Paper by Brandon Reynante, Steven P. Dow, Narges Mahyar: “Civic problems are often too complex to solve through traditional top-down strategies. Various governments and civic initiatives have explored more community-driven strategies where citizens get involved with defining problems and innovating solutions. While certain people may feel more empowered, the public at large often does not have accessible, flexible, and meaningful ways to engage. Prior theoretical frameworks for public participation typically offer a one-size-fits-all model based on face-to-face engagement and fail to recognize the barriers faced by even the most engaged citizens. In this article, we explore a vision for open civic design where we integrate theoretical frameworks from public engagement, crowdsourcing, and design thinking to consider the role technology can play in lowering barriers to large-scale participation, scaffolding problem-solving activities, and providing flexible options that cater to individuals’ skills, availability, and interests. We describe our novel theoretical framework and analyze the key goals associated with this vision: (1) to promote inclusive and sustained participation in civics; (2) to facilitate effective management of large-scale participation; and (3) to provide a structured process for achieving effective solutions. We present case studies of existing civic design initiatives and discuss challenges, limitations, and future work related to operationalizing, implementing, and testing this framework…(More)”.
Citizen Power Europe. The Making of a European Citizens’ Assembly
Paper by Alberto Alemanno and Kalypso Nicolaïdis: “This article argues that if the EU is to recover its dented popularity among European publics, we need to build a European democratic ecosystem to nurture, scale and ultimate accommodate the daily competing claims of Europe’s citizens. To attain this objective, it presents and discusses three big ideas that are at the heart of the renewed EU ecosystem that we are calling for. These are: participation beyond voting; a transnational and inclusive public space; and, a democratic panopticon for greater accountability. Promisingly enough, these ideas already find reflection in the first batch of the citizens’ recommendations emerging from the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). Even if these recommendations still need to be refined through deliberation by the plenary of the CoFoE, they add up a clear and urgent message: let’s tap into our collective intelligence and democratic imagination to construct a pan-European public sphere by enhancing mutual connections, knowledge and empowerment between citizens across borders…(More)”.
A data-based participatory approach for health equity and digital inclusion: prioritizing stakeholders
Paper by Aristea Fotopoulou, Harriet Barratt, and Elodie Marandet: “This article starts from the premise that projects informed by data science can address social concerns, beyond prioritizing the design of efficient products or services. How can we bring the stakeholders and their situated realities back into the picture? It is argued that data-based, participatory interventions can improve health equity and digital inclusion while avoiding the pitfalls of top-down, technocratic methods. A participatory framework puts users, patients and citizens as stakeholders at the centre of the process, and can offer complex, sustainable benefits, which go beyond simply the experience of participation or the development of an innovative design solution. A significant benefit for example is the development of skills, which should not be seen as a by-product of the participatory processes, but a central element of empowering marginalized or excluded communities to participate in public life. By drawing from different examples in various domains, the article discusses what can be learnt from implementations of schemes using data science for social good, human-centric design, arts and wellbeing, to argue for a data-centric, creative and participatory approach to address health equity and digital inclusion in tandem…(More)”.
Toward A Collaborative Smart City: A Play-Based Urban Living Laboratory in Boston
Paper by Eric Gordon, John Harlow, Melissa Teng & Elizabeth Christoferetti: This article reports on an urban living laboratory that designed a suite of play-based prototypes, as an attempt to “institution” collaborative smart city governance in the city of Boston. This project was called “Beta Blocks,” and it geographically defined “Exploration Zones,” governed by local residents and business owners, who decided whether, where, and why to temporarily install technologies in the public realm. To recruit and facilitate the participation of Zone Advisory Group members, the authors fabricated a lavender, parking-space-sized, inflatable art exhibition (Beta Blob) that hosted a suite of public-facing activities. Although the composite model failed at “institutioning” itself into Boston’s government through this prototype, the discrete components succeeded in centering play in public learning situations and prototyping a model for collaborative governance between publics, and the public and private sectors…(More)”.
Research Anthology on Citizen Engagement and Activism for Social Change
Book by the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA): “Activism and the role everyday people play in making a change in society are increasingly popular topics in the world right now, especially as younger generations begin to speak out. From traditional protests to activities on college campuses, to the use of social media, more individuals are finding accessible platforms with which to share their views and become more actively involved in politics and social welfare. With the emergence of new technologies and a spotlight on important social issues, people are able to become more involved in society than ever before as they fight for what they believe. It is essential to consider the recent trends, technologies, and movements in order to understand where society is headed in the future.
The Research Anthology on Citizen Engagement and Activism for Social Change examines a plethora of innovative research surrounding social change and the various ways citizens are involved in shaping society. Covering topics such as accountability, social media, voter turnout, and leadership, it is an ideal work for activists, sociologists, social workers, politicians, public administrators, sociologists, journalists, policymakers, social media analysts, government administrators, academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students….(More)”.
CoFoE: deliberative democracy more accountable than elections and polls
Article by Eleonora Vasques: “Deliberative democracy processes are more democratic than general elections or surveys, according to Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) participants and experts of the second panel on democracy gathered in Florence last weekend.
CoFoE is a deliberative democracy experiment where 800 citizens, divided into four thematic panels, deliberate recommendations to discuss and vote on with lawmakers.
The panel on European democracy, values, rights, the rule of law, and security, recently approved 39 recommendations on anti-discrimination, democracy, the rule of law, EU institutional reforms, the building of a European identity, and the strengthening of citizen participation.
“Usually, the way we try to understand what people think is through elections or opinion polls. However, I think both methods are biased. They rather ‘freeze’ a debate, imposing the discussion, without asking people what they want. Thus, it is good that people here speak about their own will. And they do not necessarily use the same categories utilised by electoral campaigns and opinion polls,” Oliver Roy, professor at the European University Institute and one of the panel experts, told journalists…
Similarly, citizens selected for this panel believe that this democratic exercise is more valuable than mainstream political participation.
“I feel I am living a unique democratic experiment, which goes beyond the majority rule. Democracy is often understood only as a majority rule exercise, with elections. But here, we are demonstrating that democracy is about debating, sharing general ideas from the bottom up that can have an impact,” Max, a participant from Slovakia, told EURACTIV…(More)”.
Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy
OECD Report: “This guide for public officials and policy makers outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy.
Increasingly, public authorities are reinforcing democracy by making use of deliberative processes in a structural way, beyond one-off initiatives that are often dependent on political will. The guide provides examples of how to create structures that allow representative public deliberation to become an integral part of how certain types of public decisions are taken.
Eight models to consider for implementation:
1. Combining a permanent citizens’ assembly with one-off citizens’ panels
2. Connecting representative public deliberation to parliamentary committees
3. Combining deliberative and direct democracy
4. Standing citizens’ advisory panels
5. Sequenced representative deliberative processes throughout the policy cycle
6. Giving people the right to demand a representative deliberative process
7. Requiring representative public deliberation before certain types of public decisions
8. Embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning…(More)”.
Data Portals and Citizen Engagement
Series of blogs by Tim Davies: “Portals have been an integral part of the open data movement. They provided a space for publishing and curation of data for governments (usually), and a space to discover and access data for users (often individuals, civil society organisations or sometimes private sector organisations building services or deriving insights from this data).
While many data portals are still maintained, and while some of them enable access to a sizeable amount of data, portals face some big questions in the decade ahead:
- Are open data portals still fit for purpose (and if so, which purpose)?
- Do open data portals still “make sense” in this decade, or are they a public sector anomaly in a context when data lakes, data meshes, data platforms are adopted across industry? Is there a minimum viable spec for a future-proof open data “portal”?
- What roles and activities have emerged around data platforms and portals that deserve to be codified and supported by the future type of platforms?
- Could re-imagined open data “platforms” create change in the role of the public service organisation with regards to data (from publisher to… steward?)?
- How can a new generation of portals or data platforms better support citizen engagement and civic participation?
- What differences are there between the private and public approaches, and why? Does any difference introduce any significant dynamics in private / public open data ecosystems?…(More)”.
Sharing Student Data Across Public Sectors: Importance of Community Engagement to Support Responsible and Equitable Use
Report by CDT: “Data and technology play a critical role in today’s education institutions, with 85 percent of K-12 teachers anticipating that online learning and use of education technology at their school will play a larger role in the future than it did before the pandemic. The growth in data-driven decision-making has helped fuel the increasing prevalence of data sharing practices between K-12 education agencies and adjacent public sectors like social services. Yet the sharing of personal data can pose risks as well as benefits, and many communities have historically experienced harm as a result of irresponsible data sharing practices. For example, if the underlying data itself is biased, sharing that information exacerbates those inequities and increases the likelihood that potential harms fall disproportionately on certain communities. As a result, it is critical that agencies participating in data sharing initiatives take steps to ensure the benefits are available to all and no groups of students experience disproportionate harm.
A core component of sharing data responsibly is proactive, robust community engagement with the group of people whose data is being shared, as well as their surrounding community. This population has the greatest stake in the success or failure of a given data sharing initiative; as such, public agencies have a practical incentive, and a moral obligation, to engage them regarding decisions being made about their data…
This paper presents guidance on how practitioners can conduct effective community engagement around the sharing of student data between K-12 education agencies and adjacent public sectors. We explore the importance of community engagement around data sharing initiatives, and highlight four dimensions of effective community engagement:
- Plan: Establish Goals, Processes, and Roles
- Enable: Build Collective Capacity
- Resource: Dedicate Appropriate People, Time, and Money
- Implement: Carry Out Vision Effectively and Monitor Implementation…(More)”.
What Biden’s Democracy Summit Is Missing
Essay by Hélène Landemore: “U.S. President Joe Biden is set to host a virtual summit this week for leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector to discuss the renewal of democracy. We can expect to see plenty of worthy yet predictable issues discussed: the threat of foreign agents interfering in elections, online disinformation, political polarization, and the temptation of populist and authoritarian alternatives. For the United States specifically, the role of money in politics, partisan gerrymandering, endless gridlock in Congress, and the recent voter suppression efforts targeting Black communities in the South should certainly be on the agenda.
All are important and relevant topics. Something more fundamental, however, is needed.
The clear erosion of our political institutions is just the latest evidence, if any more was needed, that it’s past time to discuss what democracy actually means—and why we should care about it. We have to question, moreover, whether the political systems we have are even worth restoring or if we should more substantively alter them, including through profound constitutional reforms.
Such a discussion has never been more vital. The systems in place today once represented a clear improvement on prior regimes—monarchies, theocracies, and other tyrannies—but it may be a mistake to call them adherents of democracy at all. The word roughly translates from its original Greek as “people’s power.” But the people writ large don’t hold power in these systems. Elites do. Consider that in the United States, according to a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, only the richest 10 percent of the population seems to have any causal effect on public policy. The other 90 percent, they argue, is left with “democracy by coincidence”—getting what they want only when they happen to want the same thing as the people calling the shots.
This discrepancy between reality—democracy by coincidence—and the ideal of people’s power is baked in as a result of fundamental design flaws dating back to the 18th century. The only way to rectify those mistakes is to rework the design—to fully reimagine what it means to be democratic. Tinkering at the edges won’t do….(More)”