Participatory Government

How will Web 2.0 technologies contribute to 'Enterprise 2.0?'

2006-07-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

In his research, Harvard Business School Associate Professor Andrew P. McAfee studies the managerial impacts of Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs, AJAX, social bookmarking, wikis, open APIs, and RSS feeds. Much has been written on how these technologies are changing the public Internet and engendering a real "participatory culture" epitomized by MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us, and others. However, McAfee argues that these technologies are becoming a powerful participatory engine in the workplace as well. In fact, McAfee contends that these "enterprise 2.0" technologies are "likely to have their largest impact inside companies. This is because they essentially allow all employees, instead of only a small development group, to build, edit, interlink, and categorize Web content. When this happens, online interactions and collaborations become part of an emergent system -- one that has dynamic patterns and structure, even though it is not centrally directed or governed."

Victim Participatory Rights

2006-06-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Kim Palowek's recently completed (fall 2005) dissertation, Victim Participatory Rights in Parole: Their Role and the Dynamics of Victim Influence as Seen by Board Members, provides an excellent in-depth investigation of the impact of a growing participatory phenomenon in the criminal justice system. Palowek begins with the argument that, "Over the past two decades, both the Canadian and American governments [have] responded to the public and to victims' rights interest groups by significantly expanding victims' rights and participation in parole processes" (p. 4). The study contains compelling data on the proliferation of these rights: "In the United States, over 46 states now provide some type of legislated victim right to be heard regarding an offender's parole" (p. 5). And in Canada, "[t]he last decade has seen an escalating demand from victims to exercise their participatory rights in the parole process. Canada's National Parole Board observed a 95% increase in contacts with victims from 1996-1997 to 2000-2001" (p. 6). Overall an interesting study that is worth a close look at. On a side note, Palowek's dissertation is housed on Simon Fraser University's Institutional Repository, which is based on the open-source D-Space platform.

Community-Based Monitoring

2006-03-24T11:05:00.000-08:00

NFG Reports: "Community-based Monitoring, Learning, and Action (CMLA)" is a great example of stakeholder participation in government. In their report, Larry Parachini, Andrew Mott, and Susan Rees make a convincing argument for expanding community voices through community-based monitoring, learning, and action. They further show that citizen engagement is not only a tool for policy development; it is instead an important element throughout all stages of the policy process.

Progressive Government Institute

2005-05-07T06:06:00.000-07:00

The Progressive Government Institute is "a non-partisan, educational organization dedicated to ensuring transparency and accountability in the executive branch of the federal government." Not only is the PGI advocating for greater democratization of governmental information, but the organizational structure of the PGI is inherently devolved and participatory. Take a look at the requests for Progressive Experts™, Appointee Trackers™, Democracy Detectives™, and Federal Register Hawks™ – volunteer positions designed to help update PGI's databases, look for stories that highlight governmental transparency (or the lack thereof), and study the daily Federal Register for potentially important developments. Interesting case.