How to be a Public Innovator

What is a Public Innovator? | The Harwood Institute:

"Public innovators are people who are engaged in their communities and are committed to solving the challenges around them, says Harwood, founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-area Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, a national nonprofit based in Bethesda, Md. The Institute teaches and coaches people and organizations to solve pressing problems and change how communities work together."

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Active public engagement and PlaceSpeak

The Importance of Active Engagement:

"For public engagement to produce useful outcomes, residents need to be actively invited to join the conversation about topics that affect them, and provided with convenient opportunities to take part. This is where PlaceSpeak comes in."

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Designing public engagement

Policy makers are from Mars, citizens from Venus: designing effective public engagement | EngagingCities:

"Summary: Designing public engagement processes and institutions from the perspective of citizens alone makes them easy for policy makers to ignore. We need to pay more attention to the needs of those making policy in order to design public engagement processes which make a difference. "

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Some White House Petitions Are Still Unanswered More Than a Year After Earning a Response

Some White House Petitions Are Still Unanswered More Than a Year After Earning a Response [UPDATED] | TechPresident:

• Since the launch of the White House's "We the People" e-petition site, 232 petitions have met their signature thresholds, which are supposed to trigger an official response from the administration. So far, 202 of those have been responded to, in an average of 61 days. Of the 30 unanswered petitions, the average wait time is a whopping 240 days, or eight months.
• These delightful facts have been surfaced by Eli Dourado, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. He built his new transparency site, WHPetitions.info, "because the list of successful petitions that are awaiting a reply seems like a glaring omission from the We The People site."

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Why we need better public participation: Complex issues and how structure makes us think better

Why we need better public participation: Complex issues and how structure makes us think better. | EngagingCities:

• Our conventional way of doing public participation in this country tends to fall at one end of the freedom/constraint spectrum or the other.  We either present people with a pre-determined, pre-endorsed plan (or a couple to make it look more like a choice), or we just  throw open the microphone and say "what do you think?"  I don't know why we're surprised when we get protest, or most likely apathy, in the first case, and crazy or irrelevant feedback in the second. 
• We have to find the right balance of openness and structure, of inviting feedback and keeping people on track, of getting people as deeply and constructively involved as they can be instead of settling for a lousy experience on both sides of the table.  If the only people who are benefiting from public involvement are the list-checker-offers and those who came to hear their own voice resound, then we are wasting our limited time and our more limited money.  Period. 

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Beginning September 23, 2013: Dialogue, Deliberation, and Public Engagement Certificate Program

National Issues Forums: News:

• The Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University is pleased to announce the award winning Dialogue, Deliberation, and Public Engagement Certificate Program (DDPE) beginning September 23rd.
• This distinctive program focuses on developing mastery in making wise choices for bringing dialogue, deliberation, and engagement into situations where they are most effective.

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Participate this election season through social apps / TV channel

From:  The Digital Citizen Project, by Sandy Heierbacher  |  NCDD

• Digital Citizen 2012 is a cross-platform and converged media series that seamlessly connects people using social and mobile applications, to television programming of the 2012 campaign. 

• Using well-established online engagement tools, public participants contribute video, audio, text and still images of themselves to the station’s website, stating their opinions and posing questions. 

• Initially, the online community will vet contributions. Producers will join in, to assure the inclusion of representative groups in this process and to track contributors whose posts are popular among the community. 

• Utilizing the digital capabilities of modern studio production equipment, a significant number of the pre-recorded contributor questions and comments will appear on the live programs.

• Resource Link:  http://citizenschannel.org/

Placemake public spaces to build stronger communities

From:  Project for Public Spaces (PPS), by Sandy Heierbacher  |  NCDD

• Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. 

• Our pioneering Placemaking approach helps citizens transform their public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation and serve common needs.

• In its broadest application, Placemaking is a catalyst for building healthy, sustainable and economically viable cities of the future.

Learn more about PPS, with resource link, from the original article.

President Obama promised public engagement. How has he done? A survey of civic engagement sites.

Dec 22, 2008  |  Public Agenda  |  Team Obama, Technology & Public Engagement

• If you go to the Obama presidential transition web site, Change.gov, you'll see continuing efforts to include the public. The "Your Seat at the Table" section allows users to see and comment on what outside groups are telling the Obama transition team. "Join the Discussion" features a question from the transition team to start an online discussion by users, followed by a video response from the Obama team. 
• Just about every section of Change.gov allows users to comment. Users are allowed to vote up or down on comments, which allows high-rated comments to rise to the top. That voting affects a user's "Reputation Meter," so that the more high-rated comments you make, the higher your reputation becomes. Tools like that show that the Obama team is planning on making this into a long-term tool.
• The Obama team will have to decide if they're going to just apply new technology to the old goal of building a more powerful political machine, or use it to match their campaign rhetoric by embracing public engagement and changing the way the country is governed.

Jan 14, 2009  |  Social Capital Blog  |  Watering the Obama grassroots post-election

• Now that Obama is elected, how will the Obama administration rate in the care and feeding of this tremendous network [campaign followers]?  At our Saguaro conversations back in the late 1990s (in which Barack participated), it became clear that politicians have much more of a natural interest in stoking grassroots networks before elections and tend to neglect them after election victories, when it is often less clear both how to use these networks and “what’s in it for them– the politicians?”

Feb 25, 2009  |  Public Agenda  |  Viewpoint: Public engagement in the Obama era

• President Obama, on his second day in office, issued a memorandum to the heads of all executive departments and agencies calling on them to "establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration." As the memo said: "Public engagement enhances the government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge."

May 11, 2009  |  Personal Democracy Forum  |  White House Opens "Office of Public Engagement," Releases Citizen's Briefing Book

• As one of the new OPE's first official acts, they released the Citizen's Briefing Book, a collaborative document [citizens' policy input] compiled online during the presidential transition.

Feb 01, 2010  |  KevinBondelli.com  |  President Obama Answers Questions on Facebook

• Earlier today President Obama answered questions submitted through CitizenTube via the White House Live Facebook application.
• On the whole I think the session was a great move and fits in with my belief in taking your message to the places where people live and hang out (even virtually), and Facebook is certainly one of those places.

Jul 17, 2011  |  e.politics  |  Obama Unfiltered: An E.pol Quote in CBS News Radio Story on Twitter Town Hall

• The Twitter forum is a way for the White House to “deliver their message unfiltered.”

Toolkit: Making the Case for Public Engagement

NCDD - The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation: Resource Center
Making the Case for Public Engagement

• In this economic climate, the value of public engagement needs to be articulated in economic terms. Involve’s toolkit demonstrates that you don’t need specialist skills or knowledge to make the business case for engagement.
• Download the July 2011 toolkit from Involve and Consumer Focus, Making the Case for Public Engagement: How to demonstrate the value of consumer input. Toolkit authors are Edward Andersson, Emily Fennell and Thea Shahrokh.
• This practical Toolkit will help users understand and make the business case for engagement and present it to internal and external audiences. It can be used for all kinds of engagement from small scale ‘one off’ projects to major exercises across an entire town or wider local authority area.
• It is aimed at those who manage, design, deliver, plan or commission public engagement projects. It does not require the reader to have detailed knowledge of economics.

If you're interested, please go to NCDD's post for the details.

Tuesday, 12:00PM Eastern webinar: "Know Thy Communication Style" using SMART Conversations

PublicDecisions: PublicDecisions Blog
Tuesday, 26 July PublicForum Webinar: Know Thy Communication Style

• “Know Thy Communication Style” Using SMART Conversations® to speak your truth and enhance all of your relationships. A PublicForum Webinar
• Date: Tuesday, July 26 Time: Noon-1:30 pm Eastern (New York) (60-minute webinar with optional 30 minute Q & A ) FREE* for Circle Club members $20* USD for nonmembers *Add $12 for telephone audio (no charge for computer audio) Registrants receive access to the session recording (a $20 value) and the program slide deck.
• As individuals seeking self improvement or professional development, or as practitioners of public engagement, we need the skills to deal with people on the small, everyday matters as well as the elephants in the room. But how?
• Dialogue is a foundational skill that can transform your conversations and give you the tools to communicate with authenticity, respect, and trust. In this webinar, you'll gain exposure to action dialogue and learn what it is, what it isn't, and how it can help you in your personal and professional life.
• Our presenters are Paul Weisman/Smart Conversations® and Michele Simos/Smart Conversations® and Simos Consulting.

If interested, please go to the PublicDecisions post for details.

Engage in a safe environment in The American Square

The American Square is Here!

AmericaSpeaks has just launched The American Square, an experiment designed to bridge the online political gap and provide a safe space for civil, multi-partisan conversations about public policy and politics.

This is the first website I know of dedicated to responsible engagement and debate; it's an idea who's time has come long ago for the internet...

A 10-point plan for national civic renewal

A 10-Point Plan for Civic Renewal

Peter Levine's 10-Point Plan: 

1. Choose one grave national issue and use federal policy to support participatory, deliberative solutions. 

2. Pass the Fair Elections Now Act or a close equivalent. 

3. Make voluntary national service a means to develop civic capacities. 

4. Prepare a new generation of active and responsible citizens. 

5. Put citizenship back in the civil service. 

6. Support charter schools, Community Development Corporations, watershed councils, and Federal Qualified Health Centers. 

7. Give the public a voice in policymaking. 

8. Use the Internet to make the regulatory process more deliberative. 

9. Launch a Civic Communications Corps. 

10. Incorporate immigrants into civic life.

This is an occasional public engagement to-do list by a national leader, Peter Levine. Let's get busy-- all citizens on call!