I failed: Remote Participation after Thursday's OpenGov Public Meeting

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Lucas Cioffi

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Aug 1, 2015, 10:33:40 PM8/1/15
to US Open Government
Hi All,

I was quite impressed with the livestreamed program last Thursday; congrats to all the folks who put it together.

In the spirit of open innovation, I have to admit that I failed to interest more than a handful of civil society members in collaborative "post-game" online discussions with each other after the livestream.  The goal was to provide space where we members of civil society could speak with each other while the presentation was still fresh in our minds.  If anyone has any other suggestions for how to do something like that better next time, please email me or reply to all.

The only place I spread the word about these post-game discussions was via Twitter during the livestream and on this Google group.  This Google group does not display the number of members, so it's hard to say how many people heard about it.  So there was definitely a lack of getting the word out on my part, but also I probably wasn't making it sound interesting enough.  I'm a software developer, so those aren't my strengths.  It would be great to work with a few people to design the next online participation opportunity so we can put something great together.

I want to end this on an upbeat note.  I believe that a much deeper level of collaboration is possible within the opengov community as we prepare for the next National Action Plan (NAP), and I think it's our job to organize ourselves.  OSTP has done their part and we need to do ours.  Stated simply, I think we have to use phone & online tools other than this Google group to discuss our recommendations for the next NAP with each other.  I think we need to do this before, during, and after we enter them all in the NAP Hackpad.  We can all enter our ideas individually, but we'll certainly be stronger if we work in collaboration to refine them.

From 2009-2011 I worked with a few other members of the opengov community to put together opengov conferences on-site at eight federal agencies, and we had about 1500 people participate in-person and online.  I wish that back then we had all the collaborative tools at our disposal that we have now, six years later.

The government side has taken a big step forward in recent years.  If we in civil society want to take a big step forward, I think we should consider using some tools beyond Google Groups, Twitter, and our individual blogs–each of these tools is designed primarily for broadcasting information rather than primarily for in-depth collaboration.  

In-person meetings aren't enough either.  I've been to the civil society in-person meetings in years past representing an association in the public participation field.  Everyone goes around the room listing our individual initiatives that we'd like to see in the NAP, but there is little time for collaboration.  It would be wonderful if we were speaking with each other before those meetings took place, and this in a way that's open to participation from opengov activists across the country.  

I'm definitely not trying to criticize the work that's been done; I am noting an opportunity for us to do more together this time around.

What do you think?  I look forward to your thoughts on this.

Lucas Cioffi
Founder, QiqoChat
Charlottesville, VA
Mobile: 917-528-1831






On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Zarek, Corinna <Corinna...@ostp.eop.gov> wrote:

Lucas, this is awesome!

 

Really looking forward to seeing where this post-event conversation goes and the potential for other engagement.

 

Hope to see many of you (or hear from you during the livestream) Thursday!


Cori

 

From: us-open-g...@googlegroups.com [mailto:us-open-g...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lucas Cioffi
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2015 12:26 PM
To: US Open Government
Subject: Re: Remote Participation after Thursday's OpenGov Public Meeting

 

Hi All,

 

For those who cannot attend in-person, there's going to be a place online where we can gather at 4pm Eastern on Thursday (after the livestream).  Prior to the event, please create a free account and RSVP here: >http://qiqochat.com/e/ARQIRufhClTjmWOJEyqcHVmra/IXSLzcLPkGTpqGHbjvEkKBDBQ<

 

This will be a highly engaging and conversational session, and you'll be able to discuss any topic that is important to you related to the livestream.  This is not a webinar; this is more similar to an online coffee shop–informal and interactive.

 

For many reasons, we believe it's important to create ways for remote participants to engage in-depth, and we're running this as an experiment to see what we can create for the OGP Summit in Mexico in October.  Your feedback is greatly appreciated!!


Lucas Cioffi

Founder, QiqoChat

Charlottesville, VA

Mobile: 917-528-1831

Lucas Cioffi

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Aug 4, 2015, 6:18:45 PM8/4/15
to US Open Government
Hello Alex,

Thank you for sharing, and congrats to Abby Paulson and OpenTheGovernment for initiating that process.  It looks like it was very open to anyone who wanted to participate.  

"Public participation" is one third of transparency-participation-collaboration opengov framework, but unfortunately (and ironically) the big organizations in the public participation field didn't know or didn't participate.

This is not OpenTheGovernment's fault, but I think it reveals that our community's communication infrastructure can be improved.  I searched for the announcement of this civil society model national action plan and found it on one of these Google group threads in March.  Someone even replied, "Really appreciate this group, but don't see any other way to follow what's going on."

I'd like to work with a few others to do something about that.  Are there a few people on this list who would like to put together quarterly online gatherings to see if we can reach more civil society organizations?  With a regular rhythm of events, we could do a better job consolidating the most important announcements (such as the one about the model national action plan) and we could begin collaborating on a more regular basis.  If I don't hear back, I'll assume everyone is content with how things are, and that's ok too.

Lucas Cioffi



On Monday, August 3, 2015 at 8:15:20 AM UTC-4, Alexander Howard wrote:
Lucas, 

If you haven't seen it, there has been considerable collaboration between various groups on a model open gov national action plan, led by Abby Paulson of OpenTheGovernment.org.

You can find it here: 

Participating organizations:

Brennan Center for Justice

Center for Democracy and Technology

Constitution Project

Council for a Livable World

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Demand Progress

Electronic Privacy Information Center

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Government Accountability Project

InterAction

National Security Archive

OpenTheGovernment.org

Project On Government Oversight

Publish What You Fund

World Privacy Forum

 

Now, I wonder how the process of combining them will go. That might be an area where software helps, putting them side by side comparison or "mail merge" -- ultimately, there will be a final version.


I wish this could be broader than open government activists and wonks, but it's hard to get the public to believe it matters. Unfortunately, putting "restore trust in government" on the plan is neither concrete enough not easy to do. 

 
-- 

Zarek, Corinna

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Aug 6, 2015, 12:06:19 PM8/6/15
to Lucas Cioffi, US Open Government

Thanks, Lucas.


I’m glad we’re having this conversation (or reviving this conversation, as it were). It’s really important to our USG teams that we bring in as wide an array of stakeholders as possible and we know we aren’t capturing everyone we could be including. I mentioned this at the event last week and it’s true: we need your help with this. So I’m glad to see folks are willing to step up and help!

 

I’d like to spend some time discussing this next week at the Interagency Open Government Working Group meeting, especially since it’s the open meeting with USG and civil society. If folks could think more beforehand about possible solutions or even things to experiment with, let’s plan to discuss next week. (Please see the other thread in this discussion group about the meeting.)

 

Thanks again to all who are working to help increase participation of this important work from inside and outside of government.

 

Cori

 

PS: Lucas, you didn’t “fail!” … Let’s consider it an opportunity for improvement for all of us!

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