Power to the Many
Interesting video from Beth Noveck, now in the Obama Administration.
e-Democracy 17 articles
In what can be considered an example of e-Democracy at work, the Government of Ontario, Canada has recently backed down on proposed legislation that would have put severe restrictions on new drivers. The Government had proposed to limit new teen drivers to having only one other teen in the car as a passenger. Protests began almost immediately on Facebook with 150,000 new members in two weeks. Many protested that this would limited teens' ability to car pool or to select a designated driver when going to a party amongst other concerns. The speed/expansion of the protest via Facebook was unprecedented in Ontario and the Minister of Transportation has announced that he is dropping that element of the proposed legislation. The opposition parties and the newspaper hail this as a victory for democracy. Early indications are the participants in the Facebook protest will continue to seek further changes in the legislation. Whether or not that happens, it will be interesting to see whether this example of influence, and the use of Facebook to quickly extend and magnify the voices of concern, will be followed by others in the future.
The Internet is the enemy
This from a comment by Australian commentator Clive Hamilton...I'm not sure if I agree with him, but the issue is real enough I guess: It is commonly believed that the advent of the Internet has been a boon for free speech. No longer do the mainstream media act as the exclusive gate-keepers of public opinion. Anyone with a point of view can set up a website and start publishing. Online news and analysis sites like Crikey, New Matilda and On Line Opinion have proliferated. D...
Discussion: eParticipation in Europe
Today an Internet discussion starts about the current state and future developments of eParticipation in Europe. It has been organised and will be moderated jointly by PEP-NET (Pan European eParticipation Network) and the European eParticipation Study. Issues to be debated are: Existing and emerging technologies, channels, bottom-up vs top down, dangers, European public sphere, EU cooperation with other actors, EU learning experience, changes in nature of politics and institutions. P...
LittleSis -- The Sousveillance Website
Relatively new and still evolving, LittleSis has already garnered some publicity in the last couple of months. The website is http://littlesis.org/. It describes itself as "an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited and maintained by people like you." The creators go on to explain: "It's easier than ever to spot the symptoms of corruption and cronyism in our political process. Ordinary Americans have never felt more shut out from all levels of gov...
Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment
My colleague Willi shared with me a great presentation about Koln's interesting experiment in participatory budgeting and since I know many of you are interested in this topic I thought I would share it more widely. I hope you enjoy it!
A Swedish Model of Direct Democracy
Heard yesterday at Ivo Gormley's film showing about a swedish experiment in direct democracy where a candidate stood and got elected on the basis that all her decisions would be decided by the vote of registered voters rather than her. For more details in english see http://demoex.net/en . There is also lots more but unfortunately only in Swedish!
e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking!
Today I participated in e-Democracy 08, the annual e-democracy event in London. There was an interesting opening presentation by My Society’s Tom Steinberg who assessed progress over the last 12 months. Not surprisingly, his initial focus was the recent US elections and to my outsider’s eyes I thought his analysis got it just right. He highlighted President-elect Obama’s success in securing mass participation, but noted that much of his online campaign was about usin...
eRulemaking
Expanding opportunities for citizens to comments on proposed federal rules, policies and regulations. I suggest you take a look at the site (www.regulations.gov) - use "broadband" as the subject and roam around for a minute. You also have the opportunity to subscribe to a feed on any topic. e-Rulemaking: Committee makes recommendations for future of e-rulemaking The Council for Excellence in Government's Committee on the Status and Future of Federal e-Rulemaking issue...
Multi-channel citizen engagement: the Ipatinga PB experience (PB part 3)
Following this series of posts about Participatory Budgeting (PB), I would like to describe an experiment in the coordination of which I had the pleasure to participate, which took place in the framework of the e-Agora Project (co-financed by the EC) in the city of Ipatinga, Brazil. Prior to 2001, community leaders of the city of Ipatinga collected written proposals for public works from citizens during neighbourhood meetings which were then submitted for deliberation in PB in loco m...
Is public participation in democratic government really a good thing - or is the question moot?
Current circumstances are making for interesting times on the Web, as all sorts of new questions & views pop up about what is happening around us. Underlying this I see growing disillusionment and anger about the state of world affairs, and a rising tide of despair about the future. For me, interesting thoughts relevant to TCR are triggered. For example I have just read a piece by Larry A. Hickman published in Free Inquiry (the journal of the Council for Se...
Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (part 2): the Belo Horizonte case
This post is based on a paper of mine published by the Electronic Democracy Centre (Zurich University) about the experience of the e-Participatory Budgeting of the city of Belo Horizonte. In part 1 of this post I use extracts from a short article by Dan Jellinek (Headstar) and myself that aimed to present a summary of the published paper. At the end, I will add some information contained in the paper about the votes that was not included in the summary article. 1) &nb...
Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (Part 1)
Participatory Budgeting (PB) can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and monitoring public spending. Participation may take various forms, from effective decision-making power in the allocation of resources to more modest initiatives that confer voice during the development of the budget. Added to the normative claim that PB gives citizens the opportunity to participate in decisions that directly affect them, it is expecte...
Quick reality check: are we kidding ourselves?
Recently, UK Cabinet Office Minister Hazel Blears gave a speech about eGovernment and eDemocracy. Her concerns focused on the success, or otherwise, of local government. These two blog responses brought me up a bit sharply. The first was clearly sceptical: "That's good coming from Blears! Local government, with a few exceptions, hasn't had a problem with revolutionising services, its central government that's been lagging and we get tired of hearing it the other way around. I've spent the...
Networking Democracy - Can National Conversations Work?
This morning I came across a great UK experiment in online democracy - Networking Democracy, an OpenDemocracy project to explore how the internet can be integrated into a national political process. The idea arose from Gordon Brown's decision to launch a national debate on a British Statement of Values as part of his plans to reform the Governance of Britain. So the government wants to get people involved in a debate on these issues and is considering having various regional events and other ...
Perils of modernity
I know it’s dangerous to get too misty-eyed about the corrosive and liberating potential of the blogosphere, but stories like this can’t help make you feel a little more optimistic. Maybe I’m just kidding myself…but for the moment, I’m going to take this as another important straw in the wind that tells us something good about the renovation of the democratic conversation. Here is how the Economist told the story: The government's cyber-enthusiasm comes back to haunt it ON MARCH 8th Malay...
Opening Up the Debate
Citizen empowerment should certainly be about opening up debates on public issues so more citizens can engage and shape them, but it is a topic that seems a bit neglected. Probably because people think it is too difficult (and maybe because those who currently control policy debates are happy to continue doing so!). A little while ago I came across an interesting tool which aims to help people collaboratively map debates. I was intrigued and while browsing another favourite site of mine, whic...