Re: Abridged summary of us-open-government@googlegroups.com - 2 updates in 1 topic

[Alexander Howard]

It's good to see an open dialogue here. It seems like everything old is new again.

As people here may recall, in 2011 the White House asked for feedback on the development of the first national action plan for open government and provided ope...@ostp.gov as a feedback mechanism, an inbox that endures today. As Nick Clark Judd reported, that choice drew some criticism, after the use of Change.gov, Ideascale, Google Moderator and other online commenting platforms from 2008-2011 for open government consultation.
http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/semi-open-development-open-government-plan

At the end of the process, the emailed comments were aggregated and disclosed to the public. There are some genuine drawbacks to that process, with respect to enabling the public to annotate a draft bill, policy or regulation, but also benefit.

As Tiago Peixoto noted in a post at the time, while the choice to only use email might seem counterintuitive, there were a couple of rationales for why OIRA head Cass Sunstein and US CTO Aneesh Chopra chose it:

"One possible hypothesis is that Sunstein might have been confronted by something that is no news to federal government employees: they have a very limited number of tools that they are actually allowed to use in order to engage with the public online. Having a limited number of options is not a bad thing per se, provided the options available are good enough. In this sense, the problem is that most of the tools available (e.g. ranking, ideation) do not meet reasonable standards of good "choice architecture", to use Sunstein's terms. One might imagine that as Sunstein went through the different options available, he foresaw all the effects that could be generated by the tools and their design: reputational cascades, polarization, herding… In the end, the only remaining alternative, although unexciting, was e-mail. In this case at least, preferences are independently aggregated, and the risks of informational and social influence are mitigated."

It might be useful for agencies to openly discuss their consultation plans for these plans. I think what NARA is doing with its social media strategy to create a living document is worth considering:

"Your feedback is needed to make this strategy the best it can be and we want to hear what you think. We see this as a living document, so we’ve published the strategy on GitHub, a collaborative development web platform. Take a look at the National Archives Social Media Strategy and leave a comment below. Or, send an email to socia...@nara.gov and let us know what you think. Please be sure to add your comments by September 16 so we can include your feedback in our plan!"
https://narations.blogs.archives.gov/2016/08/25/rebooting-the-social-media-strategy-for-the-national-archives/

Github + online comments + email. Full spectrum!

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 11:35 PM, <us-open-g...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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• email address for comments about the State Department's Open Government Plan - OpenG...@state.gov - 2 Updates

email address for comments about the State Department's Open Government Plan - OpenG...@state.gov

Stephen Buckley <sbuc...@igc.org>: Aug 26 05:04PM -0400 Hi Andre,   Thank you for being so considerate of people's feedback about your process for updating and improving the State Department's OpenGov Plan. Your responsiveness is a great example ...more

"M. Andre Goodfriend" <goodfr...@state.gov>: Aug 26 02:46PM -0700 Steve,   Like you, I support engaging in a forum where the discussion is publicly visible. That being said, if I understood correctly, not all members of the public are comfortable in ...more

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Alexander B. Howard 

Phone: 410.849.9808 | @digiphile
Social Media: http://j.mp/ContactABH