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imply put, governance is the science of decision-making. The concept of governance refers to the complex set of values, norms, processes, and institutions by which society manages its development and resolves conflict, formally and informally. It involves the state, but also the civil society at the local, national, regional and global levels.

Characteristics of a Governance Model that is sensitive to a community's needs:

NLGN believes that local government, their partners, and the communities they lead, must undergo a profound cultural shift to embrace three core 'changemaking' values of creativity, collaboration and self-determination. Only then will councils and citizens be able to generate the many innovations necessary to solve our biggest social problems. 

Climate Interactive is a not-for-profit organization based in Washington DC. Our team helps people see what works to address climate change and related issues like energy, water, food, and disaster risk reduction. For example: We're long-time partners with the U.S. State Department and analysts for the Chinese government. Our tools have helped them assess and communicate the impact of their government strategies. We've helped NGOs and businesses improve their thinking and communication in the UNFCCC climate negotiations. We're helping development agencies in East Africa design better strategies to reduce the number of people displaced by extreme events and slow onset disasters, like droughts. We work alongside the scientific community to build an understanding of what climate change means for society and the impacts our actions have on finding solutions.

In Slow Democracy, community leader Susan Clark and democracy scholar Woden Teachout describe how citizens around the country are breathing new life into their communities. Large institutions, centralized governments, and top-down thinking are no longer society's drivers. New decision-making techniques are ensuring that local communities-and the citizens who live there-are uniquely suited to meet today's challenges. In Slow Democracy, readers learn the stories of residents who gain community control of water systems and local forests, parents who find creative solutions to divisive and seemingly irreconcilable school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizen-led actions that are reinvigorating local democracy and decision making.

There is, however, one small problem with this. Governments cannot create community, no matter how hard they try, and they cannot build social capital. At best they can create policy environments which assist individuals and institutions in civil society to do these things, or at least, do not stifle their efforts or make their task more difficult. To acknowledge this is not to suggest that governments should simply sit back and hope social capital will grow before them. On the contrary, it is to advocate a radical re-invention of government and a wholesale move away from the old service delivery paradigm in the human services so as to remove some of the key governmental obstacles to civic engagement, responsibility and reciprocity at grass-roots levels of our society.

ABOUT MONEYBALL Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's, transformed baseball by ignoring the scouts and using data to build championship contending teams despite limited budgets. Moneyball for Government, a project of Results for America, encourages governments at all levels to increase their use of evidence and data when investing limited taxpayer dollars. By playing Moneyball, we can improve outcomes for young people, their families and communities.

The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant societies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people. We seek to strengthen the rule of law; respect for human rights, minorities, and a diversity of opinions; democratically elected governments; and a civil society that helps keep government power in check. We help to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. We implement initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. We build alliances across borders and continents on issues such as corruption and freedom of information. Working in every part of the world, the Open Society Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting™ (CPBB), a Denver, Colorado-based, mission driven, organization established in 2010, provides technical and advisory services to assist local governments, school districts and other non-profit agencies achieve Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting. This creative and innovative process, developed by CPBB, enables communities to reassess their priorities in order to make sound, long-term funding decisions. Establishing a non-profit solidifies CPBB's mission of being a trusted advisor and a dependable, objective resource, assisting local government leaders who are seeking service excellence, transparency to their stakeholders and a strong desire to achieve the Results that are important to their community.

"As Americans, we have only one institution with the resources and the public mandate to address our nation's most important and difficult challenges: the federal government. As government struggles to recruit new talent, keep up with ever-increasing innovation and contend with a wave of retirements, we need federal leadership that endures beyond appointment terms, administrations and the headlines of the day. In response to this urgent need, The Partnership for Public Service developed the Public Service Leadership Model as the standard for effective federal leadership.  "

We lead proactive efforts to make the federal government more effective. We convene stakeholders from across the public and private sectors to solve critical management challenges, and we work with federal agencies, Congress and the administration to deliver results.

New and resurgent solutions are democratizing how we produce, consume, govern, and solve social problems. The maker movement, collaborative consumption, the solidarity economy, open source software, transition towns, open government, and social enterprise are just a few of the movements showing a way forward based on sharing.

What is the OpenGov Hub? The OpenGov Hub is an attempt to physically collocate historically distinct but like-minded communities of practice under a single shared physical workspace in downtown Washington, DC. The OpenGov Hub aspires to be the day-to-day home to a range of people and organizations working on the open government agenda while also serving as a community gathering point for open government learning and networking activities in the Washington area.

Today, Global Integrity plays the unique role of innovator for the transparency and accountability community: working with a global community of local contributors, we produce innovative research and technologies to ensure that the field continues to evolve with better data and research tools. We believe that accountable, transparent, and honest government is a fundamental right of every citizen.

We are one of eleven strategic partners of the ABCD Institute, and the lead partner in Europe. We have worked as ABCD social explorers, trainers, mentors, facilitators, researchers and consultants with change partners and disruptive innovators around the world. These include Communities, Charities, NGOs/NPOs, Faith-based organisations, Think Tanks; local and national Governments in over 30 countries. Our ambition is to support the proliferation of inclusive, bottom up, community driven change. We aim to achieve this by supporting local communities and supportive mediating/civic organisations to create the conditions where any neighbourhood can identify, connect and mobilise its assets to the benefit of the whole community.

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike. We are committed to improving access to government information by making it available online, indeed redefining "public" information as meaning "online," and by creating new tools and websites to enable individuals and communities to better access that information and put it to use.

Civic technology experts have recognized the benefits of sharing technology among governments and institutions. However, instances of successful collaboration and sharing are still few and far between, in part because there is no easy, structured way to share knowledge about this software, let alone the software itself. There is no one place to go to look for civic software that cities need, and no roadmap to share what they have. Enter the Code for America Commons. As infrastructure for the open government movement, the CfA Commons is a community-edited resource to find out what's working, where.

Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity was founded in 2009 to address falling standards in the media as well as a steep falloff in reporting on state government and provides professional training; research, editorial, multimedia and technical support; and assistance with marketing and promoting the work of a nationwide network of nonprofit reporters. Supplementing these efforts is our newly launched Citizen Watchdog program that trains ordinary citizens to report from local communities.

Government transparency is an important issue to many in today's political environment. The recent controversy in the US over health care reform is just one example of how hard it can be to see the realities behind the rhetoric. As researchers, we believe we can help by giving people the right tools to understand, explore, and communicate about government data.

"Participatory Budgeting is perhaps the greatest innovation in municipal governance in the United States in the last five years, and it has grown rapidly. Originating in Porto Alegre, Brazil-where 20 percent of the municipal budget is now allocated this way-PB has spread quickly throughout Brazil and Latin America over the past two decades. It's currently in place in roughly fifteen hundred municipalities throughout the world, but U.S. municipalities have been late adopters." This is one of the best community empowerment tools out there. Trouble is most communities aren't empowered enough to implement it.