OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Carie Fox and Philip Murphy

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Ideas contributed by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy

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  New Tools and Technologies »

  Multi-Criteria Decision Support online and in Traditional Workshops

  Multi-criteria decision support is a technique that supports wiser and more inclusive decisions. It -Gives more people the opportunity to comment ...more »

  Multi-criteria decision support is a technique that supports wiser and more inclusive decisions. It

  -Gives more people the opportunity to comment in a more accessible and powerful way. (See, for example, http://gsnmvibe.ecr.gov/hike , and go to the “weigh in” section or see http://www.decisioncafe.com/ccwes/ .)

  - Separates values from science

  - Can be fully collaborative from the workshop-based creation of the decision framework to the online and workshop discussion of alternatives, values and science inputs to the model

  - Assesses which areas of research or discussion would be most likely to lead to a stronger decision (sensitivity analysis)

  - Is a unique self-learning opportunity (see http://gsnmvibe.ecr.gov/hike, and go to the “test drive” side)

  - Provides for utterly transparent reporting, including the logic chain leading up to the decision

  For more information, please go to http://www.infoharvest.com/ihroot/infoharv/docs/ECR%20MCDS%20Final.pdf or see www.foxmediation.com or www.infoharvest.com.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  20 votes

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  Comment Feedback System—Comment Analysis and Summarization

  Many of the suggestions on this site would increase the public’s access to government and the ability to provide feedback on government proposals. ...more »

  Many of the suggestions on this site would increase the public’s access to government and the ability to provide feedback on government proposals. But what is the government going to do with all those comments?

  The current comment analysis technology fails to create a “learning system.” To be a learning system, the government’s response to the public comment has to be timely, interesting, and relevant (“this is what we heard, and this is how it influenced us”). A commenter must be able to trace her comment directly to the summary and from the summary back to the original comments. And the summaries themselves must capture the passion in the comments as well as the “facts.” One challenge is to deal with repeat comments without losing the texture and depth of the public narrative.

  Government needs to invest in radically different technologies for analyzing and summarizing comments. The approaches, as well as being more effective and efficient, could run the gamut from transparency to full collaboration. For more information about one such emerging technology, capable of being used as appropriate throughout the full transparency/collaboration range, see

  http://www.infoharvest.com/ihroot/infoharv/docs/NAEP%20comment%20analysis%20v1.pdf

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  23 votes

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  New Tools and Technologies »

  Use Good Collaboration Practices in Web and other Technology Design

  Mediators, facilitators and other professionals have a well-developed set of principles about transparency, participation, and collaboration. ...more »

  Mediators, facilitators and other professionals have a well-developed set of principles about transparency, participation, and collaboration. Use them.

  Examples:

  -apply principles of active listening to comment analysis

  -apply principles of interest-based negotiation in development of interactive websites, for instance by using multi-criteria decision analysis (in part) to help people distinguish between positions (alternatives) and interests (criteria)

  -assist people in discriminating between values (policy) and science, for instance by using multi-criteria decision analysis and giving people the chance to “play with” their values and experience the intersection of values and ratings in a practical context

  -consistently consider “process, substance and relationship” issues in the design of online interactions

  -develop models collaboratively

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  6 votes

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  Allow Agencies to Survey Public Without Central Review of Survey Instruments

  Engineers do not send all their engineering plans to a central engineer reviewer. Agencies rightly implement NEPA differently. Why is there ...more »

  Engineers do not send all their engineering plans to a central engineer reviewer. Agencies rightly implement NEPA differently. Why is there one central review system for surveying of the public? There are many better systems for supporting quality.

  The tools for transparency will evolve so rapidly that a year-long lag in corresponding evaluation systems just won’t work.

  This is all the more essential since any interactive system appears to be a “survey” under the Paperwork Reduction Act.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  10 votes

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  Making Government Operations More Open »

  Open-Ended Questions in Requests for Comments

  As a standard of practice, design requests for comments should include open-ended questions. For instance, this site presumes that efficiency ...more »

  As a standard of practice, design requests for comments should include open-ended questions. For instance, this site presumes that efficiency and effectiveness are the goals. What if a participant values fairness as well as efficiency? There should be a place to comment on the actual framing of the questions.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  Between Federal, State, and Local Governments »

  Think of New Approaches as Social, Tech & Staff Investments—Long Term

  New approaches, such as collaborative comment analysis or online multi-criteria decision support, are costly. They require an investment by ...more »

  New approaches, such as collaborative comment analysis or online multi-criteria decision support, are costly. They require an investment by the public in at least two ways (a) learning a new approach/interface and (b) giving the agency their trust that this new approach really will work better. It requires capitol investment. It requires investment in training and practice for staff and management. Agencies should think about new tools and approaches strategically and for the long-term, complete with evaluation and improvement, rather than for a single event or planning process.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  When Using Novel, More Accessible Techniques, Advertise In Traditional Media

  Developing novel techniques meant to involve “more than the usual suspects” needs to be teamed with advertisement in more traditional media. ...more »

  Developing novel techniques meant to involve “more than the usual suspects” needs to be teamed with advertisement in more traditional media. People can’t come and be excited by a new website unless they know it is there. For instance, did the website include a Spanish version? That’s cool, but also not much good unless it was matched with advertisements in Spanish-speakers’ newspapers, or flyers and leaflets in their communities.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  Rulemaking »

  Comment Gathering Events Articulate How Comments Will be Reported, Acted Upon

  Letting users/commenters know how their information will be securely reported and acted upon is a good practice for websites and other types ...more »

  Letting users/commenters know how their information will be securely reported and acted upon is a good practice for websites and other types of public interaction.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  3 votes

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  Making Data More Accessible »

  Report Types of Uncertainty

  In decision-making processes, the type of uncertainty should be identified. Is the system inherently predictable and well known? Is it inherently ...more »

  In decision-making processes, the type of uncertainty should be identified. Is the system inherently predictable and well known? Is it inherently predictable but not well known (you can give a number, but have to say + or -)? Are important aspects of the situation stochastic (random)? Is the system nonstationary (cannot predict future from the past)?

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  4 votes

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  Comment Feedback System—Instant Reporting

  Once a comment period is over, public comments should be instantly posted and made available to the public.

  Add your comment

  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  8 votes

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  Between Federal Agencies »

  Inreach (within-agency collaboration and shared learning)

  Inreach, interagency dialog, and outreach have many of the same characteristics. It makes sense to (a) treat these as concentric circles, starting ...more »

  Inreach, interagency dialog, and outreach have many of the same characteristics. It makes sense to (a) treat these as concentric circles, starting with inreach and working out to the general public or (b) treat these as one. All the principles, ethics, aspirations and implementation tools discussed in this site should be designed for application within the agency as well in agency-agency and agency-public dialogs. Overall, this would lead to wiser and more implementable decisions.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  Use Well-designed Feedback Systems instead of Central Control to Improve Web Design

  An efficient and effective way to improve quality of websites without hampering creativity would be… yup, transparency, specifically transparency ...more »

  An efficient and effective way to improve quality of websites without hampering creativity would be… yup, transparency, specifically transparency about how well the website is working for the intended user. There are plenty of examples in the private sector—was this answer useful? How clear/interesting was this page? How easy was it to find what you wanted? The answers to these questions should be available in real time on every federal website. The results of this query should be used in evaluating and rewarding not only the staff directly responsible for the site but also the manager for that unit.

  In an emerging field, this is a better way to identify and reach excellence than trying to set and enforce national rules.

  (See also the usage statistics recommendations—excellent!)

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  Planning and Collaboration Operate from the Same Platform

  Technology gives the public the ability to comment from the same platform as the planners, thus greatly increasing the likelihood that the comments ...more »

  Technology gives the public the ability to comment from the same platform as the planners, thus greatly increasing the likelihood that the comments themselves will be salient, that the planners will be able to act on the comments, and that the system (decision-maker and agency) will have a positive reinforcing loop. For instance, if planners are using GIS, then commenters should be able to use GIS in similar ways. Instead of agencies using a tacit (and invisible) decision framework and asking the commenter to guess at the underlying logic of a decision—and planners to guess at the commenters’ guesses—make the decision framework explicit and give the commenters access to that.

  When the agency designs their decision-making process, make it conducive to collaboration* by building outreach and planning upon the same foundation rather than treating outreach as an add-on.

  *If collaboration is a goal

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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  New Strategies and Techniques »

  Design Planning and Decision-Making Processes with “Outreachability” in Mind

  When designing planning and decision-making processes, one of the criteria should be “does this support the level of collaboration to which we ...more »

  When designing planning and decision-making processes, one of the criteria should be “does this support the level of collaboration to which we aspire?” If differing planning or modeling approaches score similarly for cost effectiveness, relevance, and planner or scientific acceptance, then the approach that lends itself more readily to wider collaboration (and if wider collaboration is a goal), then that approach should be chosen. Likewise, once a planning or scientific approach is chosen, thinking early about each step “how will this support various levels of participation?” will provide for a much stronger synergy between good science, good planning, and good collaboration.

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  Submitted by Carie Fox and Philip Murphy 2 years ago

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