Online Deliberation and The United States Open Government Initiative

1
Online Deliberation and The United States Open
Government Initiative

• Lisa Blomgren Bingham
• Indiana University
• School of Public and Environmental Affairs
• Bloomington, Indiana

2
Overview

• The Legal Framework for Online Deliberation in
  the US Federal Government
• The Open Government Initiative Transparency,
  Participation, and Collaboration
• The Open Government Dialogue An Experiment
• The Open Government Directive More Input than
  Deliberation

3
The Legal Framework for Online Deliberation

• Administrative Procedure, Freedom of Information,
  and Sunshine Acts
• Limited role for public participation, none for
  deliberation
• Silent on online participation
• Framed in terms of information transparency and
  access
• E-Government Act of 2002 Authorizes online
  participation in rulemaking
• Federal Document Management System (FDMS) has a
  single agency and public interface for 170
  rulemaking entities.
• The public can view materials and submits
  comments through single uniform website,
  www.regulations.gov.
• No user participation in design, closed
  architecture, not interactive, no online
  deliberation.

4
The Open Government Initiative (OGI)

• President Obama issued an Executive Memorandum on
  Transparent and Open Government
• OGI umbrella Government should be
• TRANSPARENT
• PARTICIPATORY
• COLLABORATIVE
• Open Government Dialogue
• Open Government Directive
• Open Government Plans

5
OGI Transformative Transparency

• People need information to participate and
  deliberate.
• Data.gov
• USApending.gov
• Apps.gov
• Recovery.gov
• Leveraging public
• Private Sector Aps

6
OGI Open Government Dialogue

• Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in
  Office of Management and Budget, White House
• Open Government Dialogue intended to model
  upstream Online Deliberation for agencies.
• No user participation in design.
• Administration had been in place for gt4 months.
• Move from top down agency action to bottom up
• Phase I Brainstorming using Ideascale.com
• Phase II Discussion using OSTP Blog and
• Phase III Collaboration using a wiki through
  MixedInk.com.

7
Phase I Brainstorming Using Ideascale

• Short lead time and notice. OSTP used conference
  calls to activate participation through NGOs
  membership.
• Registered users create account, log in, post
  ideas for making government transparent,
  participatory, or collaborative.
• Other users could vote up or down and comment.
• Earliest posts ended up with the most votes.

8
Phase I Brainstorming Results

• National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA)
  monitored (7 days)
• 30,222 visits -- 20,830 unique visitors.
• Every state and territory as well as 123
  countries.
• About 4,000 registered as users (19 of the
  unique visitors)
• 1,129 unique ideas
• 2,176 comments
• 46,469 votes.
• Suggestions included better use of federal
  advisory committees, e-rulemaking, or Web 2.0.

9
Phase I Brainstorming Problems

• Birthers flooded the site with comments
  regarding the President Obamas birth
  certificate.
• Most other users felt were off-topic.
• NAPA could not remove comments and put them in a
  parking lot in Ideascale.
• Site did not let other users self-moderate by
  voting ideas down to minimize or hide them.
• First Amendment prohibits government from
  discriminating on the content of speech in a
  public forum.

10
Phase II Blog Discussion

• OSTP bloghttp//blog.ostp.gov/category/opengov/
• Voting mechanism for self-moderating. A majority
  of negative votes minimized an entry but left an
  active link.
• Allowed participants to deepen the conversation
  by drafting longer suggestions and commenting
  directly on each others entries.
• NAPA analysis of Phase I helped inform Phase II.
• From June 3-21, 2009, attracted more than 1,000
  comments in response to 16 topics.
• OSTP continues to use its blog for other OG
  issues.

11
Phase II Blog Results

• Input from some blog entries are reflected in
  final Open Government Directive issued in
  December 2009.
• Self-moderating solved birther issue.
• Problems Blog does not create reliable permanent
  record of dialogue.
• Links with analyses and reports are broken.
• Links to files of data from Dialogue are broken.
• Much less participation.
• Unclear connections between ideas in Phase I and
  task in Phase II.

12
Phase III Wiki using Mixed Ink

• Wiki tool to draft policy (http//mixedink.com/ope
  ngov/).
• From June 22-July 6, 2009, 305 drafts by 375
  authors, with 2,256 people voting.
• Phase III Wiki Problems
• Attracted fewest participants by far.
• Allowed participants to use each others language
  out of context
• Could make original author a coauthor on new
  draft without the original authors express
  agreement.
• Tool was best suited to small groups who share a
  common goal and know each other.

13
OG Directive and Plans

• OG Directive in December 2009 Agencies must
• Publish high value govt datasets
• Publish open govt webpage
• Create open govt culture among leaders
• Incorporate transparency, participation, and
  collaboration into ongoing work
• Develop an Open Government Plan, and
• Create an enabling policy framework for open
  govt to realize the potential of new
  technologies and forms of communication.
• Spring 2010 All agencies have published plans
  http//www.whitehouse.gov/open/

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OGD Critique Public Input, not Deliberation

• No data on representativeness of participants
• Limited outreach, mostly to organized
  stakeholders
• Short time frame, one off process not embedded.
• More individuals in Phase I, but by Phase III few
  mostly organized stakeholders
• Tools used were unsuited to deliberation
• No self-moderation in Phase I risk of useless
  text
• No briefing materials, nor setting expectations
  regarding deliberation
• Wiki did not require deliberation
  institutionalized unauthorized use of ideas and
  name.
• No incentives based on reputation-building.

15
Next Steps

• OG Directive focuses on online transparency and
  input. Does not adequately cover face-to-face.
• DIRECTIVE DOES NOT USE WORDS DELIBERATION OR
  DELIBERATIVE.
• If only online input, then make better uses
• Fung, Graham, and Weil (2007) advocate
  Collaborative Transparency to enable users to
  shape content. E.g. SARS outbreak map.
• Sirianni (2009) Public co-produces govt
  services.
• Noveck (2009) Peer-to-Patent, an online
  community of volunteer experts helps govt
  evaluate the originality of patent applications.

16
More Resources

• Comprehensive empirical analysis of OG Dialogue
• STEPHEN P. KONIECZKA, Practicing a Participatory
  Presidency? An Analysis of the Obama
  Administrations Open Government Dialogue, The
  International Journal of Public Participation
  Volume 4, Number 1 (January 2010)