Ideas for Implementing the Open Government Directive

Ideas for Action 300x225 Ideas for Implementing the Open Government Directive

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In response to the Open Government Directive, federal agencies have been meeting its many deadlines, though the quality of the results at this early stage has been uneven. Next is the April 7 deadline for publishing the Open Government Plans that will guide long-term implementation for each agency.

A February workshop, sponsored jointly by federal agencies and private sector groups, took a look at dozens of ideas for these plans. Using collaborative methods, the 55 participants, about equally divided between public and private sector groups, reviewed the proposals in a series of intensive sessions and came up with a priority list. (The workshop report can be downloaded here.)

The report presents a set of strong ideas that could do a lot to keep the Open Government process on track toward meaningful change. Nevertheless, in reading them and looking through the Directive, I keep asking myself, What is Open Government really about? How will its grand principles of transparency, participation and collaboration turn into meaningful action that makes a difference in people’s lives?

I’m reminded how different the public expectations can be from those of government employees. What looks like big change from the inside may not register at all with the public. Most people, of course, will never know or care about the Open Government Directive or Open Government Plans, and most don’t have time to spend downloading data sets or finding each agency’s website in order to contribute ideas about policy.

The starting point that tends to get lost in the attention to the details of the Open Government Directive is clear enough. The public doesn’t trust government. A lot of people experience it as closed-minded, ineffective at solving problems, and inefficient and wasteful in the way it spends the taxpayers’ money.

That’s what Obama was responding to in the original Memorandum on Openness in Government. He went right to that problem and made a promise to the American people that the federal government will earn the public’s trust by:

  • giving people a greater voice in the decisions that directly affect their lives

  • solving the big social and economic problems effectively

  • spending money efficiently

  • delivering results that matter to people.

Read more »

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Collaborative Planning for Groundwater Management

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The collaborative approach to water resource planning has been growing over the past 15 years, especially where urban, agricultural and environmental needs are straining the local supplies. Like many other public water managers, the Sonoma County (California) Water Agency faced a decline in groundwater supply throughout the Sonoma Valley as pumping steadily increased because of growth.

To come up with a plan to manage the problem, the Agency convened a 20-member collaborative Basin Advisory Panel that reflected the diversity of water interests in the region. A professional facilitator from the Center for Collaborative Policy worked with these stakeholders as they shared ideas and negotiated the Sonoma Valley Groundwater Management Plan. The group adopted the plan 2007 and now helps oversee its implementation.

It’s a good example of collaboration, but such efforts take a lot of planning before any meetings are held. The convening agency needs to consult the stakeholders directly to figure out whether they’d be willing to take part, how they thought about the major issues and how they’d like to see the process work.

In ensure objectivity, the Agency put the independent facilitator in charge of a wide-ranging assessment. She met with 30 leaders of the water-related interests for in-depth interviews and then based a series of process recommendations on this rich source of ideas. The report summarized the key stakeholder concerns, supported the use of a collaborative approach and dealt with the overall structure and product of the meetings, communication with the wider public and many other issues.

Once the group itself came together, the members adopted groundrules and reached procedural agreements to ensure that everyone knew what to expect and what their responsibilities were. In this way, the participating water interests became co-creators of the planning effort rather than members passively responding to an invitation to a government-defined process.

This up-front investment of time and resources seems to have been worth it. After producing the plan, the Basin Advisory Panel has kept on meeting to review ongoing implementation. You can find extensive information, including the assessment report and other key documents at the project website.

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Moving Toward Agreement from the Extremes

Groups Waving Flags 300x299 Moving Toward Agreement from the Extremes

Image courtesy of Nihat Dursun – Fotolia.com

In the last post, I summarized different ways of thinking about the effect of extreme beliefs on efforts to resolve conflict and solve problems. Elizabeth Bader approaches the mediation context in terms of personality and psychoanalytic theory, while Eggers and O’Leary Moving Toward Agreement from the Extremes describe how government solutions to major issues can be derailed, in part, by the distorting influence of existing beliefs.

In this post, I want to review studies that extend this discussion to other frames of reference. Cass Sunstein, a prominent law professor, addresses the role of deliberation as it relates to the formation of extremist groups and the larger political institutions that control extremism through the system of checks and balances. Though these books address different types of policy discussions, they agree that fruitful dialogue can occur among people holding extreme and opposing views but only if they are willing to consider new ideas and possible changes to their positions.

  • Cass Sunstein’s Going to Extremes Moving Toward Agreement from the Extremes explains the ways extremist groups form and the effect of deliberation in their resistance to moderation. His frame of reference is the role of the political system of checks and balances in managing the impact of extremism rather than the use of ad hoc collaborative deliberation.

  • James Fishkin’s When the People Speak Moving Toward Agreement from the Extremes combines theory and empirical evidence to establish the effectiveness of the Deliberative Polling technique to help citizens of differing views move closer to shared positions on controversial policy issues. His basic concern is the use of deliberative process involving ordinary citizens to influence the formation of public policy by government. His work has become a cornerstone of practice in the emerging field of Deliberative Democracy.

The experience gained from these approaches helps to sharpen the picture of group decision-making and to identify the most favorable conditions for building agreement when major differences divide participants. Read more »

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Consensus Building and the Unshakable Rightness of Belief

ChromaticWeave 300x225 Consensus Building and the Unshakable Rightness of Belief

Anyone who’s worked at building consensus on public policy knows the frustration of trying to reason with someone who just won’t change a position or even consider alternative possibilities. They may refuse to accept any evidence that seems to disprove their positions and become aggressive and disruptive in the face of challenges. Sometimes, it’s possible to write off this unshakable dissenter as an oddball individual, well-known to the rest of the group as such. But in a collaborative process each person represents a specific interest and has an important role to play in reaching agreement. A careful response is needed to move dialogue in a productive direction.

A number of recent studies and explanations are helping to clarify some of the possible reasons for intransigence of this type. In doing so, they’re also bringing out the fact that such behavior is not so unusual. We’re living in a time of increasing polarization of views on politics and public policy, and it’s especially important to understand the tenacity of extreme opinion and its impacts on consensus building and other forms of collaborative work.

In this and the next few posts, I want to explore ideas about why people can hold so firmly to existing beliefs no matter what contradicting information they may have, and also about practical steps that facilitators and collaborative leaders can take in response. This post provides brief overviews of the ideas of Elizabeth Bader, drawn from psychoanalytic theories of human personality, and the recent work of Williams Eggers and John O’Leary (If We Can Put a Man on the Moon Consensus Building and the Unshakable Rightness of Belief) that draws on neuroscience research for some of their conclusions about obstacles to problem-solving in government.

These ideas address different levels of group interaction and, taken together, offer extremely helpful guidance for finding effective strategies. They do this by focusing on the non-rational elements that pervade consensus building groups. As Robert Benjamin has pointed out, the interest-based, joint gains negotiation model assumes that rational analysis will be decisive in formulating agreements. The dynamism of group interactions, however, is much more complicated, and requires understanding of very human but quite non-rational behavior.

Personal Identity Issues

Elizabeth Bader, an attorney, mediator and psychologist, has recently offered a model of the mediation dynamic that draws on psychoanalytic theories. The essay at Mediate.com, The Psychology of Mediation: The Mediator’s Issues Of Self And Identity, summarizes the first part of her longer academic paper of the same name. It places the tendency to cling to pre-established positions and demands in the context of human personality while also offering specific strategies for managing the problem during mediation. Read more »

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Networks

Online Networks & the Future of Politics

Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum (PdF), gives an overview in this video of changes in politics and citizen engagement made possible by network technologies.
As described online, PdF is “an annual conference and community website about the intersection of politics and technology,” especially the way in which “[t]echnology and the Internet are [...]

Conflict Resolution

Robert Benjamin on the Irrational Rationality of Mediation Models

Robert Benjamin on the Irrational Rationality of Mediation Models

Robert Benjamin recently published another of his typically thoughtful and provocative essays at Mediate.com. On Becoming a Rationally Irrational Mediator/Negotiator is the first part of an ambitious five-part series on the role of the irrational in conflict resolution. In this first installment, Benjamin sets the stage for a detailed challenge to the reliance on rational [...]

Collaborative Leadership

William Eggers: Transition to Gov 2.0

William D. Eggers introduced the term Government 2.0 in his 2005 book, and his research and writing continue to explore issues surrounding the adoption of new collaborative technologies. His broader interest is strengthening the ability of government to manage and implement complex public policy issues.
That’s the theme of his new book, If We Can Put [...]

Change Management

Moving Fast, Going Slow: Implementing the Open Government Directive

Moving Fast, Going Slow: Implementing the Open Government Directive

Deadlines are fast approaching for federal agencies to complete the initial tasks under the Open Government Directive. Publishing new data sets, opening websites, completing longer-term Open Government Plans, and dozens of others.
But notably missing is any deadline or deliverable addressing changes in agency cultures and processes. Yet every day those basic dimensions of government [...]