What’s out there: online policy portals and tools

During the NCDD conference, I had a number of suggestions about websites and online deliberation tools to look at.

Let’s start off with a suggested link by Tim Bonnemann: campaigns.wikia.com, which was directly created by wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales. See his open letter to the political blogosphere, which contains good sentiments as well as an invitation to email him with ideas on how to “start the era of net-driven participatory politics.” By the way, the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly has a good article on Jimmy and the wikipedia phenomenon.

Lars Hasselblad Torres led me to another attempt to create a user-created policy portal at moreperfect.org. Co-founders Tim Killian and Chad Maglaque, who happen to be in Seattle with me, critique the wikipedia-type of approach to framing political policy issues (i.e., neutral point of view), but still use wiki software for their site. I definitely need to talk with these guys about their goals and plans.

Chris Heuer, and later, Brian Sullivan led me to an online civic engagement tool at civicevolution.org. The aim is to develop a non-profit organization that hosts the tool and collect case studies, best practices, and other resources to allow any group to constructively bring citizens together on an issue - a broad approach to sparking civic engagement.

Jack Paulus created truthmapping.com in his spare time as an idea-centered online tool for discussion of all sorts of topics, politics and otherwise. I really like the whole depersonalization of arguments, and the fact that Jack’s name can’t be found on the website.

Aside: perhaps that’s another reason why I’ve only encountered other guys who are excited about creating online policy tools and portals – the masculinity of depersonalized arguments as opposed to the femininity of face-to-face deliberation processes.

All of these efforts are just getting off the ground and seeming to be short of the critical mass each of them needs to be really useful. As I said in yesterday’s post, there seems to be something missing from each of these efforts (relative to my personal goals – not to the goals of each creator) in terms of usability and interaction. At least they’ve done something tangible and out in the world, whereas I'm stuck (for now) thinking about it. My question is whether a separate effort is worthwhile or whether an existing effort will turn out to be good enough (with or without my input).

First impressions: after the conference

I’m at the airport gate again, trying to still the voices inside my head – voices that I had heard over the past three days at the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation. David Messerschmidt, one of my advisors, is taking the same flight back, and we have talked a little about what we got out of the experience. Here’s my first take on the advice and ideas that I was exposed to:

• Learn and start by just doing it, starting with a content management system and by connecting online via commenting on similar blogs. Feasibility analyses are only good up to a point.
• Incorporate storytelling and non-written communication when talking about policy issues (i.e., don’t be such a wonk, and make it more accessible at the same time).
• Possibly use existing online deliberation tools in order to add depth to the site (i.e., don’t just present the views, but allow and encourage constructive engagement).
• There may be value to such a broad trans-partisan resource, because almost all existing issues guides (if used at all in a deliberation process) are static and necessarily issue-specific.
• The cornerstone of the website must be the trust of users, based upon the integrity of authors to be genuinely trans-partisan.
• There are efforts at online policy-issue tools or other deliberation tools that could be adapted to policy use, but still no prominent website out there that is trying the same approach:
• web2.0, user-generated-content technologies
• broad range of topics
• easy to access and compare viewpoints
• goal of being engaging and entertaining
• flexibility to add local-level or situationally-specific content

I’m sure more will come to me over the coming weeks, as I take down more notes from the conference and as I’m talking with more people and writing the short research paper.

Interaction: and the first question is...

What initial resources do you use to frame the issue(s) to be discussed in your dialogue/deliberation process? Online or in print?

Reading the guide: and the point is?

I finally took a look at the NCDD guidebook to find out (in detail) what I was getting myself into, now that I’m at the airport. This pause at the gate gives me a chance to think of the questions that I should ask at the conference. The focus of the proposed website and the conference are complementary in my mind.

From the point of view of a policy website, deliberation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Policy information needs to be obtained and absorbed in order for deliberation to start, and one of the outcomes of deliberation is a better synthesis of information that could/should be shared with others.

From the point of view of a dialogue / deliberation process, you need a reason for the multi-partisan policy information to exist.

Therefore, the central, broad question of the conference (from my POV) is:

• What online deliberation tools exist, and how do/should they interact with repositories of policy information?

Other, more specific questions for fellow attendees:

• What resources do you use to lead deliberation? Online or in print? When discussion is caught up over “the facts,” how is that resolved?
• Do you know of a central resource that ties all types of policy viewpoints together in a non-partisan way? Do you think one would be useful? How would it be used?
• Do you know of others attempting to create a website like this? Do you know of people or organizations that might be interested in participating or partnering with an effort?
• What characteristics would you like to have in a useful policy info website? comprehensive, entertaining, interactive, etc.
• How could deliberation be used to “build up” and improve a policy resource (creating a cycle of improvement for both information and the deliberation process)? How are the results of deliberation used now?
• Who are the people you target to participate in deliberation? (How) are you trying to attract those not normally drawn to the idea?