Active Citizens in a Digital Age Embracing Organized Complexity

Week 5 of the Active Citizen in a Digital Age course sought to develop an understanding of how we can engage directly with our political systems using the Internet and digital tools so as to develop an understanding of the ways in which they are changing democracy. Part of this is understanding how to make sense of news in the digital age, so one can be informed and hopefully use credible information for political action.

The course is mostly concerned with advocacy in the support or opposition of government action and how civil society does this.  Civil society, according to the course, “…Can be thought of as the place where minorities are protected, galvanized, organized, and gain access to the systems of government.” This is put in contrast to the fundamental principle that democracies are run by majority opinions. 

The question arises though, if civil society is working to protect the democratic rights of minorities, then why does civil society have to work in opposition to the government in this aspect? Because certain portions of civil society support those actions of government. Does this mean that portion of civil society has the majority opinion and vote? No, it could be a matter of structural components of the system, e.g., Gerrymandering or situationally induced views that can change when circumstances change. One shouldn't think of majority as monolithic or opinions as concrete.

Even in the digital age, with so many ways of engaging it is still a matter of real world organizing, communicating, funding, campaigning and finally voting.  Some of which is done in person, much of which can now be done digitally. In some cases being simply digital versions of these basic activities. For example, Turbovote, which provides election reminders, gets people registered to vote and applications for absentee ballots and the already NCP wiki featured MapLight which provides information on political funding. On the NCP Kumu map, MapLight is directly related to Transparency and Open Data in Government, making it an important tool in ensuring credible information for political action but one that needs to be used in conjunction with other resources. 

It has long been held by this blog that governance is different from government.  The former being a social activity taken on by a community and the latter being the establishment of institutions to implement those activities. The course differentiates between the outside-in relationships of civil society with government institutions and the inside-out relationships of government institutions with civil society.  This configuration already sets up a biased relationship conceding a greater centrality and implied ascendancy of power to the government institution diminishing democratic intent. 

Outside-in functions by civil society to influence government, besides the more formal civic functions, include easy actions such as gathering signatures for petitions or the use of hashtags on social media content. Digital makes obtaining a large number of signatures or retweets on Twitter or likes on Facebook far more possible but let us keep in mind Zeynep Tufekci warning about Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win from the last blog post. 

Digital tools can go beyond this though. They can be used to organize people, help them communicate with each other and with the broader system in which they exist. This has been true for both sides of the political spectrum from the Tea Party in 2010 to progressives marching in the streets today. 

The political agenda may be different but the digital tools remain the same. Groups like Indivisible are featured in the newly created Advocacy For and By Community wiki page which is explained more fully here. The course cites Kathryn Schulz’s New York Times article reminding us that in our digitally driven world, one of the oldest ways and powerful medium to make your voices heard is to contact your elected representatives by calling them (actually phones have gone digital as well). Using digital tools can help your organization or group grow to a larger size much more quickly but it also lets those in opposition to you know what you are doing by the digital trails that you leave.

Inside out, government institutions provide public services to those in civil society but they don't necessarily do so equitably and can become entrenched over time. The means by which governments interact with its citizens has changed because of civic tech, technology in the civic space. This again differentiates between civil society and civic space as was discussed before but now with a digital component. 

The nature of these digital programs can depend upon from which perspective they are being created.  These changes are often not initiated by governments from the inside-out. Many arise in the civil society sector to make government more transparent and accessible like Public.Resources.org.

“What Public Resources dot org is doing is literally making the public law public.”  

The OSET Foundation builds digital into the infrastructure of our democracy through open source election technology. It sets the standards for voting systems around the world to help re-establish trust in voting, our most basic democratic function. It is not a government institution but a nonprofit election technology research institute.

The course continued to warn about dangers inherent with using digital technology by examining the impact upon politics and democracy. Stating, it has the potential to empower the voiceless, actually a debatable statement. The course didn’t use potential as a modifier rather presuming the concept, empower can convey the sense that someone with power delegates to someone without power (more so in the UK) and it often isn’t a matter of the powerless being voiceless but the powerful being purposely deaf. Still, many who did not have access to making their voices heard now have multiple pathways that they can take but then so do all the other voices benign or malignant. 

The Internet makes increasingly obsolete what the course called the intermediaries, political parties, legacy media, and my addition institutions of government which created the barriers and therefore the power pockets of the pre-Internet world. Intermediaries are still necessary today but now they can make connections increasing the power of others.  This is a transition from scarcity to abundance, invoking one of NCP’s more controversial ideas. The course though may give the impression that this happens far more easily than happens in reality. One person having access to millions is one thing, one person among millions having access to millions is another thing. 

Other dangers arising from the Internet include lack of access to reliable information to make informed choices are examined in Can Democracy Survive the Internet.  This NPR Radio program features both the author of the original article, Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford University and  Zeynep Tufekci discussing this more deeply. These dangers can be made worse with the excess virility of information including the creation of “fake news”. Even foreign governments have increased capacity to influence our elections by injecting “fake news” into the discourses. 

“One of the difficulties in defining “fake news” is that one person’s propaganda is another person’s persuasion.”

The other two concerns with the Internet were echo chambers and privacy. These may actually feed into each other. There is not only, no civil society space, on the Internet, there is also no individual privacy on the Internet as was also discussed previously. There is, therefore, no community on the Internet save what trust we place in other people. Allowing for the privacy of others because they allow for our privacy, we also trust in their authenticity as they trust in ours. A lack of authenticity or anonymity may disclose not only a lack of conviction but even a lack of humanity.

The course places the responsibility of this primarily on the individual, particularly the individuals taking the course. The course seemed to emphasize community joined efforts in the background readings but more individualistic endeavors in the videos and assignments. 

On an individual basis, efforts can only be aggregated as a statistical class. To allow for collaboration to create meaningful change requires some level of community. The transition from aggregated individuals to collaborative socialization moves the community from disorganized but predictable and manageable complexity to organized complexity, difficult to predict, less manageable but creative (see Science and Complexity - Warren Weaver). 

As the course states, people do need to be careful as to what actions they take on the Internet, whether directly through blog posts or the creation of apps or indirectly through retweets and Facebook likes. The problem is that the advice came across as a discouragement. The problem with that advice is that only those taking the course would be following it. Those creating or propagating fake new have no such stipulation. This cannot be effectively countered with only the cumulative efforts of individuals. This doesn’t mean not taking any actions. It requires community or as Jane Jacobs saw it a level of organized complexity. Jane Jacobs concept of eyes on the street could also be applied to the Internet. The more people see something or are made aware of it, the harder it is to purge from social consciousness and the more it can grow to create new paradigms for the community. 

Finding More Pathways for Vehicles of Change

This blog post is going to be a continuation of the last, adding more online resources to the New Community Paradigms Wiki and again provide associated locations on the NCP Wiki Map.

Because New Community Paradigms doesn’t configure community governance functions in the same manner as traditional hierarchical, largely in separate silos, top-down command structures many of its approaches are means or process oriented rather than goal oriented.

One example is Community Management and Technology, the map of which displays a number of different approaches to addressing social problems. Among these are Community Tech Tools map.

Community Tool Box is a free, online resource offering thousands of pages of tips and tools for taking action in communities to those working to build healthier communities and bring about social change. Over 300 educational modules and other free tools for community assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, advocacy, and other aspects of community practice.

Poplus is about sharing code so that every organization using digital technologies to hold governments to account, challenging corruption, and demand the right to transparency doesn’t have to write their software from scratch

Another pathway is Systems Thinking Approaches, the map of which tied directly to Systems Thinking but bridges to Community Management and Technology through Systems Thinking Theories, Methods and Tools Table which is seen as being related in turn to Change Management and Processes, a bridge, as reflected in the narrative section to the left between Community Change Agencies, Systems Thinking, Change Management and Technology and Asset Based Community Development.

A new resource under the Systems Thinking Online Training, Books, and Methods section is the updated Beyond Connecting the Dots (Now free and downloadable Mac and Windows)

Beyond Connecting the Dots is a new kind of book on Systems Thinking and Modeling. Rather than being constrained by the printed page, it runs digitally on your computer or your tablet. Because of this, it can provide you an exciting experience that goes beyond the printed word. The models in the book are truly interactive and you can directly experiment with them within the book as you read about them.

Online Version: http://read.beyondconnectingthedots.com/
User Name: reader
Password: feedback

Community Arts has been featured before, its map connecting to Soul of the Community. Storytelling and Social Change: A Strategy Guide | Working Narratives with communities to tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy by drawing on participants’ personal experiences and local cultures. By telling stories—whether in the form of performance, radio, video, or other media—communities build power, envision new democratic possibilities, and change culture and policy. Their work is located at the intersection of arts, technology, and social change.

Design Thinking was also connected with Collective Impact as reflected on the map. A new resource is Design Impact, a non-profit social innovation firm made up of designers, community development practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and educators. Their mission is to: • INCUBATE projects that transform communities, • EQUIP leaders with social innovation tools, and • ADVANCE methods of creative community change.

Transparency and Open Data in Governance are seen as a bridge from Governance linking particularly to National and State Movements, to Community Management and Technology linking to Maplight. The recent elections arguably make this all the more important.

Open Government Partnership is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. In the spirit of multi-stakeholder collaboration, OGP is overseen by a Steering Committee including representatives of governments and civil society organizations. This version of the Advancing Open and Citizen-Centered Government | whitehouse.gov, however, is an archived historical material from the Obama administration that will not longer be updated. The Trump administration version will be linked to once it is made available.

In the third Open Government National Action Plan, the Administration both broadens and deepens efforts to help government become more open and more citizen-centered. The plan includes new and impactful steps the Administration is taking to openly and collaboratively deliver government services and to support open government efforts across the country. These efforts prioritize a citizen-centric approach to government, including improved access to publicly available data to provide everyday Americans with the knowledge and tools necessary to make informed decisions.

Data Journalism and Community Information is seen as being associated Civil Society within the map while being related to Transparency and Open Data in Government in Governance.

Doubtful News’ “Beyond Doubtful” list of no-go-to sources | Doubtful News is the latest new resource.

Doubtful News’ “Beyond Doubtful” list of no-go-to sources The purpose of Doubtful News is to expose questionable claims in stories you find on the internet. Mostly we deal with major news outlets because those are the stories that people will search on to find additional information. We get those searchers who then can see some science-based, rational takes on paranormal, anomalies and alternative subjects in the news.

The final addition is Data Sources also under Community Management and Technology under the map. The Overview | National Equity Atlas is an introduction. More is expected to be rolled out related to this new and expanding resource in the future.

The National Equity Atlas is a living resource, and our team is working to add new data and functionality to this site and produce new equity analyses that inform action. 

The Pew Center on Open Data, Whether Half Full or Half Empty, What's the Next Half of the Journey?

This post will be a slight detour from the pathway being taken by the previous two NCP posts concerned with Collective Impact. The Facebook group Open Government and Civic Technology - (The global #opengov group) recently had a post on Americans’ Views on Open Government Data | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and provided different views on the topic.

This brought to mind the past NCP blog post, Open Data as End and Means of Civic Disruptive Innovation, as well as the wiki-page that arose later, Transparency and Open Data in Governance and related blog post, Open Data - Left or Right, Inside or Outside, Works for Creating New Community Paradigms.

The Facebook post was submitted by Alex Howard of @digiphile, who also wrote 15 key insights from the Pew Internet and Life Project on the American public, open data and open government | E Pluribus Unum. According to the Sunlight Foundation Blog's perspective, “New Pew study: Public is optimistic about open government and open data”. In his Civic Innovations blog post, “Hearts and Minds and Open Data” writer Mark Headd wrote that it, "suggests a tremendous opportunity for organizers working in cities across the country to engage people to use data for new apps, services and visualizations." Steven Clift of the E-Democracy Forum and @democracy saw, “this survey as a huge wake up call to #opengov advocates on the #opendata side that the field needs to provide far more useful stuff to the general public and care a lot more about outreach and marketing to reach people with the good stuff already available.” Alex Howard also did a follow-up post, “Half empty or half full? Mixed reactions to Pew research on open data and open government” which extended the variety of perspectives even further.

Whether half full or half empty, it still puts us at being not any more than half way done. The question is being done with what? If it is transforming our means of democracy then this should be seen as nothing more than getting our foot in the door.

It has to be kept in mind that for the most part, especially in terms of truly impactful engagement and empowerment, we are on the outside of often entrenched systems of community governance. Did anybody think that the entrenched systems of bureaucratic, political power would fade away when enough apps became available?

Open data does not mean easily accessible or willingly shared. The need remains to penetrate the walls of entrenched bureaucratic, political systems often putting such efforts, and therefore the needed design focus of app developers, closer to that of community data journalists. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to become a local community data journalist. It does mean creating platforms to move from community data to community information and on to community wisdom, but open data and apps alone will not accomplish that, far deeper systemic transformation is needed

Most of the community and civic related technological innovations have been of the sustaining variety, for the most part sustaining the status quo, making changes on the edges. Significant examples of change can be found, yet for people to reach a tipping point to bring about true transformation, not only what they do but how they do it and why they to it, we need something much closer to disruptive innovations.

That pathway is a much longer haul, still being explored and requiring more steps. It will also require greater use of design thinking, not only to improve the user interface with an app within particular systems, but also within larger scalable, community based, collaborative efforts such as Collective Impact or upcoming The Next Systems Project in deeply understanding the needs of the community.

The Knight Digital Media Center believes that design thinking can develop better solutions for community organizations, especially foundations, and community media. Design thinking as used by design firms such as IDEO and others is based on a human-centered, design-based approach to helping public and private sector organizations innovate and grow.

Design thinking can help community foundations frame the question, “How might we craft information solutions that meet the deepest needs of our community?” It is done, according to the Knight article, “Can design thinking power better solutions for community foundations?”, by diving deep with small groups of people, to really understand their day-to-day behavior, their context, how they feel, what they do and how, instead of talking with a scientifically representative sample. The Stanford University d-school approach makes going even further explicit, drilling down to the individual. Looking for extreme users to understand the experiences of people at the statistical edges is also insightful. “The idea is that people who are in extreme positions one way or the other are exhibiting needs more acutely than the average person,” said Andrew Haeg, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University. “If you can talk to them they're going to help you understand problems that a lot of other people share or help you understand dynamics that are shared by a lot of other people."

The next question is how to apply this to communities? The Incourage Community Foundation’s initial goal of working with the community of Wisconsin Rapids on developing new ways of listening, talking and interacting, to encourage a culture ripe for self-organizing and collective action, was through adaptive skills but the foundation’s work quickly began incorporating design thinking which increased the impact of their work with residents. Applying adaptive skills prepared the ground so that a human-centered design approach created deep roots helping to transform the people and the culture of the place where they worked and lived. As sharing and spreading lessons about the resident-centered process with other organizations was seen as an important objective, a defining question then became: “How do we nurture the demand for information in the community?“

This started my thinking about Alex Howard's response to a Facebook comment with better questions. “A majority of American adults use open data in apps and services but do not realize that they do so. Do people need to be ‘engaged’ to find use in it, even if they're unaware? More broadly, under what conditions would providing access to data created with public funds to the public be a useless idea?"

The last NCP post addressed the need to be 'engaged' question. Apps and services using open data can be applied to all levels of Increasing Engagement (Kumu map). This would also include adding the concept of community attachment to that list. This still leaves open the question as to how to move people up the list to true engagement and beyond to empowerment. There isn't likely to be any sort of tipping point though if those using the apps, those curating the apps, and those designing the apps are focused only on specific grass-top organizations.

For New Community Paradigms, an ideal approach would be a bottom up one endeavoring to build a viable civic network by being able to follow these Tips from Beth Kanter and find local data nerds and build a local data hub, again from | Knight Digital Media Center. While this approach still focuses on grass-top organizations like nonprofits, it does attempt to reach into the community. Kanter's original post suggested setting up something like Chicago CivicWorks' online services, mobile apps, reports, or local services accessed by interactive text messaging and provided 10 strategies for finding volunteers and others to assist with data projects.

There is also the need for better community related content creation that is not only transparent but also factual, meaningful and viable. Again, from the Knight Digital Media Center, Public Lab’s DIY science plugs community into civic decisionmaking. Using low-cost tools, Public Lab is able to inject community knowledge into civic decision-making about local environmental concerns. Public Lab lists scores of DIY citizen projects on its extensive community populated Wiki website. It also puts accessible tools into the hands of the community not only resulting in good solid data being collected the tools themselves become self-replicating and viral through the provision of hand drawn, illustrated guides on how to create them, along with video tutorials walking people through each step of the process of using them to collect data. Open source licensing has also fed into Public Lab’s sudden growth.

By enabling ground up data-based research and communication, by putting the tools, the media platforms and devices into the hands of the community, Public Lab addresses a huge information gap with local governments and the industries whose policies impact the environment that community members can fill? The outcome could be a media campaign, interfacing with journalists or calling for a larger, systematic study of a certain area.

Working towards and attaining all of this in a comprehensive fashion by which it becomes ubiquitous will undoubtedly make things more complex, the challenge is making it all coherently complex, even simple if possible, which means continuing to develop new community paradigms.

Keeping an Eye and a Thumb on Entrenched City Halls

As stated in a prior blog post, there is no plan to turn this blog into a data journalism site. There is still though a great deal of commonality between the efforts of new community paradigms and data journalism. Partnerships would seem to be a natural relationship. This is particularly true with new community paradigms efforts working from the outside, engaging with entrenched political institutions over a protracted period of time. This takes a more disruptive approach to establishing new community paradigms. Entrenched politicians often use anecdotal stories to support their decisions. Having a thorough analysis of the facts, especially those hidden from public view could help leverage change in a community. Even if a data-based story is not of larger publication interest it could still be of importance to the community in which it is occurring.

The first challenge is finding out what data there is available. This can depend upon how consistently open the government is to transparency and open data. Those which have an open approach can offer different methods of keeping current.

Some sites will offer “email alert” functionality. The Doing Journalism with Data, First Steps, Skills and Tool course offers UK government publications as an example, here is the American version. Others will offer RSS feeds (read more about RSS). The course features the Office of National Statistics in the UK and Data.gov.uk. Here in the United States, there is Data and Statistics | USA.gov.

This accessibility does not seem to be as prevalent though at the state and especially at the local levels of government and when it is available one needs to be sure that it is providing untampered and unbiased information.

Even when the institution does not offer either email alerts or RSS feeds, there are alternatives available such as ChangeDetection.com which can track changes and send update notifications with or without the willing cooperation of the institution.

There are also advanced Google search techniques that you can use to help determine what sort of information you want and where that information might be.

A Google search though can provide too much information and there can be a desire to focus the search. Searching with an exact phrase by using quotation marks e.g. “crime statistics” has fewer results compared to crime statistics with no quotes. Using a minus sign can exclude data, e.g., “crime statistics” versus “crime statistics” -national, the later will provide a more local and regional focus. You can also broaden your search with a wildcard asterisk "*". Using * for example within an exact phrase such as “crime statistics city of * ” will give you a list of websites of cities and their crime statistics. You have to experiment though and the number of results generated does not stay consistent.

You can also try searching within particular types of websites for specific information. Using site:ca.gov "community health” provides community health-related websites in California ending with ca.gov. Using filetype:xls will give you results formatted as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, filetype:doc as Microsoft Word documents and filetype:pdf as PDF’s.

Searching for databases is a different matter as the contents of a database might not be visible to the search engine. In that case, you can use the word database "search by" instead of filetype. Databases though are the best means of organizing data for analysis if made efficiently accessible.

More advanced search operators such as Google’s advanced search, Google Guide advanced search operators page and the ability to combine different search operators are also available.

Sometimes, however, a possibly more confrontational approach, using legal avenues to obtain information by requesting it directly from government institutions through Freedom of Information or Right to Information laws is needed, when you cannot find it online. These are rules or regulations that provide citizens access to particular types of information, such as environmental laws.

To understand these legal rules and regulations check with sources for Freedom or Right to Information laws, or connect with people fighting for these laws.

You should speak with the organization in question before making the request, to check if they do hold the data but also anticipate possible exceptions and exemptions. Consider what judgments have been made on previous or similar requests.

The second challenge, beyond gaining access, is considering the means of analyzing the type of information you are seeking, whether it follows changes over time, requiring data over time or it compares items, meaning you need data dealing with the comparison or sometimes you need data that can add context to an issue.

All of this depends though on how the institution maintains its information online and how it provides access to the public. As suggested above, maintaining the data in machine readable form within databases is the best way of establishing a transparent open data environment.

If this is the case then you can request a related data dictionary. If investigating, for example, crime, gender, victim, and suspect information gathered by the police or investigating gifts or hospitality given to individuals by organizations and that information is kept in a database, then a data dictionary can be very useful.

These have data codes, designed specifically for combining datasets that use the same code. The course provides the HES online Data Dictionary Inpatients (PDF) from Great Britain. Here is access to data dictionaries for the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obviously, it would be easier if all government institutions organized their data this way. This provides a good rationale for supporting open data laws. Often though the data is not so neatly organized and must be extracted.

There are means of collecting and extracting data usually left to those focusing on data journalism. Still understanding these methods so as to better work as or along with data journalists seems a good idea.

A primary means of extracting data is called scraping: using Google Drive spreadsheets or other online tools such as OutWit Hub, Import.io, Chrome extension Scraper or Scraperwiki. With a Google Drive spreadsheet which is available to just about everyone, it is matter of using the function formula =ImportHtml(“URL","query",index) with the URL of interest address in quotations, the type of data format which is either table or list you want, also in quotations and the sequence number of specific table or list that you want which is not in quotes.

As an example, the World Cup has been ongoing for the last few days so the course provides a FIFA webpage that publishes information on football agents in Cyprus. The formula for extracting the first table on the page is =ImportHtml(“http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/footballgovernance/playeragents/association=cyp.html”,”table”,1). Be warned though, you cannot just copy and paste from a Page or Word document or even blog post.

The New Community Paradigms wiki provides a variety of different of organizations, often through Facebook connections, outside the framework of institutional government that can provide knowledge and advice on a range of issues.

You need to map out what you’re interested in and which organizations, both governmental and non-governmental deal with that area. You might also seek other experts or pro-amateurs that collect and publish data by thinking about the people affected by the issue that interests you.

If looking for data in specialized areas of knowledge then you need to understand the jargon or professional language used in that arena. Sometimes you have to pick up the telephone and ask someone.

Data journalism pursues in-depth analytical stories that may be beyond the capacity or interest of an organization focused on particular community issues. There may be times though when statistics or data on a certain issue are needed to make a case for change in a community. There are a number of different types of sources of information available to build a case for change.

1) National statistical organizations

2) Local, regional and national governments and departments

3) International bodies

4) Regulators and auditing bodies

5) Charities and non-profit institutions

6) Corporations

7) Professional bodies and unions

8) Open data initiatives in your field

• Google’s Public Data page

• The Guardian’s datastore

• OpenSpending

At some point, these efforts take on the aspects of a long-term campaign by an established and organized group rather than one time issues. Maintaining a data library then becomes essential. The course suggests using social bookmarking services such as Delicious or Pinboard.in. This site uses the Diigo Group Page feature for new community paradigms to organize sites and related tags. You can also keep records of your sources in a master document (Google Docs, Microsoft Excel). Proper tagging allows you to find your data fast.

If starting to work as an organized group for change through new community paradigms, then the basic idea behind organizing your means of accessing, extracting, collecting and analyzing data in this fashion is the same as it is for data journalism.

"If you need to do something more than once, get a computer to do it for you," Charles Arthur (The Guardian).

Finally, even if the data is not available or not made accessible by a government institution or city hall, it still raises questions. Why is there a lack of data? What are the implications if certain data is not collected? What about data that exists but is not shared? These concerns still fall under the endeavor to create new community paradigms.

Open Data - Left or Right, Inside or Outside, Works for Creating New Community Paradigms

The importance of open data to new community paradigm efforts was realized at the end of last year with the post, Open Data as End and Means of Civic Disruptive Innovation which dealt, in part, with Code for America’s Beyond Transparency related video panel and Open Data - Getting Started video panel. Since then supporting documentation on the topic from a variety of sources has been collected. This issue has support from both the political left and right and from numerous organizations. Two of which are sources that have been followed for some time but have not been featured to any extent on these pages. One works from within government, at all levels, and one works mostly outside of government, actually it pretty much works outside. 

Public Lab for Open Technology and Science is a connected online but still working within their own individual community that develops and applies open-source tools for environmental exploration and investigation by democratizing inexpensive and accessible Do-It-Yourself techniques, like hooking camera’s to weather balloons or kites for public mapping. It is a collaborative network of practitioners actively re-imagining the human relationship with the environment. Although there is no claim of any expertise in this area, having a chapter in your community with which to work together seems a logical step. Online, they seem a very cohesive community. How well they are integrated into the community advocacy within their own communities outside of their group circle is another question.  There would arguably be easier and better integration with community governance based on participatory democracy than with the more institutional forms of government.

The group that works from within the multiple levels of government is GovLoop, which has a simple mission: connect government to improve government. We aim to inspire public sector professionals to better service by acting as the knowledge network for government. This is something to which communities striving to create new paradigms would want to be connected.

GovLoop is the largest government niche network of its kind, serving a community of more than 100,000 government leaders helping them to foster collaboration, learn from each other, solve problems and advance in their government careers, as well as being a leading site for addressing public sector issues.

It could also be a potential fifth column against entrenched bureaucratic institutions of government power, a good thing from this blog's perspective. Not that this will be found in any part of the GovLoop mission statement or be anywhere explicitly stated on their webpages but they invariably give support to best practices across the spectrum of government which is helpful in putting pressure on entrenched holdout government institutions and the community making up GovLoop is often sympathetic to the community principles expressed on these pages, at least as individuals if not through their particular institutions. 

Voices from both of these communities have spoken up for important events supporting the expansion of open data in government. PLOTS called for celebration, within their ranks, for the first birthday of the US Open Data Policy and the first open data report. President Obama took the historic step of signing an executive order on May 9, 2013, making open and machine-readable data the new default for government information a year ago. Not that sexy sounding but making information about government operations more readily available and useful is paramount to the promise of a more efficient and transparent government at all levels.

The White House Project Open Data, covers, at a federal level, efforts in  opening data in areas of importance to new community paradigms including Health, Energy, Climate, Education, Finance, Public Safety, and Global Development.

These efforts, which are designed to share best practices, examples, and software code to assist other federal agencies with opening data, have helped unlock troves of valuable data and are making these resources more open and accessible to innovators and the public. Data for which taxpayers have already paid.

Pat Fiorenza, Senior Research Analyst at GovLoop, posted an article, ”DATA Act is a Big Win For Data Transparency", on the passage of H.R. 2061, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2013 (DATA Act), the Senate version of which had passed in April, and which the President’s signed in to law on May 9, 2014. 

 The DATA Act was supported from both sides of the political divide in Washington DC being championed by Representatives Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) in the house and Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rob Portman (R-OH) in the Senate.

Government transparency, according to Pat, provides numerous means of improving not only transparency, but also business growth and improved government services. Making it as well, in my view, a primary and essential tool for community activists. 

Freely available data from the US, and from all levels of government for that matter, is an important national resource, serving as fuel for entrepreneurship, innovation, scientific discovery, and economic growth. In a time of imposed austerity because of tightening budgets, it can provide a means of combating waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.

Publishing data allows activists to analyze government’s financial data and assess spending trends, and be improved stewards of taxpayer money. Pat was actually talking about government institutions but the idea still works for advocates not on the government payroll. 

John Kamensky, a Senior Fellow with the IBM Center for The Business of Government and another frequent GovLoop blogger had previously written an article on "Implementing the DATA Act:  Encouraging Signs" focusing on the sweeping nature of the new law and the challenge for public managers to effectively meet the relatively tight implementation timeframe. 

This was the result of a three-year effort to pass the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (the DATA Act) which deals with federal spending transparency based on the success of the Recovery Act’s financial reporting efforts and proposed extending of it to all federal spending.  

Even though the effort was at the federal level, there are still lessons for advocates working at the local level. John, highlighted several key lessons provided by Ed DeSeve, a key leader of the Recovery Act effort. 

These included providing focused leadership from the top with implementation led by well-respected veterans of public service. New community paradigms recognizes that community leadership will remain essential as will dedicated professional public service.

Perhaps more apparent in keeping with new community paradigms is a collaborative governance framework through which to engage networks of affected stakeholders.

If  they can get statutory deadlines established ensuring the urgency to act and get appropriate funding for implementation then it would be an extremely helpful step, although this is likely something that community advocates working outside of the doors of city hall cannot initiate by themselves.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any dedicated funding even with the new federal law, but  other aspects point to hopeful signs of potential success and again provide lessons at the local level.

The effort had virtually unanimous support in Washington. Virtually unanimous community support, if and when it could be achieved, would arguably be as good if not better than virtual bipartisan support in Congress. There would also though still be the need for a commitment to the oversight of its implementation.

The federal effort was supported by the Data Transparency Coalition, an outside group involving industry and non-profit stakeholders that not only supported passage, but more importantly supported implementation. As demonstrated by the New Community Paradigms wiki, communities have multiple advocacy organizations with which to work.

Communities can seek key support and involvement from public interest organizations that are key stakeholders in using transparency to improve citizen engagement and agency accountability such as the Sunlight Foundation.

As John Kamensky said, with the federal effort, any attempt to implement open data policies, regulations and laws will have to face the real challenge of not just complying with the law, but actually acting on its intent to increase transparency, improve performance, and change the culture in government institutions, particularly from a new community paradigms perspective city halls.

By creating coalitions of like minded advocates both outside and inside of government halls, those seeking to create new community paradigms can achieve not only the opening and availability of data but can also create the social networks needed to transform their communities.

Governance by the Community or Not - Getting with or past City Hall

Yesterday's post took a second look at the concept of community governance in which a community could potentially govern itself without handing over a  major influence on their collective lives for four years to a city council.  This is taking the perspective to its most extreme.  In practice, communities would likely maintain some form of city government within a city hall.  What it points out is that anyone, whether through a civic organization or just getting together a group of friends, could arrange for community meetings to allow people through a deliberative decision-making process to have their say on matters affecting their community.  There are a number of organizations that can assist with this as can be found in the Community Governance.  This is not to discount the challenges in doing so but it is not necessary to get permission from an institutionalized form of government power.

Taking a decision process that has substantial effect on our communities out of an arena of adversarial political competition and instead using organizations such as The World Cafe Community to create and experience deep and meaningful conversations about those things that really matter or using AmericaSpeaks to create an opportunity to have a strong voice in public decision-making on issues affecting our communities is achievable.

If such a community meeting were put together by some concerned citizens, it could be with the sponsorship of city hall.  Often times this happens through such efforts as strategic plans or economic development studies.  Unfortunately, because direct deliberative democracy is not the norm there is a flurry of activity for a short time then these plans and studies often end up on the shelf without follow-up and without any substantial changes being made. It could also be done in parallel or independent of city hall.  Any group organizing community meetings and wishing to maintain independence from city hall for its own reasons could still upon completion present its finding to the public from the city hall dais. Finally, such an effort could be against an entrenched city hall culture.  Community paradigms are not intended as a tactic to use for the benefit of one particular politician against another.  Rather it is designed to make a significant transformation in a community which has devolved into a culture of entrenched political and economic power that is no longer truly serving the needs of the community.

The challenges that need to be faced under these three scenarios become increasingly greater depending upon the openness of city hall, both in establishing the changes and implementing them.  Success under each scenario presumes that the community group will take a large role in the governance of the community.  Idealistically, at some point, the divisions between city hall and community-based governance effectively disappears.  Only idealistically though because there are too many problems communities with which have to deal and too many opposing interests even if city hall is not entrenched and in opposition.

There is a difference though between governance and government.  New community paradigms do not assume that people will take turns being the city planner or a city council member for a day.  It does work under the premise that the relationships with community leaders and city employees (maybe better would be community-based employees) need to change and become different. How community needs are met and community standards enforced would also likely be different.  How to make this would work is another challenge for new community paradigms.

This moves from the concept of 'governance through community' and using deliberative democracy to decide the future path of a community to the concept of 'governance by the community' and acting as a community working to build that path.  'Governance by the community' under new community paradigms has not been addressed yet as it is more difficult to convey in concrete terms and it took time to build on the concept.

Community governance at this point stops taking a potential advisory role whether requested or not by city hall and moving from deliberation to implementation, from strategy to tactics.

The concept of 'governance by the community' fully realized is related to the concepts found under People’s Governance (wiki page) which offers resources for direct democratic participation but usually in opposition to an unresponsive political power.  It also relates to its applications in specific areas of public concern such as participatory budgeting (a concept which needs to be examined further by this blog in the future) which happens most often with communities that have the political leadership that understands the benefit of inclusion by the community.

It can also relate philosophically with the concept of Civil Society (wiki page) as it recognizes and differentiates those aspects of society or community that do not have to be dependent upon institutional forms of government.  The blog posts Community paradigms as a set of community relations and Civil society as a platform for new community paradigms provide some discussion of this perspective.

Any group or organization reaching this point in the creation of new community paradigms should take a second and third look at its inclusionary efforts to make sure it was doing its best involving the entire community to avoid simply becoming another political competitor.  This might not happen at first but it should be a constant and primary goal or full community governance will never be attained.

An important resource that has been around for a while in helping to ensure this is  A Ladder of Citizen Participation by Sherry R. Arnstein.

This article is about power structures in society and how they interact. Specifically it is a guide to seeing who has power when important decisions are being made. It is quite old, but never-the-less of great value to anyone interested in issues of citizen participation. The concepts discussed in this article about 1960's America apply to any hierarchical society but are still mostly unknown, unacknowledged or ignored by many people around the world. Most distressing is that even people who have the job of representing citizens views seem largely unaware, or even dismissive of these principles. Many planners, architects, politicians, bosses, project leaders and power-holder still dress all variety of manipulations up as 'participation in the process', 'citizen consultation' and other shades of technobabble.

1. Citizen participation is citizen power

1.1. Empty Refusal Versus Benefit

2. Types of participation and "nonparticipation"

2.1. Limitations of the Typology

3. Characteristics and illustration

3.1. Manipulation

3.2. Therapy

3.3. Informing

3.4. Consultation

3.5. Placation

3.6. Partnership

3.7. Delegated Power

3.8. Citizen Control

I will repeat Most distressing is that even people who have the job of representing citizens views seem largely unaware, or even dismissive of these principles. Many planners, architects, politicians, bosses, project leaders and power-holder still dress all variety of manipulations up as 'participation in the process', 'citizen consultation' and other shades of technobabble.  This is the working toolbox of entrenched city hall power brokerages.  Breaking this hold over the community would be a major accomplishment for any group wishing to instill new community paradigms within their community.  This still leaves the requirement to work on meeting the communities needs.

The Results That Matter Team provides a more pragmatic working definition of community governance that goes beyond processes and a model for achieving that.

Community governance” refers to the processes for making all the decisions and plans that affect life in the community, whether made by public or private organizations or by citizens. For community governance to be effective, it must be about more than process, it also must be about getting things done in the community. And what gets done must make a difference. 

A Model of Effective Community Governance

The Effective Community Governance Model recognizes engaging citizens, measuring results, and getting things done as three “core community skills” that help people and organizations make decisions about what actions to take in a community and help them measure the community’s performance in achieving results. Citizen engagement invests legitimacy in those decisions and performance measures. To be effective, a community—or community serving organization—will align two or all three of them to perform the “advanced governance practices” of the governance model.

Another model of effective community governance came originally from "Challenge and Choice: Options for Local Governance in Ottawa-Carleton" Township of Goulbourn's World Wide Web Site and is made available by the Global Development Research Center or GDRC.

Characteristics of a Governance Model that is sensitive to a community's needs:

• Accessible
  Citizens will have easy access to the elected and staff decision makers who are responsible for municipal services.
• Accountable
  Elected and appointed officials will owe responsibility to the public.
• Inclusive
  The community will be recognised as an important component of decision making.
• Representative
  Citizens will be fairly and democratically represented.
• Comprehensive 
  All municipal functions and services will be addressed; services will be delivered at a level communities believe to be appropriate; clear and logical responsibility for service-delivery will be identified; voluntary citizen participation will be acknowledged.
• Comprehensible 
  It will be easy to understand who does what.
• Cost-effective 
  Appropriate quality service will be delivered efficiently and in a manner that makes citizens feel they are receiving a reasonable return on their tax money.

GDRC | The Urban Governance Programme deals with governance as the science of decision-making. 

The concept of governance refers to the complex set of values, norms, processes, and institutions by which society manages its development and resolves conflict, formally and informally. It involves the state, but also the civil society at the local, national, regional and global levels.

The GDRC | The Global Development Research Center is an independent nonprofit think tank that carries out initiatives in education, research and practice, in the spheres of environment, urban, community and information, and at scales that are effective.

There are also other resources available.  Another resource found during the journey to this point is Government To You | Gov2U | which bridges the concerns of governance through community and governance by the community from a global perspective.  This effort to create new community paradigms readily seeks solutions from around the entire globe that benefit the entire globe.

Our Policy and Citizen Engagement Unit works to enhance the legislative process and its outcomes by promoting representative, transparent and accountable governance. By improving the interface between citizens and decision-makers we aim at increasing civil society's input in policy-making. Because Democracy is not only about votes, it's also about deliberation.

Gov2U Facebook also provides a valuable set of technological resources that can be found on the World Wide Web.

Here's why: the internet offers virtual spaces where citizens, in absolute equality, can reclaim an active role in the political process. In essence, these virtual rooms today have the same function as the public squares in ancient times, where citizens gathered to exchange ideas and jointly agree to common solutions. So ironically, it is only through sophisticated information and communication technology that we will successfully revive the fundamental principles of democracy and citizenship, and confront the global issues of our time.

Prior to this point, the concept of community governance has been viewed as a theoretical assumption and even though there is a long road to making it a reality it should be set as a guiding principle of new community paradigms.  To do that future posts will work under the premise that there is an unnamed independent organization in a community working to define and implement new community paradigms for the community in question.  The goal of this blog and related online resources will be to assist in achieving that.

Budgeting for Community Prosperity requires a Clear View

The word austere has been thrown around in two recent posts, Governance through Community and Second look at Making Cities Work but there has been little discussion so far as to money or budgets.

Although budgets are important and in truth an essential evil, they are a function of institutions and not of communities.  Budgets are not evil in themselves but they often turn into the master of planning instead of a guide to planning.  They do serve an important function, particularly when developed and implemented with a philosophy of transparency as their basis.

One of the complexities facing communities today is that they not only have to worry about their own community's budget but the budgets of state and federal governments as well.  They also have to worry about the regional impacts of budgetary decisions which falls between the local and state levels.  There are reasons to justify this worry.  Not only do communities receive a good deal of funding from or through state and federal agencies, the budget decisions regarding intra-communities infrastructure and other expenditures made by state and federal agencies also impacts communities.  This is a two-edged sword and communities need to be careful in how they use these resources.  Some have not been and are paying the price.

All of this presumes though that the members of a particular community have decided to take the lead in self-governance which is at the heart of the new community paradigms movement.  This is more likely in Innovatitown than it is in Parochialville but even in Parochialville there could be a desire for greater transparency and insight into the budgets that have an impact on their community.  The New Community Paradigms wiki page Budgeting For Community Prosperity offers some resources, though so far resources directly related to community budgeting have not been included.

What can be found are resources offered by California Budget Project or CBP which engages in independent fiscal and policy analysis and public education with the goal of improving public policies affecting the economic and social well-being of low- and middle-income Californians. This organization could serve as a template for local communities developing protocols for greater public inclusion.

The CBP believes that information can help give voice to those who often go unheard in budget and policy debates. “Knowledge,” as the saying goes, “is power.” Since 1995, the CBP has worked to make the budget more understandable and to shed light on how budget and related policy decisions can affect the lives of low- and middle-income Californians.

The California Budget Project is also on Facebook.  The CBP has served as a resource for policymakers, advocates, community leaders, interested citizens, and the media since 1995.

Another organization working to bring greater transparency to California's government and budgetary processes is California Common Sense, a Stanford-based nonprofit using Silicon Valley technologies to open government finances to the public, engage citizens in data-driven discourse, and catalyze a grassroots movement for more effective and efficient governance.  


As with many of the resources provided through the New Community Paradigms wiki California Common Sense or CACS is also on Facebook.

CACS is the first organization in history to mine California's vast records and successfully construct an organizational mapping of the several thousand agencies, departments, councils, committees, branches, sections, divisions, and subdivisions—many of them redundant—within California's executive branch. This research base and user-friendly online map will enable CACS to create the clearest case for establishing better governance.

California Common Sense created a Transparency Beta for the City of San Francisco based on its Theory of Change.

Imagine a world in which ordinary citizens are invested in their governments and take ownership of them by virtue of actually knowing a) how government works and b) how their tax dollars are used for public services. We at CACS see that world vividly and are guided by the vision that solutions to major local and state problems will stem from the marriage of transparency and engagement. The innovative technologies we use open up government, expose its excesses, draw its shareholders-particularly young people-into the political process, and improve the efficacy of services on which citizens rely.

Perhaps some organization such as Code for America will create an app that will make it possible for smaller communities to set up Transparency Betas for their own budgets.  However, as important as budgetary transparency and appreciation of where the dollars are going may be, it is not as important as an understanding of where the dollars come from and how they get to where they need to be.   That will be the subject for the next post.