National Civic Blog

Recommended Reading

By way of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation blog this is a must-read article in the NY Times on open government and civic participation via the Internet.

"The headlines from Washington today blare of bailouts, stimulus, clunkers, Afpak, health care," writes columnist Annand Giridharadas.

But it is possible that future historians, looking back, will fixate on a quieter project of Barack Obama’s White House: its exploration of how government might be opened to greater public participation in the digital age, of how to make self-government more than a metaphor.

A comforting thought...

Federal agencies have been directed to release online information that was once sealed; reporters from Web-only publications have been called on at news conferences; the new portal Data.gov is allowing citizens to create their own applications to analyze government data. But the most revealing efforts have been in “crowdsourcing”: in soliciting citizens’ policy ideas on the Internet and allowing them to vote on one another’s proposals.

It would be nice to see more of this kind of thoughful journalism and less blare of bailouts, stimulus, etc.

Good Examples

Thanks to various colleagues and comment writers for their suggestions. I had asked for examples of local governments or communities using dialog, deliberation or democratic governance to resolve contentions issues.

Peter Levine of CIRCLE and Joe Goldman of AmericaSpeaks suggested the New Orleans UNOP process. That is a good example. After Katrina, there were several recovery planning processes going at once, but none seemed to be garnering public support. There was a lot of distrust and anger in the community and fear that some neighborhoods would be written off. Participation in the various processes was not very high.

A group of foundations helped fund a new effort with AmericaSpeaks, which organized a 21st Century Town Meeting, inviting thousands of New Orleans residents and doing outreach to people who had sought refuge in other cities (Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, etc).

Bottom line was they were able to reach consensus on a recovery plan, thus freeing up millions of dollars in funding.

A few good examples

I’m looking for vivid examples of local governments or communities facing polarizing issues comparable to the federal health care reform debate and resolving them through public participation, dialog or deliberation.

I’d like it to be something fairly specific—a difficult or complex policy decision rather than a visioning/ strategic planning process or dialog about a more general topic.

Can anyone think of any (hopefully recent) examples?