Open Government Dialogue
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4. Convene the American Public in National Discussions of One Million People or More on the Issues of Highest Public Concern
A healthy democracy needs the capacity to involve its citizens in key decisions. Government cannot be left to leaders, experts, and pundits with the public only weighing in on election day. People from all walks of life should be encouraged to wrestle with tough questions, seek common ground, and develop and articulate their views.

President Obama should call for regular national discussions of one million Americans or more on the issues of highest public concern, like foreign policy, energy, taxes, health care, and jobs. Every citizen should have a seat at the table. National Discussions could be one of the signature initiatives of the Open Government Directive that signals a new way of governing.

National discussions will use a variety of methods to ensure that more than one million Americans can take part in a meaningful way. Some people will weigh in by participating in massive national town meetings that link gatherings around the country together by satellite, so that Americans in Buffalo can speak with Americans in San Jose, Boise, Birmingham and other communities around the nation. Others will host their own conversations in their homes, places of work or community centers. In small groups, they will wrestle with the challenges facing our nation and then submit their ideas over the Internet. Still others who cannot attend the national discussion in person will join the process online, where they will work with a small group in a virtual discussion space before registering their priorities.

Each National Discussion will engage Americans from every walk of life and every corner of the nation. By providing so many people with a meaningful voice, we can help restore public trust in our governing institutions and energize the civic spirit of America.

Why Is This Idea Important?

On the issues of highest public concern – foreign policy, taxes, health care, jobs – Americans have no formal way to wrestle with the choices facing policy makers and articulate their collective preferences as a nation. All too often, the health of our democracy is measured by participation in elections, rather than the ability of our governing institutions to represent the collective interests of the American people. Our democracy doesn’t and shouldn’t end after Election Day. It should provide the public with a real voice in our nation’s policy making process while offering our representatives with a firm mandate to govern.
Comments
averym 9 months ago
What an absurd idea! How can one million people watching TV together get anything done? Or are you saying one million people should attempt to speak at once, or Obama should call on one million people over a single session? Where would he find the time to do anything else?
jpritikin 9 months ago
The best proposal for better and national ballot initiatives is at http://ni4d.us
laurie_durnell 9 months ago
Like the idea of dialogue. The public has so many misconceptions about critical issues it's a good idea to give people a forum to voice their opinions AND to create a space for information sharing.
Edward 9 months ago
This is a great idea. There are many current tools that allow for national town halls and there are even people trained to conduct such meetings.

The technology already exists and it wouldn't be hard for the federal government to institute national town halls involving millions meeting in city council chambers and state capitals around the country.

Town Halls like other public meetings follows simple rules and it wouldn't be hard for those rules to be applied with the use of technology. Robert's Rules have even been adopted to meet the needs of online meetings.

If we create a simple system, allow people to gain the floor using current technology we are able to allow anyone who wishes to speak to be heard and to be heard by the President in real time. This doesn't mean that everyone should be allowed to speak at once instead the town hall meetings would develop ideas and discuss them in small groups and have group leaders share what they came up with with the entire meeting who will then vote on those ideas.

The meeting moderators would then link up to an online town hall with the administration and will in the order that they log (Robert's Rules make it clear that the first person who has the floor is recognized by the chair) on be allowed to discuss the conclusions that their town hall arrived at.

This could all be done electronically, and when the meeting moderator has finally tallied all of the votes (the President and his staff would be able to see these votes in real-time using the same technology).

The administration and members of Congress who represent that district could then questions to the group, and the meeting moderator (acting as chair would either respond or recognize someone who seeks the floor and wishes to speak to the President.

This would take some time but I think that it is possible for the President to gather data in real time, hear the concerns of Americans in real time and for members of Congress and the President to co-host these meetings. The number of districts and states involved in the town hall meeting may vary depending on the rules set for that specific national town hall meeting.
maitre.alex 9 months ago
NOt a good idea. We are a representative democracy, a Republic. This system as described is open to abuse by our leaders, and it leads to plebiscites. Strong leaders have a history of hijacking this system. Napoleon is one example in history, and Hugo Chavez is a current example.
Edward 9 months ago
@ maitre.alex

Holding national discussions doesn't mean that our elected representatives have to act on the expressed will of the people and can choose to ignore them at their own peril. Discussions do not mean that people can hijack the discussion and instead are a better reflection of how some people feel.

It allows them to be civil and to debate with their friends and neighbors while at the same time being able to hear the views of those who may be drastically different from them based on geography, culture, tradition and values.

Since national discussions have never been used either by Hugo Chavez or Napoleon I'm not sure what you are trying to get at and I definitely don't understand why you would be afraid of the people being able to publicly express opinions in a civil manner and to know and talk with the President like every lobbyist. Its also ironic that you are posting on a forum discussing with the president the issues while advocating that others not be given the same opportunity.

Just because someone can't afford to go to D.C. to express their opinions and don't have tools to be heard by the President doesn't mean that they don't deserve to be heard.

Think of these people as millions of lobbyists and you will understand why there's nothing wrong with the President seeking the people out and allowing them to express their opinions and ask him questions and have him be able to ask them questions.

The lack of these kinds of meetings have led to partisanship, and a lack of civility towards those we disagree with. We can write letters to the editor, we can post to online forums and we can express our opinions. We can even vote an issue up or down on an forum like this one but it's not very conducive to hearing people, and being able to talk with them. It's also a lot easier to insult someone from the comfort of a computer than from across a table.
grassrootsunity 9 months ago
During the 60's there were major national discussions going on about civil rights, the environment, and the Vietnam War. It was a vigorous democracy we had back then. The discussion is healthy. We need 'movement politics' and a good leader will promote ideas for discussion as a means to unify people.

I'm reminded of a quote from German philosopher, Goethe. "That nation governs best which teaches us to govern ourselves." I'm totally in favor of our President teaching us that politics must no longer be a forbidden subject of discussion at parties. The contrary is true.

I urge everyone to visit www.vote.org That site leads into a discussion of ballot initiatives as a way of focusing those discussions to matters of broad political import resulting in a vote of the people. Politicians love to take polls so they can figure out what the people want to hear. Why not have polls that actually matter.
grassrootsunity 9 months ago
I think newspapers hastened their own demise by making it so hard for the public to engage in discussing opinion via 'Letters to the Ed'. The public wants to be engaged but the newspapers severely limit the number of letters they will print. They also provide very little space for op-ed pieces. It seems to me that if the newspapers would quadruple the 'letters' section and triple the op-ed section they would have more loyal and more informed readers, and they would promote civic participation. The direct participation angle is what many people like about blogging and commenting.
nstie 9 months ago
This idea is key to your efforts. The on-line town hall held by the President was a stellar example of using technology to reach the electorate. It would also be helpful to require this of state Senators and Congress with their own constituencies.

jgoldman 9 months ago
A few years ago, Senators Wyden and Hatch asked AmericaSpeaks to investigate what it would look like to convene the American public at a national discussion of millions of voices. We spent several months working with dozens of experts to produce a report called Millions of Voices (which you can view in the resources section at www.americaspeaks.org).

The intent is not to replace the judgment of elected officials, but rather to create an informed, public mandate for political leaders to act on those issues that are most important and most difficult to resolve.
johnruuu 9 months ago
Sure. We could assemble 1,000,000 American's per day. Enable them to interface via the web with the President, and he could reach all 365,000,000 in a year!
cii 9 months ago
My only concern with this is the focus on millions of people. We need high quality, wise decisions that take into account a wide variety of perspectives and options.

Smaller, longer, more focused and informed methods such as Citizens Juries and Consensus Conferences use a few dozen randomly selected citizens who take the time (several days to a week or more) to learn about an issue and interview diverse experts and then deliberate deeply to a real public judgment on the issue.

If we want to involve more people, why don't we do 20 or 100 separate Citizens Juries on the same topic and compare the results. The differences and similarities would be VERY interesting -- and the results would be MUCH more significant than a million self-selected people tossing up ideas onto the internet after a few hours or an afternoon of conversation.
shaaslyons 9 months ago
The success of national discussions will lie in the combination of engagement approaches.

Some aspects of the conversation can be held online, while some will be face to face.

The face to face methods can be very large and attended by demographically representative participants, such as AmericaSpeaks. They can be smaller and community driven like study circles. They can be filled with small, short, high energy discussions, of any group size, like conversation cafes. They can be smaller, longer and more informed like Citizens Juries. And more! For more about dialogue and deliberation methods, check out http://www.thataway.org

Online participation can be like this one, where people post, rank and comment on ideas. It can be small group oriented, where one small set of people have a conversation over time. It can be learning oriented, where individual preferences are aggregated over time. And more!

There are a plethora of proven and promising tactics to engage citizens in the most important decisions of our time.

What's important is that the government takes concrete steps to involve citizens in important decisions, like the economy, health care, immigration, energy security, foreign policy, etc.

National discussions will:
* Provide the public with a greater voice in national policy making
* Provide policy makers + agency managers with informed opinions and collective priorities
* Involve the public in being part of the solution and taking action
* Forge a stronger link between Americans and their government
* Gain unique insight into tough issues and identify new options with broad support
jgastil 9 months ago
I think we're at the point where this really is do-able. The key to this proposal is the links between small and large scales, and there have been good experiments in doing this with online, teleconferenced, and even face-to-face groups. One million people is not beyond reach. Good proposal.
gerald.kosicki 9 months ago
Such large-scale deliberations are certainly feasible and would likely have considerable legitimacy. It is important, however, to give some consideration to how such persons should be selected so as to somehow be representative of something meaningful.
Stephen Buckley 9 months ago
Dear fellow "Idea" brainstormers and commentors:

For news and moderated discussion (public, but unofficial) about the
continuing development and implementation of the "Open Government
Directive", you are invited to either:

1. send mailto:opengovernmentdirective+subscribe@googlegroups.com

2. visit http://groups.google.com/group/opengovernmentdirective

NOTE: Because I am posting this to the Comment section of some
(but not all) Ideas, you may see this message more than once.
I apologize for that.

vr,
Stephen Buckley
http://www.UStransparency.com
Rob Wheeler 9 months ago
I posted a proposal for developing and implementing a National Strategy for Sustainability at: http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3299-4049. All UN Member States have agreed to develop and implement sustainability plans; most of the developed countries are already doing so. The plan should be developed using processes engaging the American people in a National Discussion of well more than a million people and using innovative processes such as are described in this comments section. The National Strategy should then serve as an example for how the process can be used for other issue areas as well.

Rob Wheeler
robineagle @ worldcitizen.org
robwheeler22 @ gmail.com
tomgoldie 9 months ago
Better yet, let's make our REPUBLIC (no, it's NOT a democracy -- read your Constitution) more accountable and open.

I think you'll agree it CAN work better.
nathan.orth5 9 months ago
Did you by chance draw inspiration from a political philosopher named John Rawls? If not, you should read his work. His theories of Justice are very similar to what you are discussing here.
stevensje 9 months ago
We need more representative government. We don't have the number required by law. More people more representatives. 650,000 people per representative is shameful.
sludge 9 months ago
One of the reasons our Republic's (NOT a democracy, a democracy being something our forefathers warned heartily against) constitution contains strong checks on our federal government is to keep it from becoming so large that it is no longer reactive to the will of the people. The federal government has usurped powers reserved to the states and citizens. If the feds operated within their constitutional mandates such discussions as suggested above would be made at the state and local level.

In short, the problem is not that we are not providing a meaningful voice, hugging and singing Kumbya together, it is that the federal government is far to large. The state sovereignty movement needs to be supported forcing the federal government to retreat to within its constitutionally mandated powers, leaving the remaining powers to the sovereign states and the citizens. Once that happens we don't need all this national dialogue stuff as 99% of governance will occur on the state and local level as our founders intended.
dominiclether 9 months ago
While I note the merit of this idea is wonderful as any increased in participation by the public is healthy for democracy, however, it's important to remember that the form and structure of a discussion is just as important as who is allowed to participate. Imagine 1,000,000 people having an unstructured debate on an issue like abortion... it would be chaos. Furthermore, we can accomplish the same thing with smaller numbers by using randomized selection techniques(to ensure unbiased selection) combined with demographic data to ensure that those selected match the makeup of the country.

In addition, a public debate of this scale would require a public educated on the issue under discussion at this scale and, sadly, this is not the case. Americans are still too heavily influenced by ideology which cripples any kind of honest debate. I partially blame an education system which fails to teach students to be critical thinkers (i.e. understanding the difference between opinion and fact) and a media who is too overtly influenced by political, or other forms, of ideology itself (honestly, look no further then FOX News to figure that one out, but they are by no means the only one guilty of doing it).
dominiclether 9 months ago
One more note... the way our foreign policy is structured in this country, and many others, actually is designed for PREVENTING the public from having a say in the debate because many in foreign policy circles believe that the public doesn't have the know-how or expertise to engage in foreign policy decision making. its one of the reasons why magazines like foreign affairs exist, to cut most people out of the discussion and leave it to experts.

I would like to mention, however, that none of these claims made by supposed experts have ever been empirically tested. Also, if it's lack of an educated public which is the problem then the simplest solution would seem to be to educate the public on foreign policy issue (in the real sense meaning teaching them about Geopolitics) meaning stop feeding Americans crap information and propaganda about international events...
Debra Bryant 9 months ago
Want to see the surplus money the US government and all states, local governments have? http://CAFR1.com and http://TaxRetirement.com
and support Campaign for Liberty
Debra Bryant 9 months ago
Do a search in Google on "Government Wealth" then if you are inclined, support this man that has provided this great service for us that make up the USA. We need volunteers to audit their city, county, state, etc...
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