixer: Join us for wine and cheese, followed by a series of presentations on new open gov projects. A good way to meet people in the movement and get involved. www.summerofgov.com Friday, June 5th - Capitol Camp: Albany throws open its doors for an open gov unconference, and invites you to help them improve your state goverment. www.capitolcamp.org
FYI - Steve From: Ari Schwartz <email obscured>> Date: Thu, May 28, 2009 at 2:31 PM Subject: [openhouseproject] Wikis for Draft Legislation To: <email obscured> I wanted to point Open House followers to CDT's project to try to encourage online comment on legislation before it is introduce. We have created the E-Privacy Act Amendment Wiki --- http://eprivacyact.org/ . While this is generally a technical bill (in the policy sense), we hope that we can get broad participation in this experiment and that other groups will be encouraged to create open processes to vet their draft proposals as well. Let us know what you think.
Here is mine: http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2519-4049 Place Everything Public Online Unless the Law Says Otherwise If you like it, vote for it. This is part of the White House effort. More: http://opengov.ideascale.com/