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A DRAFT proposal from 2001 ... additional bullets are on Steven Clift's print version, but they will not be added until after March 2005 ...

Contents 1 Distributed Democracy 1.1 Introduction 1.2 E-Citizens 1.3 Media 1.4 Governance 1.5 Advocacy 1.6 Civic Non-Profits 1.7 Community 1.8 Elections 1.9 General

Distributed Democracy

A Guide to Elections, Media and Governance in the Information Age

Introduction

A collection of concise essays from leading pracitioners across the democracies online community.

Format

All commissioned essays will be presented in common format with an easy to read style template with the following sections:

1. 75 Word Summary
2. 500 Word Essay including top 5 to 10 tips list, references in the text
3. Links to key online resources and documents

The Distributed Democracy Guide will contain up to 50 short essays covering the state-of-art practices and lessons related to the Internet and democracy. Key authors will be sought and compensated at a rate of XXXX for satisfactory and timely completion of articles. A further call for submissions will be made publicly with a XXX prize for each of the top ten submissions or for all those accepted for publication. All authors must have and share direct experience related to their topic. This "best practice" essays will focus on the "what is" and "how to do it" not what could or should be.

E-Citizens

1. What do E-Citizens want? - Summary of public opinion polls, user testing, focus groups, and Internet traffic statistics on political information and interactivity.
2. E-Citizen Tips - Top ten tips on how to be a good e-citizen.
3. Using the Internet to Teach Politics and Government
4. Tips on E-mailing Elected Officials

Media

1. Online Voter Guides - Creating special guides on candidates and ballot questions. This chapter is focused on online news sites.
2. Online Election Coverage - Creating a special web section for details election news coverage.
3. Political Coverage and Online News - Lessons from leading regional online news sites for ongoing state political coverage.
4. Civic Journalism meets Technology - Using information technology to enhance "civic journalism" projects.
5. Online Political Chat - Hosting live chat for political discussions and special guest appearances.
6. Designing Online Polls - Unscientific but useful? Tips on how to design online poll questions that generate interest and perhaps a useful result.
7. Building Voter/Candidate Selectors - How to build site features that allow users to have their political opinions matched with those of the candidates.
8. Election Return Presentation - From live results to detailed post-election reporting.
9. Hosting Candidate Q and A and Election Discussions among Readers

Governance

1. Effective E-mail Response Strategies and Techniques - Frontline advice from elected officials dealing with their "e-mail overload" challenge.
2. Finding Democracy - E-Government public portals and site navigation lessons.
3. Services versus Democracy - Success stories from e-government efforts that promote services with democracy to improve public accountability and transparency.
4. Fighting Corruption - Lessons from overseas on the use of the Internet to promote better service transparency.
5. Personalization Strategies - Bring e-goverance information to the citizens through e-mail and advance search and tracking features.
6. Legislatures Online Features List - Everything a legislature might consider.
7. Elected Officials Online - The election is over. How to use the Internet in your official representative work. Include a potential features list.
8. Campaign Finance Data Online - Making detailed campaign finance information available for wide spread use.
9. Public Accountablity - Putting Lobbyist and Ethics reports online
10. Budget Proposals and Spending Information - How to share budget and spending information online to improve public awareness and accountability

Advocacy

1. Develop an Effective E-mail Advocacy Alert Network
2. Using E-mail Communication within Grass Roots Organizations
3. Youth Guide to Online Organizing - From using key Internet tools to understanding your rights and responsibilities in educational environments.

Civic Non-Profits

1. Builing an Online Voter Guides - Lessons for non-profit, non-partisan online voter guides
2. Governance Guides - Helping the citizen effectively participate in government through independent online efforts.

Community

1. Building an E-Block Club - Gather your neighbors online for stronger bonds.
2. Online Townhall - Building the online public commons for local issue discussions.
3. Online Civic Events - Using the Internet to create structured, time-based events on important public issues.

Elections

1. E-mail Strategies - From e-mail newsletters to e-mail list segmentation, opt-in e-mail leads the way as the most effective online campaign organizing tool.
2. Campaign Features List - From essential to ubscure a ranking of Internet features and applications
3. Local Look-up - Behind the scenes technical strategies for zip code/address look-up of candidate/elected official look-up.
4. Top Ten Disasters - A beind the scenes look at lesson learned from the 2000 political .com hype and burn-out.

General

1. Usability and User Testing - Poor user interface design can make or break your site. Read these tips for the democracy online content development community.
2. Democracy Broadcasting: Enhanced Digital Television and Datacasting -
3. Multimedia Democracy - Streaming audio and video from political web sites. What works. What isn't worth the effort.

Also see the future tech 2001 list.