02180: Obama's interesting intiative: Fwd: Opportunity until 5/28: Butterfly Wings of Participatory Governance
From:
Miroslav Kolar <wddm(at)mkolar.org>
Date:
Wed, 27 May 2009 19:30:11 -0600
Subject:
Obama's interesting intiative: Fwd: Opportunity until 5/28: Butterfly Wings of Participatory Governance
It looks like the Obama's administration is actually attempting (see
the forwarded message below) to do something quite similar to my
10-year old proposal for a priority queue of citizen proposals and
initiatives: http://democracy.mkolar.org/toDonald.html !
But they gave us too little time to participate, only a week. We
should require that is turned into a permanent thing.
It seems that anybody from all over the world can participate, which
is quite appropriate as the actions of the US government do affect the
lives of people around the world.
You still have one day to participate.
Mirek
----- Forwarded message from cii(at)igc.org -----
Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:17:19 -0700
From: Tom Atlee <cii(at)igc.org>
Subject: Opportunity until 5/28: Butterfly Wings of Participatory Governance
Dear friends,
On January 21st, U.S. President Obama issued a Memorandum on
Transparency and Open Government, calling for an unprecedented level
of openness in government. In the memorandum, the President outlined
three principles for promoting a more open government: transparency,
participation, and collaboration. Now, Obama is calling on U.S.
citizens to help shape how that commitment is fulfilled.
I hope this is a sign the administration is committed to really
engaging our diverse population. A number of their past dialogue
initiatives have been motivated more by mobilizing support for the
administration's agenda. That is fine for the world of partisan
politics, but is not the kind of whole-system inclusive co-
intelligent politics I've been promoting for the last decade.
This new invitation from the Obama administration COULD be a turning
point. It seems to offer us an opportunity to participate in
creating participatory governance. Time will tell if the
administration is actually serious about this. Meanwhile, my sense
of possibility suggests it is worth imagining that they are.
Chaos theorists tell us that "initial conditions" can have a profound
impact on what happens next, out of proportion to the initial
energies involved. This is the so-called "butterfly effect" in which
micro-currents from the flap of a butterfly's wings get caught up in
feedback dynamics that generate a storm a thousand miles away.
If we take an optimistic view of this opportunity, Obama is inviting
us to flap our butterfly wings as his administration begins its
efforts to make the governmental machinery more accessible and
responsive to citizen engagement. They've set up a website <http://
opengov.ideascale.com> to gather ideas from the field, get them
commented on and voted up or down, and then to discuss the leading
proposals and weave them into a program.
I've browsed over the website, voted on a couple of dozen proposals,
added a few comments, and finally added a proposal of my own. On the
chance that this just MIGHT be a breakthrough moment, I urge you to
take 20-60 minutes to do this yourself. There are many very
excellent proposals there, as well as some deeply flawed ones.
At the very least, I ask you to consider voting for the items below,
which I consider offer the most leverage for creating a more co-
intelligent democracy.
The brainstorming, commenting, and voting stage of this process is
open to the public until Thursday, May 28, 2009. So if you want to
join this effort, please do so now.
My recommendations for your consideration, comment, and vote:
1. Use Randomly Selected Citizen Deliberative Councils to tap the
collective wisdom of We the People http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2971-4049
This is my proposal, described in full below.
2. A national citizens' assembly to represent the people's wisdom http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2535-4049
This proposal comes closest to mine, although it focuses on
only one form of citizen deliberative council -- Citizen Assemblies
-- unfortunately the most elaborate and expensive one. But it is
grounded in the same theory about how to generate a wise voice-of-the-
whole.
3. Ask Federal Agencies to Adopt the Core Principles for Public
Engagement http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2510-4049
This is the consensus document project I engaged in with the
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, that I described in
my April 6th mailing. You might also like to search and vote for the
IAP2 principles, another powerful, although less broadly agreed-to
set of guidelines submitted to this Open Government site.
4. Promise USA - National Network of Citizen Conversation http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2632-4049
This is a broad dialogue project which, while not actually
producing the kind of coherent "voice of the whole" that I believe we
urgently need, includes facilitation by Girl Scouts, which I think is
a brilliant innovation! If instituted, its conversations could
include discussing the findings of national citizen deliberative
councils.
5. A "Plan B" when Congress doesn't Represent: Better and National
Ballot Initiatives http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2469-4049
I favor this national ballot initiative idea because the
referenced proposal has a Citizens-Jury-like deliberation built into
it to evaluate ballot initiatives. That one modification goes far to
salvage the ballot initiative process currently so corrupted at the
state level with special interest influence.
6. From Bottom Up: Increasing the quality and quantity of local
citizenry engagement with critical public issues and the government http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/2859-4049
This offers a general perspective I would love to see adopted
by governments everywhere.
Thank you for any exercise of your citizenship you wish to practice
in this forum.
May this part of the Journey prepare us well for what is to come.
Coheartedly,
Tom
===================
MY PROPOSAL TO THE OPEN GOVERNMENT SITE
Ad hoc, randomly selected, well-informed citizen deliberative
councils like Citizens Juries, Citizen Assemblies, and Consensus
Conferences have been used hundreds of times around the world to
provide policy guidance to public officials and the citizenry. The
U.S. lags far behind in their use.
These similar approaches all enable a microcosm of a country or
community to generate informed public judgment about specific issues.
They are not legislatures. They are temporary councils, more like
juries, but they deliberate on public issues rather than private
guilt, and they are far more actively engaged in becoming informed
than any jury can be. They get professional help in hearing each
other and creatively deliberating.
As with juries, random selection (a) creates greater diversity than
one finds in a legislature, (b) makes it much harder for corrupting
influences to skew the results, and (c) levels the conversation with
an assumption that all participants are peers. Also like a jury, a
citizen deliberative council disbands as soon as it completes its work.
These councils can be used for any number of purposes -- to recommend
solutions, to evaluate proposed legislation or ballot initiatives, to
evaluate the performance of public officials or interview politicians
seeking election, and more. They are useful wherever a dependable,
informed, reflective non-partisan (or "transpartisan") "voice of the
whole" is desired. Their recommendations can be advisory, or a
mandate, or they can be put to a vote by the electorate.
A related process, a citizens' Wisdom Council, could serve as an
annual "state of the union address" by a group of randomly selected
citizens officially convened for the purpose. They would not be
assigned an issue to deliberate, but would have a creative
conversation for several days and come to consensus conclusions they
would then share with the country. Whatever they came up with would
certainly stimulate much discussion!
The point I would like to raise in this proposal for discussion is
that randomly selected councils of citizens can, under the right
conditions, generate far wiser recommendations than vast dialogue and
deliberation programs involving thousands or millions of people.
Random selection -- sortition -- was the foundation of Athenian
Democracy. Well designed microcosms can be more demographically
representative of a whole community than a self-selected group or an
elected legislature -- although all three forms have their democratic
roles. Perhaps most important in these times of tight budgets,
government resources -- organizational, informational and
facilitation -- can be more focused, resulting in higher quality
outcomes at less cost.
This approach can also complement broader community or national
dialogues. The special outcomes of citizen deliberative councils can
be fed into the more broadly participative dialogues and
deliberations proposed here by others. The outcomes of citizen
deliberative councils add a totally new voice -- the voice of the
whole -- to the usually partisan public discourse we think of as
democracy.
For more information on this approach and links to the various
related practices, see http://www.co-intelligence.org/
CDCUsesAndPotency.html.
Why is this idea important?
This approach provides an inexpensive, effective way to bring the
voice of the whole community or country into partisan public
discourse or to provide useful, thoughtful advice to policy-makers.