I am putting together a small session for ~15 people to discuss ways to strengthen neighborhoods using the Internet when I am in Washington DC on Wednesday, May 7 from 9-11 a.m.

In addition to sharing the story about the exciting launch of the Neighborhood Issues Forum where I live - e-democracy.org/se - I’d like to discuss Vermont’s Front Porch Forum, i-Neighbors (academic project), the Facebook Neighborhoods application, Outside.In and Topix’s approach to zipcode based forums (lots of virtual ghost towns), Everyblock.Com, and DC’s exceptionally vibrant neighborhood e-mail list network (check out Cleveland Park with over 6,000 members). I am also interested in gathering ideas on block-level tools to support more secure networking among neighbors and how to extend the summer idea of National Night Out to a winter Local Night Online. We will even take a look at the sad Rotten Neighbor site.

If you would like an invite - drop me a note:

clift@publicus.net

Put “Neighborhoods Online Discussion” in the subject.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

P.S. We have a small grant to establish two neighborhood forums in high immigrant areas in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Work is getting underway. See: e-democracy.org/nf
I am interested in learning about any other examples where such an effort has attempted to build a geographically bounded space that is fully reflective an actual and highly diverse local community (v. white middle class active citizens who are the easiest to recruit).

Join me in Austria next September at the EDem2008 conference.

In addition to speaking, I hope to use this as an opportunity to have an informal conversation with researchers interested helping design a proposal for a multi-city European comparative research project on *citizen-based* local e-democracy projects (including a mix of community and neighbourhood Issue Forums with E-Democracy.Org).

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org and DoWire.Org

EDem2008 – Conference for E-Democracy
www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem

Krems (Austria), 29-30 September 2008

“E-Democracy“ has managed the jump from trendy “e-word” to reality. Following recommendations issued by the European Council, studies and projects conducted in Europe are starting to provide initial findings and results. There are a number of E-Democracy applications, ranging from providing information to discussion, deliberation, decision-making and voting, thus encompassing the entire democratic process. The technical devices have become a means to an end, and there are other questions that now need to be raised and answered:

• To what extent can E-Democracy support and enrich our democracy?
• What and where are the interfaces, what methods can be used to integrate E-participation in present politics public administration processes?
• How can we ensure that the greatest number of people are reached and are able to use the means of participation?
• How can the modern media support political education?
• How can the Internet increase participation in political discussion?
• What are the limitations and the risks of E-Democracy?

The EDem2008 conference presents the opportunity to look into these questions and discuss the answers. During the conference experiences will be collected, examples good and bad practice analysed, the State-of-the-Art and future scenarios will be presented and discussed.

We are looking for contributions on all areas and levels of electronic democracy and participation systems, precedence will be given to those contributions which include national and/or international experiences. Concrete projects can also be submitted, and, if accepted, would be presented as examples of “hands-on” demonstrations of E-Democracy and E-Participation.

Papers and projects can be submitted in English or German, the tracks in German and English language will be held parallel.

We invite individuals from academic and practical backgrounds as well as public administration offices, public bodies, NGOs, education institutions and independent organisations, to submit their contributions.

Important dates

15. May 2008
Deadline for paper submission (max. 10 pages)

15. May 2008
Deadline for project presentations
(if the project is not submitted with a paper please provide 2-3 pages describing the project and the a link)

30. May 2008
Notification of acceptance/rejection

15. June 2008
Final (camera-ready) papers submission

29-30. September 2008
Conference: Danube University Krems, Austria

Submission
Please submit your paper in a pdf or MS Word format to:
peter.parycek@donau-uni.ac.at
or
alexander.prosser@wu-wien.ac.at

Reviewing is applied for all the materials submitted.
All papers are refereed through a ‘double blind’ peer review process. Please submit the text of the paper, including text, acknowledgments, references and notes, tables, figure captions, figures, but with the names of authors or their biographical notes on a separate page.

Please use the following format for accepted papers:
www.ocg.at/publikationen/books/files/paper2.dot
If your paper is accepted, please fill out the author agreement: www.ocg.at/publikationen/books/files/copyright.pdf

Cost: EUR 95,- including proceedings
Further information: www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem

In cooperation with the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.
The Proceedings will be published by the OCG (Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft)

Keynote Speakers
Steven Clift (Ashoka Fellow, E-Democracy.Org, USA)
Ann Macintosh (Professor of Digital Governance, University of Leeds, UK)
Matt Poelmans (Director, Citizenlink, The Hague, NL)

Conference Chairs
Peter Parycek (Danube University Krems)
Alexander Prosser (Vienna University of Economics, A)

Programme Committee
Georg Aichholzer (Austrian Academy of Sciences – Institute of Technology Assessment, A)
Sylvia Archmann (European Institute of Public Administration EIPA)
Lasse Berntzen (Vestfold University College, NOR)
Thomas Buchsbaum (Austrian Foreign Ministry, A)
Günther Burkert-Dottolo (Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, A)
Alessandro de Carlo (Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, A)
Matjaz Gams (Jozef Stefan Institute, University of Ljubljana, SLO)
Thomas Gordon (Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, D)
Marijan Gusev (Cyril and Methodius University Skopje, FYROM)
Bozidar Klicek (University Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics Varazdin, HR)
Zlatko Lagumdzija (University of Sarajevo, Management and Information Technology Centre, BiH)
Ann Macintosh (University of Leeds, UK)
Ülle Madise (estnische Parlamentsdirektion, EST)
Ursula Maier-Rabler (University of Salzburg, A)
Josef Makolm (Federal Ministry of Finance, A)
Peter Mambrey (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, D)
Oliver Märker (Zebralog, D)
Veljko Milutinovic (University of Belgrade, Faculty for Computer Engineering ,SRB)
Robert Müller-Török (INTECO, D)
Arvo Ott (e-Governance Academy, EST)
Rob Peters (ZENC, NL)
Carl-Markus Piswanger (Austrian Federal Computing Centre, A)
Guenther Schefbeck (Parlament, A)
Erich Schweighofer (Universität Wien, A)
Rita Trattnigg (Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water, A)
Roland Traunmüller (Universität Linz, A)
Frank Wilson (Interaction Design, UK)
Maria Wimmer (University of Koblenz, D)
Melanie Volkamer (University Passau, D)
Helle Zinner Henriksen (Copenhagen Business School, DK)

Hey all, I’ll be interviewed live online next week by David Witzel with PolicyCommons.Org and Forum One Communications.

If you have any questions on the topic of “Building Town Halls Online” or e-democracy in general, send them in now:
interviews.liveinterviewsonline.com/content/interview/detail/1010/

Here is the text of the announcement from LIVE Interviews Online:

Interview with Steven Clift on Building Town Halls Online
2 April 2008, 11:00 AM EDT/4:00 PM UK (Check other time zones here.)

Participation in public life, in local democracy and civic affairs, is in a serious decline. From time pressures experienced by two income families to a growing cynicism about government and politics, local communities face a fundamental threat to their ability to meet public challenges via democratic processes and participation.

Steven Clift has succeeded at creating the equivalent of local town halls for the online world. Multiple contemporary barriers impede participation in politics and the citizen sector, resulting in feelings ranging from confusion to powerlessness to distrust. E-Democracy.Org achieves the impact of community meetings more conveniently, less expensively, and by reaching more people.

The Case Foundation just released the 20 finalists out of 5,000 applicants for the Make It Your Own Awards. You can vote here: miyo.casefoundation.org/vote

This innovate program (I was among the judges selecting the 20 finalists) is also a very interesting exercise in online voting. You can’t just go online and choose one winner, you need to dig in and vote for four. The “final four” receive an extra $25,000 on top of the $10,000 received by the final 20.

Like the Knight News Challenge, I appreciated the MIYO approach to making it extremely easy for people to submit ideas. I was also a first round judge and used their Drupal-based review system to read submissions and offer ratings. Like Ashoka’s Changemakers Competitions, an online vote determines top winners after a deliberative process that involves judges. I hope both these ideas become new mega-trends in philanthropy. Elaine Gast’s article on the main Case Foundation site titled, Keeping It Real: Case’s Approach to Online Voting might also be of interest.

Below is the list of the top 20 MIYO award finalists - congrats! Help spread the word and be sure to vote.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
DoWire.Org

From:
miyo.casefoundation.org/vote
Simple version:
vote.election-america.com/make-it-your-own/

UNCommon Council
Keith Herring - Syracuse, NY
The Southside Community of Syracuse is an area suffering from poverty, drugs, educational failure, child neglect/abuse, and crime. The United Neighbors Common Council will comprise a cross-section of this diverse community and engage its members in collective decision-making and problem-solving. The council will involve all segments of the community through a three-pronged strategy – communication via multiple formats, consultation with advisory committees, and community outreach efforts.

Wilson For The Ages
David Criswell - Wilson, KS
In Wilson – population 800 – student enrollments are declining, more than one-third of the commercial downtown buildings are vacant, and the single largest age group is “over 65.” To bring the community together and ensure that everyone’s voice is heard, Wilson for the Ages will hold town hall meetings to solicit public input; develop a questionnaire distributed by mail, by hand, and online; and make personal contact to spread the word. As input is gathered, key issues will be identified and action plans coordinated.

Child/Youth Friendly City
Nancy Gilder - Denver, CO
A broad-based effort to establish Denver as the leading Child/Youth Friendly City (CYFC) in the nation, CYFC has grown from having three partners to having more than 100. The project is now focused on gathering 10,000 voices from people of every race, religion, age, gender, and sexual orientation and facilitating 100 conversations about what makes or would make Denver child/youth friendly. A CYFC youth leadership team will take this information and engage citizens in taking action on a shared vision for the city.

Citizen Participation
Keith Twitchell - New Orleans, LA
After Hurricane Katrina, the people of New Orleans came together in unprecedented ways and, in the process, became aware of their power as citizens. Citizen Participation’s goal is to create a mechanism that builds on that community spirit and enables people to make decisions at the neighborhood level about how to rebuild the city. The program will make special effort to reach out to poor and displaced citizens. The ultimate goal is to present a citizen-designed plan for formal, permanent citizen participation for passage by the New Orleans City Council.

Community Conversations
Kate McPherson - Vancouver, WA
Vancouver/ Clark County is rapidly growing into a collage of cul-de-sacs and strip malls. Residents, especially youth, lack a sense of community belonging. Community Conversations is designed to support high school students as they develop Civic Action Projects by enabling them to talk with youth and adults who can help them shape projects that are personally meaningful and valued by the community. Student facilitators will use the Conversation Café process to foster respectful and generative intergenerational discussions.

Community Vision Project
Imre Kepes - Pelham, MA
Holyoke, MA, is a diverse, post-industrial city with great potential and also many challenges such as crime, teen pregnancy, school dropout, and other issues. The Community Vision Project will develop a team of youth leaders to inspire others and gather input from a cross-section of residents to develop ideas to make their community a better place. Together they will create a Community Vision Map that will graphically express these ideas and help to inform and mobilize the community. A support network will help turn these ideas into action.

Conversations for Change
Lisa Harper - New York, NY
As an offshoot of the South Bronx Coalition Against Violence, Conversations for Change will plan and implement dialog between the police and communities in the South Bronx – the nation’s poorest congressional district and an area plagued by increasing crime and underserved schools. Over the next year, the Coalition looks to build partnership for these conversations, train dialog facilitators, launch area “conversation circles,” and follow up to ensure that action steps are implemented.

Crossing Borders
Nan Kari - St. Paul, MN
Through Crossing Borders, an intergenerational group of Somali, Mexican, Peruvian, Hmong, Korean, and U.S. born people will explore how to bring more diverse people into public work and strengthen democratic practices – both at the Jane Addams School for Democracy (JAS) in St. Paul, as well as in towns throughout Minnesota. Among the initiative’s goals are bimonthly team discussions, cross-cultural multimedia projects, and training for others on democratic education and outreach.

DCCV
Bridget Murphy - Menomonie, WI
In its first year, DCCV has already taken action toward creating a shared vision for the rural west central Wisconsin community of Dunn County. In May, groups representing different community areas sent representatives to investigate possible futures for the county. This past summer, DCCV reached out to citizens to engage in dialogue about their hopes and ideas for the future. In the fall, citizen task forces were recruited to accomplish specific goals and make public policy recommendations.

Deliberative Democracy
Mark Shoul - Royalston, MA
For five years, community leaders in rural North Central Massachusetts have been working to build trust among the region’s diverse group of residents through community projects such as mentoring troubled youth and holding an interfaith Thanksgiving service. The network of community groups in North Quabbin needs support to continue organizing two annual public conversations – one that identifies a shared community concern and another that determines an action plan.

Five Two Eight O
Janna Goodwin - Denver, CO
The goal of Five Two Eight O is to conduct storytelling events in diverse areas of Denver to reveal community concerns and provide opportunities for action. In the neighborhood phase, individuals will share personal stories onstage, followed by group dialog. Artists, performers, and community members will re-create these narratives culminating in a citywide theatrical event at a large, central venue. Written reports as well as in-person and online dialog discussion will lead to action plans.

Front Porch Forum
Michael Wood-Lewis - Burlington, VT
Front Porch Forum (FPF) hosts a network of online neighborhood forums that blankets an entire metro area. More than 30% of its pilot city, Burlington, VT, takes an active part, connecting with neighbors, building community and partaking in grassroots democracy. This consistently gives rise to face-to-face conversation and community action, leading to safer neighborhoods, citizen campaigns and direct input into local decision-making. FPF seeks support to increase participation, expand into one other community and develop a replicable model.

In Search of the Commons
Jim Barrett - Livingston, MT
For over 100 years, Park County, Montana, located on the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park, has been at the center of conflicts pitting the demands of development against the profound national conservation values of this region. In Search of the Commons aims to heal these divisions by reaching out to our entire community. Through neighborhood meetings, a web-based community forum, and interviews that place a special emphasis on connecting young people with adult leaders, we will assure our future is a reflection of our shared ideals.

Juveniles 4 Justice (J4J)
Jessica Feierman - Philadelphia, PA
Juveniles 4 Justice (J4J) is designed to bring together youth returning to Philadelphia from juvenile justice placements to collaborate in creating a positive vision for their communities. J4J will recruit a diverse group of incarcerated youth from local community settings. These young people will communicate with others incarcerated throughout the city and state and then meet with local nonprofits, youth-serving agencies, lawmakers, and media to discuss their visions and plans for change.

Leaders of the New School
Asad Jafri - Chicago, IL
The south side of Chicago suffers from poverty, a lack of resources, and gang activity. Leaders of the New School wants to directly involve those most affected by these issues – area youth aged 13-19 – in an urban arts project designed to create and inspire social change. Diverse participants from various ethnic/racial and religious backgrounds will meet once a week to discuss and address community issues through art. Following a period of instruction and training, the youth will begin work on a multidisciplinary Hip-Hop performance.

Madison SOS
Natalia Thompson - Madison, WI
Madison SOS (Speak out, Sister!) will unite teen girls throughout Madison to identify and act on the community issues that most matter to them. Teens will develop leadership skills as they organize and implement initiatives addressing a variety of local issues - by creating an online forum for youth to connect on these issues, conducting a series of peer listening sessions, painting a visionary community mural, writing a report for community stakeholders, and leading grassroots, multigenerational action to advance their priority issues.

Making Health Our Own
Susan Sloan - Bellingham, WA
From students to seniors, from newly arrived immigrants to descendants of county pioneers, from the homeless to corporate CEOs, members of this Pacific Northwest community will work together to create a comprehensive community health plan. Through a three-step approach, Making Health Our Own will identify health issues of shared concern, prioritize these issues, and then come together to establish goals, create policies, and formulate action plans.

My School is Your School
Dominick Maldonado - New Haven, CT
Last year, a diverse group of individuals, parents, students, and community agencies joined together to establish a “constituency engagement team” concerned with the education of children attending public school in impoverished New Haven. After identifying the disconnection felt between parents, community members, and teachers, the team has decided to launch an effort to strengthen these relationships through community deliberation and action.

Summit for Environmental Action
Kate Irwin - Sarasota, FL
In Sarasota County, citizens, local government and organizations jointly host the Summit for Environmental Action. The goal of the day is to reach consensus on a few community issues to move forward on with action. Organizers have reached out to municipal, business, neighborhood, education and faith-based groups to ensure a balance of participants. That day, participants will develop collective and individual action plans. Afterward, attendees will bring the plans to their networks to serve as leaders of and organizers for environmental action.

Re-Imagining our City
Fiona Cheong - Pittsburgh, PA
To help revitalize Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District, an area now often stigmatized by negative media reports, Re-Imagining Our City will involve a diverse group of local teenagers as full partners in exploring how to design a new urban green space. A core council of area teens will recruit participants from schools, youth groups and parent groups for public conversations designed to empower young people, involve them in city planning that will re-shape their city, and support them in educating and involving the larger community.

The UK Ministry of Justice is considering an online engagement component as part of “its desire to hold a national debate on a British Statement of Values as part of the Governance of Britain Green Paper.” They plan a representative “Citizens’ Summit” into which the results of an online engagement(s) would flow.

I was asked by OpenDemocracy.Net to participate first in a preliminary “Networking Democracy” exchange which is now flowing into a just launched public discussion. See: www.opendemocracy.net/networking-democracy

I happened be outlining a potential “Minnesota Listens” online event designed to foster consensus online among say 1000 people coming at an issue with differing views. I adapted that as part of a three step online process in my recommendations (below). The reality is that building consensus offline, much less online among even 30 people is a real challenge, so in the end I recommend step one and two (and step three could be one of the many distributed events gathered in part two.)

As I outlined my recommendations, I planted a couple seeds on the DoWire Consult online group - one on Building consensus online (42 posts) and the other on Gathering input from one million people. The discussion also unearthed progress on the CivicEvolution platform for building online consensus. These discussion prove once more that the intelligence is in the network.

I encourage you to add your comments about the UK considerations on the OpenDemocracy site - they are asking the world to come in and comment on how to do this right. The UK continues to be a beachhead state with e-democracy, be it e-petitioning or government funding for e-democracy experiments. If good things breakthrough their, they might just spread.

My submission text is on the Networking Democracy site and below for posterity.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
DoWire.Org

Online Engagement in a National Debate

Steven Clift, of E-Democracy.Org

Typically, online political debate is first about quantity. It raises the voices of those who seek to be heard and is read only by those to seek (click) to listen. It is about disagreement and often disparaging those with whom you disagree behind the cloak of an alias.

If you seek quality, deliberation, representativeness, insight, and more, the resources you would dedicate to an online engagement should parallel those invested in any well-funded gathering of public input such as the envisioned Citizens’ Summit. If you are ready to accept the fact that that online “engagement” is not participation on the cheap, then let’s proceed.

First, an important issue: Promote Real Names - Promote the use of real names and community everywhere. This generates much higher quality submissions, raises the level of discourse, and causes politicians to take notice. If you decided that you need anonymous channels for participation, give people the option to opt-out of using their name in public discussions. but make real names the strong default. This is the number one quality control lesson from E-Democracy.Org. Almost everyone else as bought into the myth that “no one knows your a dog online.” It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that in political debates online people often act like animals. The rise of Facebook demonstrates the power of identity online. The value of real names does not apply to sensitive topics or places where people face serious threats of retribution or imprisonment for expressing unpopular opinions online. But in “public life” I do not buy the argument that the fear being judged or held accountable ones political views is so negative that the entire online exchange should be oriented toward the use of aliases. Try to imagine how parliament with each speaker talking with a bag over their head. Who would take that seriously?

I recommend a three pronged, evolutionary approach:

* Distributed Online Survey with Comment Submission and Rating
* Networked Engagement through Multiple Partners, National Promotion
* Online Deliberative Participation

In addition, I’ve included a list of frank advice at the end of the scenarios.

To help develop my thoughts on this proposal, I seeded a discussion on the Democracies Online community of practice about e-participation. In summary, building “consensus” online (or offline for the matter) is extremely complicated even if the result is viewed by those who participate as mattering. Since the “intelligence is in the network” please see:

* Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation Online Group

Where you can find: Building consensus online; Building consensus online/definitions?; and Gathering input from online from one million people

Distributed Online Survey – “The Widget”

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

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

Project goals:

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

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

1. Given the opportunity to answer “why?” with a comment
2. Shown five to ten second tier questions selected for that day/week that they can answer
3. Be given the opportunity to securely share demographic data for use in either weighing a potential display of the results based on census data or, if not saved with the answers, to at least measure outreach to diverse groups in society
4. Provided an option to rate other comments and view comments (default view +1 or above - “Slashdot” style, which was recently adopted by YouTube to allow the audience bury useless comments below the visibility threshold)
5. Asked to provide their e-mail address and postal code for a project e-newsletter and other important updates
6. (Random) prizes should be available for those providing their e-mail address (S. Korea has offered prizes on government-funded voter education websites)

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

If final editorial control is vested in a government official, make that transparent and clear to participants. By having a channel for top tier daily questions and second tier additional questions on the central site, most of the top rated questions should be accommodated by the second level if found too controversial for placement across government or partner websites.

Networked Engagement through Multiple Partners, National Promotion

After the initial phase of surface level mass engagement via the online survey, you now have an opportunity to leverage this audience (if you’ve aggressively encouraged opt-in e-mail registration in the first phase). In addition to the fresh opt-in e-mail list, promotion of this overall effort should leverage e-mail addresses gathered by government (from e-petitioning, etc.) to the greatest extent allowed by privacy policies/use promises.

I recommend a “thousand flowers bloom strategy.” Invite the public to search and join a local or community of identity/interest online discussion on the British Statement of Values that interests them.

You need a catchy name that says “British Values Online Month.”

Instead of picking one technology or platform, you would encourage partner sites - be they a local media or Council website, the blog of an MP, or a national site oriented toward a socially excluded population - to register the section on their site where they are hosting their own independent British Values online discussion using their own format and style. Imagine hundreds of small (and some quite large) online gatherings leveraging the skills and talents of may different hosts.

Partner sites should be invited to opt-in on a non-exclusive basis, add a logo to their website and link back to the central directory. Most importantly they would be included in a keyword and geographically searchable directory/map of participating sites.

You need a launch date and an end date to generate media attention, provide an incentive to participate “now” as well as to allow the effort to celebrate something with a sense of closure.

After one month or so of distributed participation, partners should be asked to report results using standardized online form. This will guide distribute hosts toward moving their participants from expression toward dialogue and perhaps some consensus building. Gathering public and sharable results from the each group will further allow aggregation of results.

Key to this approach is a significant promotional budget including a mix of television advertising and online advertising to drive traffic to the directory. Major media organisations would make ideal partners.

One of the conditions for partnering should include active promotion of both their British Values website participation section and the overall central initiative website through available off-line means of promotion (if a television network participates they must agree to promote the online event on the air not just on their website).

A variation of this proposal would be to create an online discussion hosting facility for use by multiple organisations as an option (preferably open source so the tool may be extended to future events/existing platforms). MPs or local councils, for example, could register to host an online discussion for people in their area and provide whatever facilitation and recruitment that is required. A fundamental flaw in most nationally conceived e-participation projects is that no politician, be they a local councillor or a MP, has to pay attention to “their constituents” in the typical format where they are often disempowered as representatives. This however does not mean many would jump at the chance to host and guide an open discussion in a medium where they feel (rightly or wrongly) they have less control than with face-to-face participation.

I should offer, that if interest is strong in a distributed approach, E-Democracy.Org would be very interested in how such an online event could leverage our existing geographically-based Issues Forums in England. Further, one might imagine a scenario whereby council or county-level forums could be established across the UK with the participation/promotion of interested local governments for a one-month event (with say at least 100 participants attracted for viability) that could then be turned over to the participants to form a voluntary committee to sustain the online public space for democratic participation in their county/council/parish/neighbourhood on an ongoing basis. See: e-democracy.org/if

Online Deliberative Participation

It could very well be that where my thinking started (the text below) with this request is least appropriate considering the value that will be generated by the in-person representative citizen jury approach.

However, if the goal is deep online engagement in a highly structured and mediated setting (which could be one of the “flowers” if funding was provided) you might go completely the opposite direction of phase one and invite 250 to 1,000 Britons to participate on a competitive basis. Selection could be based on an application process, submission of an essay/video judged in some way, or people invited based on highly rated comments. Another selection model would be to create slots based on demographics and choose participants from a pool of applicants that way.

This approach is completely different than taking a distributed “Web 2.0” approach, but I have yet to see 1,000 monkeys write Shakespeare. When the Bay Area actually delivers stronger local communities based on aggregated hyper-individualistic technological determinism we should take another look.

Below I’ve outlined a two week online event or consultation that could be adapted for our purposes. In general, people vastly underestimate the costs involved with moving online engagement beyond the Hyde Park-style soapbox or stilted “government wants to know X” consultations to something rich, deliberative, and participant driven. I have made a rough outline for a potential project in my home state in the USA called Minnesota listens, you can find it here.

Additional Advice

Some of these ideas are included above, but this is a quick list generated moment after I was first contacted for advice.

If you really want to encourage broad participation/and to quickly answer some of the questions posed:

1. Partnerships and Prizes - Develop mass media partnerships to help promote the engagement. Consider advertising and definitely have prizes for certain actions be it a ring tone or whatever. (S Korea has used prizes on government funded voter education web sites.)

2. Survey and Show Incremental Results for Immediate Feedback - If you want/expect big numbers, have a light weight online-survey option … but allow people to publish their input and allow others to rate/recommend responses ± (Slashdot style) - Queensland publishes comments/results thus far with some consultations, they even show the % results for multiple choice questions as results come it … very good, very transparent.

3. Weigh with Demographics - Ask for census-related demographics as an option (kept private and secure of course) to help you display the results in a weighted manner as an option - there is no way this can be scientifically representative on the input side so drop any illusion BUT mass participation will get you pretty close - Issy France weighs the results of their citizen panel online.

4. Hire Summarizers - Hire people with strict deadlines to distill results as they come in, summarize, and report back publicly to gather more input - taking comments and turning them into survey questions on the fly. Don’t fool yourself with strictly technical solutions. This takes bodies. However, the more structure you put into survey questions and the like, the easier it will be to tabulate high level results.

5. Review Advice - Track down newer and older guides:
New: New Zealand’s Guide to Online Participation:
www.e.govt.nz/policy/participation

Older: Online Consultations and Events - Top Ten Tips for Government and Civic Hosts
www.publicus.net/articles/consult.html