House Republicans have launched an effort, called YouCut, where each week people are offered the opportunity to vote online or by text message on which of several spending cuts they would like to see enacted by Congress. While this particular effort has obvious political undertones and motivation, it could have interesting potential on open government from the legislative branch.

What if House leadership from both parties agreed to collect input from the American public in a real and meaningful way? Background information could be provided so people could make an informed decision among several viable options, and Congressional leaders could agree to seriously consider, if not outright approve, the citizen input. This wouldn’t necessarily allow members of Congress to shirk their responsibility to tough decision making. Rather, it could enhance opportunities to fulfill another duty – to represent the wants and needs of constituents, doing so through another method of engagement than the more typical emails/letters/phone calls to Congressional offices from people who feel most strongly about a particular issue.

What do you think? Is this a legitimate step toward open government and engagement, or just a partisan gimmick?

Nancy Scola at TechPresident also offers In Defense of “YouCut”, discussing other aspects of YouCut including quotes from Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s new media director about the program.

Wednesday’s release of open government plans by agencies across the federal government is a momentous step forward in the Obama Administration’s quest to fulfill the president’s commitment to create a more transparent, participatory and collaborative government. The Obama Administration and federal agencies are to be commended for the progress that has been made over the past four months and the promise to continue to advance this important work. I am pleased that most agencies view these plans as only a first step on the road to open government and intend to treat them as living documents that will continue to evolve over time.

As has been the case since President Obama initially signed his Open Government Memorandum more than a year ago, greater emphasis has been paid to activities that advance transparency within most of the plans. Nevertheless, while some agencies have treated the participation and collaboration goals quite narrowly – focusing primarily on online tools that can expand public involvement – some agencies have produced plans that offer serious strategies to adapt how they will work to involve and engage the public.

The Department of Health and Human Services, for example, proposes to take a number of steps that will be needed to become more participatory and collaborative. These steps include the development of a menu of tools and techniques for encourage participation and collaboration, an internal community of practice within the agency to share best practices in participation and collaboration, and an evaluation process to assess current practices and plan for improvements going forward.

For open government to be successful in the long term, several key criteria must be met.

First, open government strategies and activities must be truly integrated into each agency, rather than being held apart from the day-to-day operations of each organization. The values and goals of open government must be marbled throughout the federal government as a core and essential element of fulfilling each agency’s mission.

Second, as many federal managers and senior staff have acknowledged, fulfillment of the Open Government Directive’s goals will require systematic efforts to expand agency capacity to support greater transparency, participation and collaboration. This will require significant investment in training for employees and the creation or adaptation of structures to support institutional change.

Third, agencies and their employees must be provided with institutional incentives to continue to promote open government and change how the work of our government is done. Budget, promotions and recognition programs must be aligned with open government goals to demonstrate to agency employees that the commitment of the federal government to open government is real and will last over time.

While the open government plans are a very important first step, more systemic changes will be required to create lasting institutional change.
If we are to rebuild trust between the American people and the government, it is essential that the voice of the general interest public be heard and acted upon. Unfortunately, most of the interactive or participatory experiments initiated by the White House and federal agencies to date have not attracted significant participation by the general interest public.  Rather, participation has been confined to self-selected groups of stakeholders.

In the next phases of the White House’s Open Government Initiative, it is essential that the Administration commit to engaging the general interest public in the mechanics of our government. Only by doing so, will the Administration rebuild public trust and truly demonstrate a new kind of governance.

AmericaSpeaks applauds the important progress demonstrated by the open government plans. The success of this new era of governance will require an extraordinary force of public will combined with enlightened leadership. We look forward to seeing how this momentum is continued towards this end to create a stronger, more vibrant democracy.

It is hard to assess without reading the document, but this new report seems to make a unique contribution to our understanding about the link between online transparency on federal web sites and perceptions of trust in government by the public.

A market research firm asked  people who visited one of 14 federal web sites about how they felt about data availability on the site and how they perceived what the agency does.

Researchers asked users questions related to how thoroughly the sites disclosed information about what the agency is doing, how quickly information was made available online and how accessible that information was on the sites. The answers were then run through the ACSI statistical engine to generate a score on transparency. Many agencies already measure satisfaction with their sites using the ACSI e-government index.

The transparency project surveyed more than 36,000 citizens who visited 14 federal sites during the fourth quarter of 2009. The aggregate transparency score was 75 on a 100-point scale. The authors acknowledged that there are thousands of federal sites beyond the 14 that volunteered to participate. “Even those that appear to have lower scores in this short list of 14 would certainly be nowhere near the bottom of the pack in a comprehensive index of federal government online transparency,” the report states.

The study found that citizens who believe a site is highly transparent are 46 percent more likely to trust the overall government.

Citizens who believe a site is highly transparent are 46 percent more likely to trust the overall government, 49 percent more likely to use the site as a primary resource and 37 percent more likely to return to the site, according to the study.

“We have always assumed that greater transparency [and] more openness in government would link to greater satisfaction and higher trust in government,” said Dave McClure, GSA’s associate administrator for its Office of Citizen Services and Communications, who also was briefed on the results. “What this study does is help confirm that.”

Mark Drapeau wrote a great post yesterday that questions whether the Open Government Directive is leading to real, authentic citizen engagement. The post reflects questions and concerns that people from across the public engagement field have had for quite a while now.

Mark writes:

When you hear Gary Vaynerchuk speaking about openness and engagement … , you don’t hear about putting more options on a website, nor about this or that technology very often. You hear an awful lot about people – talking to people, listening to people, providing content that people want, and generally caring about people. And a lot of it is very one-on-one, not email blasts and blog posts. It’s human and authentic.

In a talk long ago, I heard Gary use an acronym that I still use to this day, one that should be at play in all the discussion about the OGD. The acronym is RAT. RAT means Real, Authentic, and Transparent. RATs win. RATs use technology, but aren’t focused on it. They’re focused on people.

How the new open government websites and tools are used to interact with individual people, to engage citizens around topics (not agencies, topics), and act as platforms to build communities around those topics remains to be seen. But there’s one thing anyone involved in communities already knows – these things take time and are not subject to artificial deadlines.

Tim Bonnemann just put up a great post that suggests ten things to look for in the recently launched Ideascale dialogues by federal agencies. Tim’s focus is on the core things that could be improved upon relative to the open government dialogue that took place last summer.

It’s a good list and could represent a real break through if we had progress on many of the items. My guess is that there will be some progress on a few fronts and with some agencies, but that the speed with which agencies have had to pull together these dialogues will likely mean only moderate steps forward. It may be more realistic to think about these dialogues as a chance for agencies to experiment with a new platform and build up their skills, so it can be improved upon in future attempts.

Here are Tim’s ten things to look for:

1. Expectation management: Is the agency clear about the scope of their participation initiative and their promise to the public? Do participants know what impact they can reasonably expect and when?
2. Community ground rules: Every agency should have these “rules of engagement” in place and be ready to enforce them if needed. Bonus points for friendly, easy-to-understand language!
3. Level of convener involvement/participation: Does the agency become actively engaged in the discussions?
4. Quality of moderation: Will the agency manage to keep discussions on topic and moderate distractions in a fair but timely manner?
5. Quantity of participation over time: How many participants will sign up? How much content will they produce? (luckily, IdeaScale exposes a few basic metrics in real time, such as number of ideas, comments, votes and registered users)
6. Outreach and diversity of participants: Does the agency manage to attract a broad range of participants from various backgrounds? Or do usual suspects dominate the discussions?
7. Conclusion and impact: This one will be especially interesting as there doesn’t seem to be an end date defined for any of these initiatives. In case of ongoing participation programs, does the agency at least share interim results?
8. Tech support: Does the agency address technical support questions and resolve any issues in a timely manner?
9. Project communications: Does the agency offer ways for participants to stay in the loop (or get up to speed quickly) with regard to current state of the discussion, frequently asked questions, highlights, interim results, next steps etc.?
10. Mood: Overall, how happy is everyone with the process? What’s the energy level? Are things productive? Etc.

Andrea DiMaio has a couple of posts discussing the potential uses for the iPad for open government and citizen engagement, from the potential for new users to changing the way government and citizens interact: Apple’s iPad Could Do For Governments More than the One-Laptop-Per-Child and Could the iPad Redefine Public Service Delivery?

There has been a lot of discussion about the iPad since Apple announced it last week,  but this is the first I’ve seen thinking about applying it to government and citizen engagement. I’m particularly interested in the speculation that the iPad will open up technology to a whole population of people who don’t currently use it, namely older citizens. The OGD and other efforts are great steps toward openness and transparency, but it is easy to neglect reaching populations who aren’t connected to technology. I’ll be pleased if the iPad can successfully get the internet and other applications into the hands of people who have previously not had access, and therefore potentially increase connection with government.

Do you see other potential uses for the iPad to serve open government and citizen engagement goals?

In a new article at Huffington Post, Peter Levine calls for President Obama to shift course to more deeply engage the public in the governance process. Levine argues that the Administration has strayed from the authentic civic engagement that helped to elected the president:

“All the diagnoses of what’s going wrong focus on top-down strategy: the Democrats are too arrogant or too cautious, they took too long or tried to rush too fast, or they focused on health care when they should have attended to unemployment. Now the advice from all quarters is to change legislative objectives and to craft a new “message.” This whole discourse ignores what could be the unique advantage of having a community organizer in the White House.”

Levine argues that “active civic engagement” challenges the public to partner with government to actively be part of the solution:

“Service and transparency are not nearly “edgy” enough; there is no fight in them. People are angry – from the Tea Partiers to MoveOn. When citizens try to solve serious social problems, they identify enemies. They do not just hold hands and serve together; they strike back at those whom they perceive as threats. “Active citizenship” reduced to non-controversial “service” or downloading government data completely loses touch with the legitimate anger of the American people.”

“The White House chose to make health care its major focus and included no aspects of civic engagement in the deliberations about the bill, in its advocacy for the legislation, or in the design of the statute. There could have been real public discussions, instead of sham “Town Meetings” that were really speeches by politicians with time for Q&A. Progressive volunteers could have been encouraged to conduct face-to-face dialogues in their communities and to form relationships with one another (instead of merely finding themselves on the receiving end of an email list). The legislation could have included health co-ops as an experiment in engaging citizens in policy.”

“It is probably too late to try a civic approach on health care. Climate change is so obviously stuck in the Senate that it is the issue I would use. The inside game can’t work. Since negotiation cannot yield an acceptable bill, the administration should try a grassroots strategy that includes a genuine element of open discussion, not just “messaging.” And the legislation should include strong support for citizens’ work (not just volunteer service) to reduce our carbon emissions.”

Yesterday, AmericaSpeaks and the Congressional Management Foundation briefed about 40 Congressional staff members about how they can think about engaging constituents more effectively. In addition to talking about barriers that they face and principles of public engagement, we used keypad polling to ask questions about their attitudes with regard to convening the public.

I thought the most interesting statistic came out of a poll about which mediums for engaging the public did they find most useful. The top response: tele-town halls, which are structured conference call sessions in which members of Congress respond to selected questions over the phone.

Here were the results to the question:

• Focus group (6%)
• Traditional town hall meeting that uses Q&A format (18%)
• Forums that encourage dialogue among participants (15%)
• Field hearings (3%)
• One-on-one office hours (18%)
• Surveys conducted by mail (0%)
• Surveys conducted on the web site or through email newsletter (3%)
• Tele-town hall meeting (30%)
• Online town hall meeting (6%)
• Other (0%)

This was certainly not a representative group and I’d like to think that our briefing helped to broaden their perspectives about the value of face-to-face deliberation when done right. But I thought it was a useful and interesting statement about the realities that Congressional staff operate within.