Personal Democracy Forum 2008
Session: Design Principles for Online Democracy: Connecting Government and Constituents in the Internet Age
Note by Mr. Jordan Raynor:
Sarah Schacht - Sarah Schacht is the founder and executive director of Knowledge As Power, an online nonpartisan system that helps individuals effectively participate in the legislative process. She's been a Republican, a Democrat, worked on presidential campaigns and in Congress; her mission now is to help "average" individuals become powerful citizens. Website: Knowledgeaspower.org
Designing for effective citizens and responsive legislators.
Launched in January of 2008.
Their model can be created for any legislature
Knowledge As Power's main design principle: We don't make "chicken salad"
Southwest Airlines VP was hearing that people wanted chicken salad on flights. The CEO asked how that would make them the lowest cost airline? Thus Southwest doesn't serve chicken salad.
Mission is to build effective citizens and responsive legislators:
- look at available research and do own research to fill in gaps
- consider what technology is most affordable and scalable, before what is "cool"
- we view our work as a service, not a tool
What they have now:
- is not useful for people with real lives
- has been geared to the professional lobbyist, the legislative staffer
In States:
- State legislators use Outlook
- Form letters sent by 10,000s
In Congress:
- Congress uses an overly complicated system
Personal letters do matter to legislators!
How do we fix these problems?
Knowledge as Power allows you to enter key words that search bills related to that keyword.
They have a bill timeline and they upload video debates on bills
Constituents can ask questions about bills via email on the site
Politicus is a BRAND-NEW program that allows legislative aides to see exactly what is going on with particular bills. Staffers can make notes to share.
Politicus sorts emails your legislator gets by bill and by whether or not the sender is for or against the bill. It also filters out double letters and can verify whether or not the person lives in your district.
Facebook application is being launched by Knowledge is Power that allows Facebook users to track bills they are interested in within the confines of their Facebook profile.
Steven Clift - Steven Clift is the founder of E-Democracy.Org, creator of the world's first election information website in 1994 and a global expert on democracy online who has given speeches across 27 countries. Today, as an Ashoka Fellow, he is expanding E-Democracy.Org's non-profit local online town hall Issues Forums in the U.S., the UK, and New Zealand. Website: e-democracy.org
The number one question he gets from legislators is how to make their offices more open.
What can we as citizens do to be more involved in the political process?
e-democracy.org/if
ISSUES FORUMS
They created the world's first election web site in 1994...after the election in Minnesota was over in 1994, people kept talking
Today - the ONLINE TOWN HALL:
- Anywhere, anytime democracy
- City-wide, neighborhoods as well - 10 cities across 3 countries
- Where is local power?
Jamal from Minneapolis:
- Large Somali community in Minneapolis
- Their "voice" was missing despite past outreach
- Bus strike provided motivation and real world reason to join and post to forum
- Contacted by the Mayor and media within hours
Local blogs are a biiger deal than we think
The mayor of Minneapolis announced candidacy on a blog before he announced it at a press conference
How issues forums work
1. Local E-Democracy group creates the public "space", defines charter (scope of the group)
2. Subscribe once. Commitment secured! Make it nearly impossible for them to opt-out
3. Participants agree to rules (real name, post no more than twice a day)
4. We do not pre-monitor forums
Sheila Campbell - Sheila Campbell is Manager of USA.gov Web Best Practices at the U.S. General Services Administration, whose mission is to dramatically improve government online communications. Her team advocates for citizen-centric web content by providing training, a web best practices clearinghouse, collaboration tools, and advocacy for over 1,400 federal, state, and local web managers. Website: USA.gov
Check out evolution of security - TSA blog
Evolution of Security - Delete-o-meter - they publish the comments that they deleted previously in the week (COMPLETE OPENNESS)
More and more agencies utilizing RSS
Government can be cool...NASA - NASA TV, podcasts, xml, rss
More than half or government agencies can not log on to things like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace at work. This is a big problem
Government agencies on iTunes. White House is great at this!
Government agencies also utilizing second life
Searh mashup and widgets are going to aggregate content
Current hurdles:
- lack of trust in employees to use new tools wisely - this is a management issue, not a source issue
- too many security risks
- not enough resources to respond to the public
- need to control the message
- legal and policy restrictions
- federal budget process
Tom Steinberg - mySociety - from London
they run most of the "democracy" websites in the UK
FixMyStreet.com - you put in your address and it puts a pin on the map for the authorities to come and take care of your public issues
FixMyStreet is amazing! It fixes your problems but it also has more positive solutions. Everyone on the site that reports a problem gets a survey a few weeks later to see whether or not their problem was fixed. If not, it directly links them to their elected officials so they can contact them and get the issue taken care of
They Work For You - another product that allows you to see the text of everything that goes on in Parliament
They also run the website for the Prime Minister. They run the petitions system (petitions.pm.gov.uk)
Executive governments can do big things on the web if they really desire to.
The British government responds directly to tons and tons of people who petition the government.
Q & A
Question: What does the role sharing look like between governments and actual citizen users? Should more of the effort come from the governments?
Tony: The governments need to be doing more in America. Congressmen complaining about their email boxes being too full are crap. Most of them haven't spent a dime on consolidating their email.
Sheila: Governments need to bring these ideas of openness into the everyday work life of their employees. Also, there needs to be one common design amongst government sites. No two government sites are the same. We must copy best practices in an effort to make the process of obtaining information less confusing for the average citizen.
Question: Is there a way to make emails between legislators public so that it can be an open forum?
Sarah: Legislators do value personal letters from constituents. Our service provides a break-down about how well the legislators are relating to their constituents. Citizens don't want other constituents seeing what they are saying to their legislators.
Question: Why was TSA able to do this successfully and not others?
Sheila: TSA had a visionary leader and was able to see a lot of negative responses from the public. He welcomed criticism from the public and that is a key to openness in government via the internet.
Sheila: Most of the government agencies who are not willing to do this is afraid that the information will be abused
Steven: People forget that government is something we all own. Political leadership and vision is key to this...leaders need to be articulating government openness.
Question: TSA has the most impressive wiki of any government agency.
Designing for effective citizens and responsive legislators.
Launched in January of 2008.
Their model can be created for any legislature
Knowledge As Power's main design principle: We don't make "chicken salad"
Southwest Airlines VP was hearing that people wanted chicken salad on flights. The CEO asked how that would make them the lowest cost airline? Thus Southwest doesn't serve chicken salad.
Mission is to build effective citizens and responsive legislators:
- look at available research and do own research to fill in gaps
- consider what technology is most affordable and scalable, before what is "cool"
- we view our work as a service, not a tool
What they have now:
- is not useful for people with real lives
- has been geared to the professional lobbyist, the legislative staffer
In States:
- State legislators use Outlook
- Form letters sent by 10,000s
In Congress:
- Congress uses an overly complicated system
Personal letters do matter to legislators!
How do we fix these problems?
Knowledge as Power allows you to enter key words that search bills related to that keyword.
They have a bill timeline and they upload video debates on bills
Constituents can ask questions about bills via email on the site
Politicus is a BRAND-NEW program that allows legislative aides to see exactly what is going on with particular bills. Staffers can make notes to share.
Politicus sorts emails your legislator gets by bill and by whether or not the sender is for or against the bill. It also filters out double letters and can verify whether or not the person lives in your district.
Facebook application is being launched by Knowledge is Power that allows Facebook users to track bills they are interested in within the confines of their Facebook profile.
Steven Clift - Steven Clift is the founder of E-Democracy.Org, creator of the world's first election information website in 1994 and a global expert on democracy online who has given speeches across 27 countries. Today, as an Ashoka Fellow, he is expanding E-Democracy.Org's non-profit local online town hall Issues Forums in the U.S., the UK, and New Zealand. Website: e-democracy.org
The number one question he gets from legislators is how to make their offices more open.
What can we as citizens do to be more involved in the political process?
e-democracy.org/if
ISSUES FORUMS
They created the world's first election web site in 1994...after the election in Minnesota was over in 1994, people kept talking
Today - the ONLINE TOWN HALL:
- Anywhere, anytime democracy
- City-wide, neighborhoods as well - 10 cities across 3 countries
- Where is local power?
Jamal from Minneapolis:
- Large Somali community in Minneapolis
- Their "voice" was missing despite past outreach
- Bus strike provided motivation and real world reason to join and post to forum
- Contacted by the Mayor and media within hours
Local blogs are a biiger deal than we think
The mayor of Minneapolis announced candidacy on a blog before he announced it at a press conference
How issues forums work
1. Local E-Democracy group creates the public "space", defines charter (scope of the group)
2. Subscribe once. Commitment secured! Make it nearly impossible for them to opt-out
3. Participants agree to rules (real name, post no more than twice a day)
4. We do not pre-monitor forums
Sheila Campbell - Sheila Campbell is Manager of USA.gov Web Best Practices at the U.S. General Services Administration, whose mission is to dramatically improve government online communications. Her team advocates for citizen-centric web content by providing training, a web best practices clearinghouse, collaboration tools, and advocacy for over 1,400 federal, state, and local web managers. Website: USA.gov
Check out evolution of security - TSA blog
Evolution of Security - Delete-o-meter - they publish the comments that they deleted previously in the week (COMPLETE OPENNESS)
More and more agencies utilizing RSS
Government can be cool...NASA - NASA TV, podcasts, xml, rss
More than half or government agencies can not log on to things like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace at work. This is a big problem
Government agencies on iTunes. White House is great at this!
Government agencies also utilizing second life
Searh mashup and widgets are going to aggregate content
Current hurdles:
- lack of trust in employees to use new tools wisely - this is a management issue, not a source issue
- too many security risks
- not enough resources to respond to the public
- need to control the message
- legal and policy restrictions
- federal budget process
Tom Steinberg - mySociety - from London
they run most of the "democracy" websites in the UK
FixMyStreet.com - you put in your address and it puts a pin on the map for the authorities to come and take care of your public issues
FixMyStreet is amazing! It fixes your problems but it also has more positive solutions. Everyone on the site that reports a problem gets a survey a few weeks later to see whether or not their problem was fixed. If not, it directly links them to their elected officials so they can contact them and get the issue taken care of
They Work For You - another product that allows you to see the text of everything that goes on in Parliament
They also run the website for the Prime Minister. They run the petitions system (petitions.pm.gov.uk)
Executive governments can do big things on the web if they really desire to.
The British government responds directly to tons and tons of people who petition the government.
Q & A
Question: What does the role sharing look like between governments and actual citizen users? Should more of the effort come from the governments?
Tony: The governments need to be doing more in America. Congressmen complaining about their email boxes being too full are crap. Most of them haven't spent a dime on consolidating their email.
Sheila: Governments need to bring these ideas of openness into the everyday work life of their employees. Also, there needs to be one common design amongst government sites. No two government sites are the same. We must copy best practices in an effort to make the process of obtaining information less confusing for the average citizen.
Question: Is there a way to make emails between legislators public so that it can be an open forum?
Sarah: Legislators do value personal letters from constituents. Our service provides a break-down about how well the legislators are relating to their constituents. Citizens don't want other constituents seeing what they are saying to their legislators.
Question: Why was TSA able to do this successfully and not others?
Sheila: TSA had a visionary leader and was able to see a lot of negative responses from the public. He welcomed criticism from the public and that is a key to openness in government via the internet.
Sheila: Most of the government agencies who are not willing to do this is afraid that the information will be abused
Steven: People forget that government is something we all own. Political leadership and vision is key to this...leaders need to be articulating government openness.
Question: TSA has the most impressive wiki of any government agency.
