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deliberative democracy
Assessing Public Participation in an Open Government Era
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 - 12:59
The plans of top agencies have been assessed by both the government and advocacy groups to see if they met the requirements laid out in the directives, often with an emphasis on the degree to which they increase transparency. This report focuses on how well these agency plans increase public participation and collaboration.
918 recommendations
Conversations with Authors: Using Online Tools to Engage – and be Engaged by –The Public
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 - 11:21
Phrase:
Mr. Leighninger begins to pull back the veil on how the various online engagement tactics and tools can be used, and when they work best.
Radio show date:
Sat, 12/03/2011
Intro text:
While all federal agencies have developed “open government plans,” many managers find themselves unfamiliar with what tactics and tools work best, under different scenarios.
Audio segments:
0 comments
1131 recommendations
Using Online Tools to Engage – and be Engaged by –The Public
Monday, May 16th, 2011 - 10:56
Mr. Leighninger’s report begins to pull back the veil on how the various online engagement tactics and tools can be used, and when they work best.
His report describes common scenarios where public managers may find themselves needing, or using, public input. He describe a mix of ten different tactics managers may find useful for engaging the public online and highlights over 40 different technologies in use today to support those kinds of engagements.
1 comments
Ruby Sinreich
I hope to see some of these tactics (and more) utilized in the development of Chapel Hill's new Comprehensive Plan.
1283 recommendations
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer
Sunday, March 28th, 2010 - 12:49
Carolyn Lukensmeyer is Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks. Under Carolyn’s leadership, AmericaSpeaks has earned a national reputation as a leader in the field of deliberative democracy and democratic renewal.
Retooling Democracy
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 - 13:28
Today's blog post is by a guest, Matt Leighninger, executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Matt snapshots the state of play in the field of participatory democracy, an underpinning element of President Obama's soon-to-be released Open Government Directive.
View all 5 comments
Carmen Sirianni
My book, mentioned in Matt's blog, Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance (Brookings Press, 2009), is available from Amazon as well (see link below). The one in the blog did not bring up the Brookings page.
Carmen Sirianni, Investing in Democracy: Engaging Citizens in Collaborative Governance (Brookings Institution Press, 2009): to order from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Democracy-Engaging-Collaborative-Governa...
Carmen Sirianni
Another great resource is Xavier de Sousa Briggs, Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities Across the Globe (MIT Press 2008), available at:
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Problem-Solving-Capacity-Communities/dp/...
John Kamensky
Hi Carmen -- Let me fix the links on this. Thanks for the added resources!
Norman M. Macdonald
The ideas are noble and they remind me of many of the ideas that were floating around during the reinventing government effort. A key element has been overlooked how do we get the rank and file Federal Civil Service to buy into the new effort. For eight years they have been starved for people and money while many of the innovative thinkers have been forced out. Now the future is bright and morale is on the rise this is a good time for the Federal Civil Service to a 360 degree evaluation on where it stands and what are the ground level needs. This would be an evaluation where everyone has a place at the table - this will gather interesting information and would be the buy in for the rank and file.
Ed
It is nice that they are trying, but there is an implicit fail in the government *giving* participatory government to us. Democracy is not a top-down thing, and it cannot be brought about this way.
Instead, I would invite readers to look at the many emerging bottom-up approaches involved in the Metagovernment project:
http://metagovernment.org/
and/or the many other similar projects:
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Related_projects
As long as we have to wait around hoping that democracy will be granted to us, we will never have it. We must bring it about. And now we have the tools to do so. No presidents required.
307 recommendations
Collaborative Governance
Monday, July 6th, 2009 - 9:50
I spent part of my 4th of July weekend reading a new book by Beth Noveck, the White House staffer helping lead President Obama’s Open Government initiative.
View all 6 comments
Mark Cleverley
Admirable - "leaders committed to fundamentally redesigning the working of government and the relationship of government to the citizenry" - especially for the time of year that celebrates a previous example of precisely that happening...
However I won't hold my breath - what was that old saw about turkeys not voting for Christmas? (I guess that's a British aphorism, but you get the idea).
Norman M. Macdonald
This sounds like the carry on of a number of efforts of the reinventing government team ten years ago. As a Forest Service member of the reinventing team we used the term collaborative steward ship. The land management agencies have over the years developed with their various fellow collaborators a number of excellent examples. Given that command and control is dying and is being replaced by collaboration with a big boost from the development of communications nets such as Web 2.0. This is like going from Newtonian physics to Chaos physics - from a rigid structure to free flowing networks.
Lars Hasselblad Torres
Great to see that collaboration and deliberation have currency in the current administration. In particular, I am pleased that the very ideal of a "citizen" - informed, empowered, engaged - has subverted the formerly prominent "customer."
What worries me though is that "collaboration" and "deliberation" are pitted against each, both in Dr Noveck's book and in the way the two are positioned in your blog post. Phrases like "lack of imagination," "procedural uniformity," and "orderly discussion" are far too derisive to be representative of the actual state of play in the field.
What I think is more important than a review of the merits of public deliberation is clarification of basic premises here: deliberation plays a fundamentally different role in governance than collaboration, and so the comparison is something of apples to oranges.
Deliberation constitutes a set of practices that clarify how the public thinks, and where its policy preferences lie. Collaboration defines a set of practices for translating those priorities into workable public policy.
I hope in future conversations the two sets of practices can be seen as complementary toward producing more enduring and effective public policy as we continue to shape our union.
Cheers!
John Kamensky
Lars -- I like your constructive contrast between the use of deliberation - to clarify how the public thinks -- vs. collaboration -- getting something done. I agree each has an appropriate role. I'm sure Beth Noveck would agree, as well.
Lars Hasselblad Torres
Thanks John. One area I agree with Beth (from what I can learn here; I need to pick up the book) is the way deliberative processes have suffered by giving experts a "backseat" in public processes eg often informants to background materials or "presenters" set up as issue "framers" and context setters.
The missed opportunity is for them to work with the public to deepen understanding, evaluate complex trade-offs, and even for them to get a window in on how the public thinks and wrestles with the issues.
What collaborative processes tend to achieve is a more instrumental application of expert knowledge, in service of optimal policy design. Cheers.
Norman M. Macdonald
Lars:
I have worked with the collaborative concept at the field level I would say "It is a frame of mind based on respect and sharing,between sometimes opposing groups moveing toward a common goal." The key is respect without respect it flat won't work.
267 recommendations
This is an invaluable resource and will help inform public officials on effective ways to engage citizens in public policy decisions. There are many tools and techniques to choose from. This will be very informative and help lead the way for "high-quality public participation." Thank you for taking the initiative to publish this report.
This promises to offer communities insight into a variety of ways to engage citizens in public policy issues. There have been a myriad of tools and techniques developed over the past 4 years that include citizens in "decision-making" and "choice-creating". It's exciting to see the shift from random selection to large group engagement processes like the Community Forum that was a citizen initiative passed into law in King Co., Washington. The more people involved in learning about issues and sharing their opinions the more educated they become to make wiser choices to benefit the broader community.
The recommendations set forth in the report are now available in StratML format at http://xml.gov/stratml/drybridge/index.htm#AS or, more specifically, http://xml.gov/stratml/carmel/APPOGEwStyle.xml
Findings One and Four are closely related to the purposes of the StratML standard: http://xml.gov/stratml/index.htm#DefinitionPurposes