Noon session, hosted by Chris Wolz, Forum One
Drinking from the firehose: How government can manage citizen participation in the web 2.0 age?
Web versus engagement
PRA, FOIA, administrative procedures act
Policy by crowdsourcing
Collective intelligence – find best
Questions for discussion:
Assuming transparencies – push first, think later?
Moderate or not moderate comments?
Republish things that others sent you to individuals without being responsible for what they sent you?
How do you change the organizational culture?
So many tools – input/output siloed – how do you consider content when planning distribution.
Breaking down public input/comment silos?
How do you manage risk – protect your brand while providing forum?
Provide infrastructure?
Incentivize and share information across government?
Decentralized Spokesperson role?
Self select and balance input?
Where do you find other agencies’ policies?
Employee usage that may reflect back on agency?
Discussion:
Create features to describe "What I expect will happen with this communication" – new media rises mutual obligations that need to be represented in laws or norms. Opt out or expectation set in footer of email. (ie. you don’t have to respond)
Part of the expectation is that you don’t get answers all of the time. Peer to peer – government acts as router.
People expect to hear back from their government – if they don’t hear back from an agency – there are more ways for information to come back and now they expect response even more. Some companies held to higher bar in terms of response time than government.
Congressional Management Foundation did report Communicating with Congress.
Are these expectations different in among generations? Congressional communications rely on letters, slow response times. Staffers blogging, real time responses.
Patterns and architecture of communication. Trapped in "point to point" metaphor. Syndicated networking technologies allow - big utility outage took out customers. Showed up on twitter, lots of info – yet utility rep asked "how do I respond to these people?" no need to - questions should distills down to FAQ – causes categories to emerge. Let people find answers. Becomes one to many as possible.
Twitter reserved for useful, knowledge based rather than personal communication. Broadcast era versus digital natives. Proactive interactive trend a result of easier technologies. Increases number of communications. Agencies need mindshift from broadcast to collaborative, crowdsourced
TSA’s blog - good example of what worked.
Idea factory, idea storm
Allows citizens to relate to it.
Outreach piece is not often considered part of federal jobs – experts silenced through public affairs – making community relations and IT horizontal functions.
Firehose needs to manage flow – volunteers or huge well funded organization. Deputize anyone to apply taxonomy to provide level one support. Type of communication changing people’s expectations.
How do I prioritize information? Commercial websites and customer service models may offer models.
Askyourlawmaker.org – top questions to lawmakers with interviews. Agree with somebody else’s comments on say water quality issue. Give up on Astroturf model and use it for what it is.
Cultural dominance of gen xers functional information now to respond to issue at hand. Social media as an imperative. Code of honor to observe, mark and shared. Two different approaches – turf versus access argument. Responding to the horde? Systems need to be created to accommodate volumes.
Virtual internships in public service
Another model that allows freeform response. Talk directly to one person publicly. (ie. @twitter)
Un-silo specialists to offer direct information
Aggregating citizen concerns for public officials
Tools are a means to an end. How do you reorganize to use them?
Can contractors speak for government agency?
Are the people who need to use this helping shape the tools/expectations?
“Megacommunities” book by Booz Allen governt, business and civil society. If one leg unbalanced, the whole stool unsteady. Adds valuable perspective. Early adopters must articulate successes to promote innovation.
Do more with less within government can be great incentives.
People in the room:
David Recordon Six apart
Patrice McDermott, OpentheGovernment.org
Rob Pierson, Congressman Honda's Office
Wayne Moses Burke
David Blackburn, Aquilent
Timothy Lu Hu Ball, Sunlight Foundation
M. Laura Godfrey, GSA
Hillary Hartely, NIC
Nick Grossman, The Open Planning Project
Jennifer, Pahlka, Web2.0 Expo
Jessie Newburn, communications consultant
Erica Sangrans, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
Thomas.freebairn@gsa.gov
and your willing typist, Laura Hermann, Chicago Justice Project
