policymaking20

"MIT Center for Collective Intelligence"

A detailed case study of commuting and social networks in San Jose, which suggests that sentiment analysis has the potential to help cities and local transportation authorities define their priorities, planning, investments and assess the impact of infrastructure investments.

Open data + education: some obvious synergies

As today's policy challenges become more complex, it has become clear that American media - online news, television, radio, newspapers, and magazines - are not up to the task of explaining the problems underlying them or providing citizens with all the information they need to engage in public conversations about them. Democracy cannot function properly without those conversations. But one new medium - videogames - may well fill the gap. By their very nature, videogames can engage players in ways that enable players to make their way through the intricacies of policy problems. As players begin to understand them in all their complexity, games may well help their governments forge solutions.

The lack of shared expert knowledge capacity in the U.S. Congress has created a critical weakness in our democratic process.Along with bipartisan cooperation, many contemporary and urgent questions before our legislators require nuance, genuine deliberation and expert judgment. Congress, however, is missing adequate means for this purpose and depends on outdated and in some cases antiquated systems of information referral, sorting, communicating, and convening.

also saw that in PIN mailing list

From David Osimo

Can distributed version control be used in law making?

Aware of the problems.

On September 15th 3000 citizens from 25 countries took part in a global event: "World Wide Views on Biodiversity". The project engages ordinary citizens in the process of policymaking and awareness raising to sustain a living and healthy planet. About hundred citizens in each participating country attended day-long meetings to learn about biodiversity issues, make up their minds about them, and express their views. They all voted on a set of predefined questions and the answers will be presented at COP11 in India in October 2012.

A collection of tools and projects used for web-based participation, e-consultations, e-participation and online public engagement - with all of the content available now under a Creative Commons license.

A pilot program that enables people to submit comments about certain District agencies and view how District residents graded those agencies. The goal is to help residents engage better with government and help government agencies improve the quality of their services.

I think it is important to remember that at the end of the day, policy is about influencing people. Influence often isn't found persuasive arguments or rhetoric, instead it can be found in the smallest of word choices and cues.

Disappointed: the UK Govt discovers publishing open data does not create overnight a data literate society. 

"I have a brain cancer. Yesterday I went to get my digital medical records: I have to show them to many doctors. Sadly they were in a closed, proprietary format and, thus, I could not open them using my computer, or send them in this format to all the people who could have saved my life. I cracked them. I opened them and converted the contents into open formats, so that I could share them with everyone. Just today I have been able to share the data about my health condition (about my brain cancer) with 3 doctors. 2 of them already replied."

Update here: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/25/opinion/iaconesi-cure-open-source/index.html

The Work Shop is a Lambeth Council project designed so we can talk more directly about how residents, the council, and its partners might work together in new ways. It is based on the high street, to be accessible within people's daily activities, and will host various activities designed to offer a real world experience of Coop Council and what it could become; we will map, question, talk, explore, and share plenty of cups of tea. We also hope that these honest, small-scale conversations will lead to some fresh ideas about how we overcome the challenges of collaboration.

The current research examined the effects of a critical thinking (CT) e-learning course taught through argument mapping (AM) on measures of CT ability. Seventy-four undergraduate psychology students were allocated to either an AM-infused CT e-learning course or a no instruction control group and were tested both before and after an 8-week intervention period on CT ability using the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment.

The purpose of the project is to create and convene an interdisciplinary network of thinkers and doers that could help with making the transition from closed-and-centralized to open-and-collaborative institutions of governance.

An interesting look at how a political campaign tried and failed to use big data and web technologies to help reach and get out their supporters. Additional reporting at: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/orca-was-no-fail-whale-says-romneys-digital-director/ and http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/which-consultants-built-romneys-project-orca-none-of-them/