I’ve cleared the decks this week. Today, I am digging deep into the draft Sunshine 2.0 guide for the national League of Women Voters. I’ve been drawing on my early e-government days in Minnesota state government and my many speaking trips where I’ve collected some of the best examples of democracy online supported by governmentRead… Read more »
The national League of Women Voters has commissioned me via E-Democracy.org to draft a guide titled “Sunshine 2.0.”In short, local Leagues will use this guide to evaluate their local government online efforts based on their support of democracy. Government themselves, academics, and the media may also use the guide to see how they compare withRead… Read more »
Who else here hopes to make it to CityCamp in Chicago in January? Looks like a great event is shaping up of January 23-24. What kind of topics would you like to see explored? Any stories/experiences/projects you’d like to share? Also, E-Democracy.org is hosting the e-mail group for the event, so feel free to virtuallyRead… Read more »
On the 1st of June, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in the UK published online the paper “Empowering communities to influence local decision making: A systematic review of the evidence”. In this paper, Prof. Lawrence Pratchett and his colleagues provide evidence-based lessons on six empowerment mechanisms: 1) asset transfer 2) citizen governanceRead… Read more »
41 U.S. states currently face budget gaps, and judging by the forecasts of even the most optimistic specialists, such a situation is far from being substantially changed in the near future. In this context, it is particularly interesting to highlight the few ICT mediated initiatives that are starting to take place at the subnational (state)Read… Read more »
Following a series of posts about Participatory Budgeting (PB), I would like to describe an experiment in the coordination of which I had the pleasure to participate, which took place in the framework of the e-AGORA project (co-financed by the European Commission) in the city of Ipatinga, Brazil. Prior to 2001, community leaders of theRead… Read more »
This post is based on a paper of mine published by the Electronic Democracy Centre (Zurich University) about the experience of the e-Participatory Budgeting of the city of Belo Horizonte. In part 1 of this post I use extracts from a short article by Dan Jellinek (Headstar) and myself that aimed to present a summaryRead… Read more »
(note: originally posted at theConnectedRepublic.org) Participatory Budgeting (PB) can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and monitoring public spending. Participation may take various forms, from effective decision-making power in the allocation of resources to more modest initiatives that confer voice during the development of the budget.Read… Read more »