All postings and discussions

An Experiment in Open Government or What a Brave New UK Government Might Do

Featured. Posting written by Paul Johnston 28 days ago.
Last comment 15 days ago, 2 Comments.

  Problem statement: Governments have improved consultation processes and experimented with other ways of getting citizens involved in policy-making, but policy-making is still seen as a black box that people feel excluded from. Also despite government efforts to listen more to outside voices including frontline public sector workers, the process of agreeing a change package can encourage a bunker mentality where potential problems (or implementation improvements) are missed in the dri...

Transparency and Daily Life

Posting written by Paul Johnston 3 months ago.
Last comment 3 months ago, 1 Comment.

I am a strong advocate of transparent government, but sometimes it can seem very remote from daily life - how much do things like Obama's data.gov really mean to people in the street? Well, the excellent Sunlight Foundation did a blog recently that answers that question really well. The basic theme is what data might be relevant to you as you shop for your Thanksgiving turkey. Here's a sample of the blog, focussing on the main ingredient: Turkey. What are the results of the latest federal sa...

posted in Transparency

The last Tango in Lisbon

Posting written by JAIME QUESADO 3 months ago. No comments yet.

  The symbolical act of the formal ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon on the 1st December in the Portuguese Capital is at the same time a point of arrival and a point of departure. When the different leaders of Europe will sign this “contract for the future”  in the beautiful Belem Tower from where some centuries ago the Portuguese Navigators started a very long trip to give new worlds to the existing world, a last tango will be danced in Lisbon. A tango of trust and c...

Giving Citizens an Effective Voice

Featured. Posting written by Paul Johnston about 1 year ago.
Last comment 3 months ago, 6 Comments.

At Saturday’s UKgovtweb barcamp I am hoping to run a session on consultation with the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills’s Steph Gray. He will bring a wealth of experience in relation to innovation consultations. I will bring one of my current obsessions – how do you aggregate citizen input into public sector consultations? With the best will in the world ministers and civil servants face an impossible task in trying to “take onboard” hundreds ...

posted in Consultation e-participation

The idea of a Europe 2.0

Featured. Posting written by JAIME QUESADO 3 months ago. No comments yet.

The 5th E-Government Ministerial Conference  held in Malmo, integrated in the Swedish Presidency, reinforced the strategic importance that the new tools of a more transparent, capable and flexible Government have in the consolidation of the trust of citizens in the role of the State. As Dan Tapscott clearly said, “there is no more time for the lack of capability in a society where the State must be the central enabler of Trust and Ambition for Society”. That ´s it. In...

Twitter Use By Government

Featured. Posting written by njacknis about 1 year ago. No comments yet.

A discussion group of American government webmasters (mostly from local governments) have recently focused on Twitter.  Here are some of the more interesting observations: So, we had our first interesting Twitter situation today. Somebody signed up to follow our Twitter feed, and they replied to one of our news articles regarding speed patrols, commenting that there is speeding in her neighborhood. We have @replies turned off from showing up in our feed, but they're viewable on o...

posted in twitter

Obama should embrace social media to create a more effective and transparent government

Posting written by Diogo Vasconcelos about 1 year ago. No comments yet.

Yesterday, the Federal Web Managers Council  (FWMC) of US Government published a report on "Social Media and the Federal Government: Perceived and Real Barriers and Potential Solutions." (PDF) . The paper adresses the perceived and real barriers to using social media and recommend potential solutions. Cultural issues, lack of a strategy for using these new tools, employee access to online tool, advertising, procurement, privacy, acess for people with disabilit...

posted in Obama social media

A Public Sector Where Digital Natives Thrive

Featured. Posting written by gcharles 3 months ago.
Last comment 3 months ago, 2 Comments.

Digital Natives (people who have grown up in a connected world) have different attitudes, approaches and habits than those in preceding generations and will soon be a major part of society’s workforce. How does the public sector need to change to attract these people and provide them with a working environment which will let them fulfill their potential? This session will compare and contrast Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, and Digital Skeptics and explore how the public sector mig...

Reflections on "Rethinking Lean Service"

Posting written by Tim Diggins 4 months ago.
Last comment 4 months ago, 2 Comments.

I just listened to an interesting podcast by John Seddon - but really coming from the other side of most people in this community, in the sense that I'm a technologist (with some interest in the public policy agenda, but as a citizen only) and already an "Agilie" convert with some marginal interest in "Lean" (specifically with whether this might be an overlap with some of the technology methodological thinking (related to, say, the "Getting Real" ideas perhaps)  and a technologist).&...

Guidelines for social media in the public service

Featured. Posting written by msweeks 4 months ago. No comments yet.

There is an interesting discussion going on at the moment as part of the blog by the Australian Government Task Force on Government 2.0 (of which I am a member) about the best way to offer useful guidance and support to public servants wishing to explore the potential of social media and online engagement. I'd urge you to have a look and perhaps contribute your perspetives and insights.  The thread includes some interesting and predictably challenging insights from Garnter's Andrea DiMa...

Mapping Participatory Budgeting and e-Participatory Budgeting

Featured. Posting written by Tiago Peixoto 4 months ago.
Last comment 4 months ago, 1 Comment.

This is still work in progress. I have been trying to map  participatory budgeting and e-participatory budgeting initiatives across the world.There are many more e-participatory budgeting initiatives to be inserted, as well as offline initiatives. The e-PB initiatives included so far are highlighted in red color. If anyone here at TCR can think of any cases to be included or would like to collaborate in this effort, please let me know. Any suggestions on how I could make this map more ...

eParticipation beyond political topics?

Featured. Posting written by bengtfeil 4 months ago.
Last comment 4 months ago, 1 Comment.

Right now we are thinking eParticipation mainly as a tool for political or administrative issues. But why stop there? eParticipation tools could be used any other area of discourse which needs the involvement many participants. One example would be the development of long term strategies which affect a large population of a region. Adaptation to climate change is one of these large scale challenges and the Klimzug-Nord project in Germany tries to make use of eParticipation to tackle it. O...

Open Declaration: Mass Participation Phase

Posting written by Paul Johnston 4 months ago. No comments yet.

We have now finalised the open declaration - you can see the final text here. The next stage is to get as many people as possible to endorse it. The main place we are doing this is via a very simple sign-up site which my collaborator David Osimo created. If you have not done so already, please go to http://www.endorsetheopendeclaration.eu/ and endorse the declaration! We have also created a facebook group, so feel free to join this group and highlight the group to your facebook fri...

Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency

Featured. PDF uploaded by Paul Johnston 5 months ago.
Last comment 5 months ago, 2 Comments.

This is an early version of a whitepaper I am working on about the Obama administration's open government initiatives. I realise that we are all waiting with bated breadth for the transparency directive that is due in the next couple of weeks, but I would be interested in feedback on the paper in the meantime. I do think this year Nobel Peace Prize winner :-) has done a good job in moving the debate forward in this area, but I think there is still plenty to think about and a lot more that nee...

posted in Obama Transparency draftwhitepaper nobel

Public Services 2.0 in Europe - the story continues

Featured. Posting written by Paul Johnston 5 months ago.
Last comment 5 months ago, 1 Comment.

David Osimo and I are continuing with our open declaration adventure which is teaching us a great deal while also hopefully have some kind of an impact! We have now got a declaration which I think looks pretty good. It is still open for comments, so feel free to give your reaction in a comment on this blog or on http://eups20.wordpress.com/draft-declaration/ We will also do a more detailed supporting document which I will share here for your input in due course. However, the other issue...