A week ago 150 people in Toronto started a movement called ChangeCamp, a rapid-response unconference of tech, design, and policy/government people who engaged the question:

How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?

I drove up from Dayton, Ohio the day before ChangeCamp and showed up at 9:00 ready to go. We do not create these types of opportunities for engagement in the US – we mostly work through issue groups, or local citizen activist groups. With the monstrous problems in the US over the last 8 years, we have been fighting for peace, justice, human rights, civil rights, and fair elections (I’m from Ohio and what you heard is all true). And we have celebrated the Obama era with hope, expectancy, and mostly relief.

But ChangeCamp was in my new hometown of Toronto, and I was delighted to be a supporter and to lead a session (co-led Citizen Participation in Policy Making with Karen Smith).

Just a few days later, back in my US homeland I was alerted to this news on the NCDD (National Council for Dialogue and Deliberation) list:

“Barack Obama has yet to announce who his chief technology officer will be. But he has hired a Silicon Valley exec for another role: Google product manager Katie Jacobs Stanton will be the new President’s “director of citizen participation,” starting in March, sources tell me.”

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090128/obama-gets-a-google-vet-but-not-for-cto/

Comments show respondents are quite disappointed that the pick has no bona fides in civic sector organizations. Critical responses were showing up elsewhere to rebut this appointment already.

“Stanton, sources say, will be part of the White House New Media Team headed up by Macon Phillips — putting “citizen participation” under the White House communications umbrella, it seems.”

It’s great to know such an office has been established at the WH, but hiring a technology expert without any evidence of commitments in social justice and civil society may be telling us that participation is considered to be – let’s be charitable and call it “scalable communications.” I find it an interesting paradox – the Google veteran probably stands for open government and can certainly coordinate technology efforts to engage mass citizen responses. But the need to engage citizen participation is social and cultural, and the social technology design should follow the values and vision of participatory democracy. Not enough info to go on, I know, but let’s consider this a new move for us to track and learn from.

I’m on the board of a US non-profit, the Agoras Institute, that organizes design and decision making for civic sector and policy making stakeholder groups. We are currently holding a progressive (and voluntary) virtual session of structured dialogue (SDD) on the inhibitors to Obama’s vision of participatory democracy. As we are able to understand it, of course. We have conducted one round with about 15 international participants, with the online wiki for the dialogue at: http://obamavision.wikispaces.com/

Our inquiry may be relevant to this White House office. Responses to the focus question of:

“In the context of Obama’s vision for engaging stakeholders from all walks of life in a bottom-up democracy employing Internet technology, what factors do we anticipate, on the basis of our experiences with SDD, will emerge as inhibitors to the actualization of his vision?”

Show in the root cause mapping: http://obamavision.wikispaces.com/Round+5-Root+Cause+Map to include one of 3 deep driver inhibitors as: Corporate Control of the means of Democracy.

Most of my consulting is in the corporate sector, so I’m not anti-corporate. But I do believe we need a better champion, and Canada might learn from this mistaken selection. It’s not enough to just create a new role for citizen participation and then expect it to be a large-scale social network for contribution management. If government is going to be open, they must signal their intention to really listen. We need a citizen-centered policy advocate to be at the gov table, especially where our official representation via Congress or Parliament is weakened by years of the megaphone voice of corporate lobbying.

Citizen participation in the US may be emerging from a long consumerism-induced slumber and it’s got a weak voice – we need to be sure we’re being heard, not being managed by just more scalable social technologies.

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent.  Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.  Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative.  Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.  Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

January 21, 2009

nice work … what does “responsible government” mean to you?

With President-Elect Obama’s inauguration only a few hours away, I’ve been reflecting on the campaign and the profound changes that I have already seen in American Politics. Seeing our American neighbors using technology to unite and mobilize for a cause they believe in renewed my hope in the political process.

What struck me most is how fast these changes happened. From redefining social media’s role within a political campaign to creating unprecedented channels of fundraising and grassroots mobilization, I for one learned it doesn’t have to take decades to transform old systems.

Change can happen fast and it can happen now. We are welcoming the world’s first Internet President, and as Canadians we should definitely be taking note.

In the last few months we have seen Obama’s transition team introduce weekly Youtube addresses, online policy brainstorms via Change.gov and a nation wide survey encouraging people to meet and discuss the changes they would like to see in their country. Notably, the emphasis is and remains to be on PEOPLE impacting change. It sounds so simple when you say it, but it is something that is so often overlooked: we have to bring the changes we need to government.

The Obama campaign showed us what was possible, but it is up to us to carry the spirit of his message forward especially to Ottawa. We have become too lax in our own governance. Parliament is on the brink of dissolution and we have a Prime Minister who seems to be more concerned with hoarding power then acting in the best interest of the Canadian People.

So what do we do about? A lot. Get involved. There are several initiatives like this site being launched to provide Canadians with a platform for new ideas to push us forward.

My good friend, Mark Kuzniki has created a collaborative crowdsourced event called ChangeCamp which will help bring members of the public and members of political parties together to examine where our system is failing and how we can help fix it.

Let’s get involved. Right now.

Rahaf

Back in 2007, Tom Steinberg and Ed Mayo published a report on the Power of Information proposing the better use and development of state and citizen-generated information in the UK. They state that their paper is an unusual review, in that it focuses on opportunities rather than problems. “When enough people can collect, re-use and distribute public sector information, people organize around it in new ways, creating new enterprises and new communities. In each case, these are designed to offer new ways of solving old problems.”

The pair came up with 15 recommendations based on a literature review, three in-depth case studies and interviews with 60 decision makers, website operators and users inside and out of government. They argue the government could grasp opportunities that exist in the creation, consumption and re-use of information, but current policy and action is not yet adequate to seize these opportunities. The report recommends a strategy in which government:

• Welcomes and engages with users and operators of user-generated sites in pursuit of common social and economic objectives;
• Supplies innovators that are re-using government-held information with the information they need, when they need it;
• Protects the public interest by preparing citizens for a world of plentiful information, and helps excluded groups take advantage.

Check out the full report and list of the recommendations - The Power of Information: An Independent Review

From the Centre for Social Innovation news letter:

Saturday, January 24th
8:30-5:00pm
MaRS Centre
101 College Street

ChangeCamp is a participatory and web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, policy-makers, technologists, design-thinkers, change agents and media creators to answer one question: “How do we re-imagine government and governance in the age of participation?”

This is the first ChangeCamp Canada event, which is intended to ignite a national, distributed and self-organizing movement. For more information, please visit the ChangeCamp Canada Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/changecamp. A web site for the event will be launched soon at http://changecamp.ca/

A couple of great quotes to focus on:

“Open Systems Make Failure Less Costly

Finding the best ways to analyze government information and collect value from public feedback is going to take a lot of experimentation. The probability of a successful solution is what author Clay Shirkey might qualify as a scalar distribution pattern: one where there’s a very large number of failures, some modest successes, and a few solutions that will do amazingly well. Being
prepared to accept a lot of failures is the key to finding the successes.

Government bureaucracies are failure-averse for very good reasons. Public scrutiny and the spectre of being accused wasting of tax payer funds make for a cautious environment, where money is only spent on guaranteed successes. By publishing data in open, standardized formats, governments can off-load the costs and stigma of failure to external organizations. Like Goldcorps, governments can take the open approach to innovation by challenging advocacy groups, the nascent community of armchair egovernment-geeks, and the for-profit market to ‘build a better way’. The government can then take advantage of the value created by the best solutions. Solutions that don’t work can die quietly, without any tax dollars having been spent.”

And why not adopt the “Camp” approach to change? …

“Ways Forward

In the last two weeks, more than one grass-roots forum has appeared to advance a new era in civic participation.  ChangeCamp[1], originating in Toronto, and Communeautique’s Forum Ouverte, in Montreal, are two such movements calling for an open exchange of ideas around using technology to re-define the role of the citizen.  The spontaneous emergence of these groups shows the demand for new ideas and tools in the Canadian government.

The non-profit VisibleGovenrment.ca seeks the expertise and participation of grass-roots groups, advocacy organizations, and citizens across the country to make online tools for civic participation based on open government data a reality.  If you share this goal, here are some concrete steps for action:

-         Host a ‘Change Camp’ or ‘Forum Ouverte’ in your city.

-         Research resources and strategies on the VisibleGovernment.ca, Sunlight Foundation, or   MySociety websites.

-         Contribute to a VisibleGovernment.ca project.

-         Start a dialogue with your public representatives on how they can be more open.”

Transparency Through Open Data and Open Source-Scribd

VisibleGovernment.ca is dedicated to promoting online tools for government transparency in Canada.  VisibleGovernment.ca will champion the development of open source tools that allow citizens to share, organize, and analyze government data.  By promoting the creation of these tools, VisibleGovernment.ca seeks to increase government accountability and engage citizens in the democratic process.  The ultimate goal of VisibleGovernment.ca is to make Canada the world model for open governance.

The concept for VisibleGovernment.ca was inspired by the paper ‘Hack, Mash, and Peer: Crowd-sourcing Government Transparency ’ , by Jerry Brito of George Mason University, and by the example of the Sunlight Foundation in the US.

With her permission, her recent post to the ChangeCamp group is a guest post here.  Thanks Jennifer!  Jennifer’s cooperation here is a good example of how we would like to encourage non-partisan input.

Great thoughts & links on example policy & principal statement …

1.  Really, my favorite, in terms of clarity and concision, are the
Open Transition principles that Mark Kuznicki already mentioned:

http://open-government.us/

2.  OpenGovData principles are a comprehensive defition of what open
government data means:

http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OpenDataPrinciples

3.  The reccomendations from the US group OMBWatch's report: 'Moving
Towards a 21st Century Right to Know Agenda' (the result of a long and
well-funded research effort spanning a multitude of stakeholder groups
and expert panels) has some good stuff in it, but it's a bit long and
unevenly applicable.  My favorite ideas are the creation of an 'Office
of Open Government', and reccomendation D-9, quoted at length below.

http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2008/11/17/the-right-to-know-agenda/

4.  While principles are nice, concrete examples of how a change will
improve society are powerful too.  The Illinois Data Exchange
initiative has put together some nice ones that support their
principles here:

http://www.chidataexchange.net/usage_examples.htm

5.  Norway's recent e-Citizen report, written by the 'Norweigen
Ministry of Government Administration and Reform' is fairly
revolutionary for something coming from a government agency, but it's
a report, not a policy statement.  Two key findings from the summary
are:

 - core aspecs of public sector data should be made accessable and re-
useable
 - e-government initiatives should participate with external
developers, both locally and internationally.

It's worth a look for a balanced section on positives and negatives of
public participation in section 9.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8694619/eCitizen20The-Ordinary-Citizen-as-a-Supplier-of-Publicsector-Information

(There are of course, other reports and reccomendations from different
agencies/countries, but the Norway one is the most recent.)

Jennifer