The Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative may well be an historic step forward in meeting the goals of transparency, participation and collaboration. But the way these goals are being translated into practice – and evaluated – at least in this early phase, makes me wonder if the initiative will lead to greater accountability and trust [...]
Cross Collaborate
Learning About Collaborative Governance
Consensus Building: Changing Minds to Reach Agreement
For a diverse group to reach consensus, at least some of the participants – perhaps all of them – have to change their minds. They come into the room with differing, often fundamentally conflicting ideas about the challenges they face. They likely disagree on how to define problems, technical methods that should be used to [...]
Making Sense of Data through Visualization
Produced by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, this visualization presents an example of a process of data analysis. The diagram contains a lot of information expressed in jargon that takes a while to understand, but the essence of the process is captured in one unifying image that provides a clear framework for [...]
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 [...]
