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We need to revise the U.S. Code and Administrative Procedure Act to empower agencies to make greater use of collaborative governance, including dialogue, deliberation, and deliberative democracy, and also to collaborate with all levels of governance (federal, state, regional, and local), private, and nonprofit sectors.
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The Open Government Directive should help agencies model the practice of collaboration. This means that in deciding how to organize, expand, and institutionalize collaborative and participatory governance, agencies should consult broadly with their own staff.
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Collaborative governance is good government. Collaborative processes should be fair, inclusive, and transparent. Inclusion means managers need to make a special effort to involve the underserved and missing voices. Participation in governance should not be limited to electronic media, which can be dominated by a few. The Directive should call for agencies to balance face-to-face and electronic forms of public involvement.
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Each agency is different. The Open Government Directive should acknowledge the great diversity across cabinet-level, independent and independent regulatory agencies in how the work of collaborative governance is organized and related to agency cultures and missions.
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To change agency cultures and foster collaborative governance, the Open Government Directive should require that agencies designate a senior level manager in a position for whom this is the primary responsibility and with agency-wide placement.
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The Open Government Directive should define collaboration in governance broadly. Collaborative governance includes public involvement or civic engagement, collaboration with stakeholder groups, collaborative public management, and dispute resolution with citizens and stakeholders. It can occur upsteam in policy-making, midstream in policy implementation, and downstream in policy enforcement.
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Managers need to be held accountable for building their own and their staff’s competencies in public engagement and collaboration. They also need access to education and training in order to learn how to build collaboration into governance at the earliest stages and with a dedicated budget.
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To support collaborative governance, agencies need to share information and expertise. Agencies need a shared platform for collaborative governance. Historically, the Administrative Conference of the United States played an important role in the growth of dispute resolution, and could serve a similar function more broadly for collaborative governance, provided it was interdisciplinary and not focused on law. Moreover, agencies need an electronic platform for sharing information and expertise.
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