Ten Things to Monitor As Agencies Invite Input On Open Government Plans

Comment

Comment by Tim Bonnemann on February 14, 2010 at 3:20pm

Summarizing and synthesizing the conversations, ideally on a daily basis, and feeding the results back to the participants is one of the biggest opportunities for improvement for these kinds of idea collection and discussion efforts. It's a manual process, of course, and may require skilled facilitators but the benefits to the participants are obvious.

I address this challenge in more detail here: 14 Ways to Make Online Citizen Participation Work: “Keep Folks in the Loop!”

We saw a little bit of that during phase 2 of the Open Government Dialogue: each new topic was kicked off with a blog post that summarized the previous one.

Comment by Alex Moll on February 14, 2010 at 2:41pm

Good work monitoring, Tim. Good blog post too. Good to see you in this community. Building off Mr. Kuehn's remarks, I think it would be interesting if agencies would begin the following steps to improve quality of process:

1. Synthesize ideas from brainstorming, but targeted or categorized under various questions or problems per transparency, collaboration, participation.
2. Be action and problem-solving oriented. Connect people's ideas--proactively.
3. Correlate ideas toward agency missions and goals.
4. Demonstrate the effect of people's input--continually, not just at the end of three months.
5. Merge ideascales, both from former effort last summer 2009 to this year.
6. Feedback loops from new synthesis of knowledge

These are six steps I would add to your 10 above. Steve's right too: Agencies need to 'drive' audiences, but they also need to cultivate online community and interaction of people's ideas. I would invite agencies to 'build' audiences too. Kuehn's right too: CIO's perspective cannot be the only one to achieve long-term success; we need the cultural piece as well.

One of the most fundamental pieces of success overlooked is both new web 2.0 technologies and softwares that really build knowledge cumulatively, usually with some manual operation, naturally. Effective problem-solving, whether short or long term for at least non-rountine problems, requires synthesis of input into re-emerging presentations for public feedback. That's a missing link in the entire online process, whether IdeaScale or otherwise. Those are some initial thoughts...always thinking.

Comment by Tim Bonnemann on February 9, 2010 at 2:15am

I'm trying to at least scan the activity in the forums on a daily basis. Looks like some agencies are doing a much better job at moderation and community management than what we saw during phase 1 of the Open Government Dialogue.

I'm collecting screenshots on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planspark/sets/72157623377063588/

Comment by Tim Bonnemann on February 9, 2010 at 2:12am

Nice, someone actually re-posted this list to the OpenState forum: http://openstate.ideascale.com/a/dtd/19960-7038

Comment by Keith Moore on February 9, 2010 at 12:04am

Tim these are great things to monitor. I suggest close weekly monitoring participation on the input. I have noticed one or two websites that clearly are simply checking a box to meet a deadline and not aligning the OGD with their core mission. So setting benchmarks is an essential contribution to any assessment of OGD progress.

Comment by Tim Bonnemann on February 8, 2010 at 11:44pm

@David

Excellent point. That's probably the ultimate litmus test and goes back to what impact exactly any of these initiatives will have. If the key stakeholders aren't on board (and agency leadership is one of those stakeholder groups) impact will be marginal.

Comment by David Kuehn on February 8, 2010 at 9:29am

One element I would want to measure is how well Open Government Plans integrate agency missions and programs. Specifically, I would look for leadership and involvement by core program offices that have the critical interactions with the public and agency stakeholders. If the Plan is developed and supported soley by the CIO I believe it will result in limited long-term change in how agencies conduct business.

Comment by GovLoop on February 8, 2010 at 8:42am

I think a big one is "driving audience." There is a little of a build it and they will come...which I don't think is necessarily true.

Agencies should make sure to promote /open dialogues heavily via already built-in audiences (email lists, partner lists) and throughout other channels (prominent web placement, reach out to traditional media, leadership discussion at in-person meetings).

Comment by Tim Bonnemann on February 8, 2010 at 5:49am

It's worth noting that these items are almost entirely independent of the technology that's being used.