The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) have put out a joint response to the recent White House call for input.
It’s very solid, so please make sure to read it in full: Strengthening the Public Participation Elements of the Open Government Plan (PDF). Especially noteworthy is a list of resources that show in detail the benefits of “planned, structured participation”, namely:
- Raising the level of civility and trust in public discourse
- Reducing government costs through closer public oversight and better understanding of citizen needs and attitudes
- Creating more realistic budgets, either by raising “tax morale,” building support for spending cuts, or both
- Generating new policy ideas and tapping the problem-solving capacity of citizens
- Breaking through legislative gridlock on high-profile policy questions
You are invited to sign the document in support. From the blog post:
Though we didn’t have the time to put a draft out to the whole field before the deadline as we would have preferred, we welcome you to add your feedback here via the comments field. And if you or your organization support what we submitted in the joint statement, please add a comment signing on with your support! We’d love to show the White House that groups in our field are indeed “seconding” the statement.
Sign here.
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