Tim will be coming around to a number of your communities, but in case you
didn't know about Headstar's E-Democracy 07 event (there is a cost), I wanted
to give you the heads up.
To make sure we know you are interested in meeting with Tim (and we haven't
been in touch yet), drop us a note:
email obscured
Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://DoWire.Org ***
To access links, see Steven Clift's blog: http://dowire.org/notes/?p=380
Post: Event - Issues Forums Pre-Conference at E-Democracy 07 London - 8 Nov
2007
The E-Democracy o7 conference looks to be something not to miss in Europe if
you can make it. Details from:
http://www.headstar-events.com/edemocracy07
Better yet, you can come along to an extra Issues Forum briefing with Tim
Erickson from E-Democracy.Org (invite from Tim below). Citizens in communities
around the UK continue to connect with us on the potential of an Issues Forum
for their area - we require a small local steering committee and 100
participants to open a "built-to-last" forum. We'd love to see some in
Scotland, Wales, and the north and south of Ireland as well in the coming years
as we sharpen a truly global model for local democracy online.
From Tim Erickson:
Just wanted to announce a special "pre-conference" briefing/discussion about
Issues Forums, that we have arranged prior to the Headstar E-Democracy '07
conference (November 8th). I hope that folks who are attending the conference
will come early and meet with us (see below).
PLEASE - Let me know if you plan on attending this pre-conference briefing:
email obscured
Also, I want to let folks know that I'll be in the UK from Nov 3-11 and still
have a few gaps in my schedule. If anyone wants to meet during my trip to
exchange e-democracy news/stories/lessons/anecdotes - I'd love to see if we
can arrange a meeting!
Also, in exchange for a place to stay, I'm willing to schedule a presentation
or workshop in your community (if its not too far off my path and falls on a
OPEN day in my schedule) on "How to Set-Up and Manage a Local Issues Forum" or
simply meet with you to offer tips/advice on Issues Forums.
********* E-Democracy '07: Pre-Conference Briefing **********
E-Democracy.Org & Issues Forums at - E-Democracy '07
http://www.headstar-events.com/edemocracy07
All delegates are invited to arrive at the conference early for a special
briefing - over coffee and pastries - on the establishment of a network of
citizen lead online issues forums across the UK. The briefing will be hosted by
Tim Erickson of E-Democracy.Org, the international organisation which has
helped create the first wave of UK issues forums in Brighton, Bristol and
Newham, with others planned elsewhere. The forums are designed to promote local
civic discussion,
connecting local citizens, councillors, media, and other decision makers in a
common online forum (see also http://forums.e-
democracy.org/ ).
The cost of this briefing is included in your delegate fee, so there is no
extra charge, but please let us know if you wish to attend as numbers are
limited.
**********************************
Tim Erickson
(+1) 651-246-5045
email obscured
http://e-democracy.org/blog
*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://DoWire.Org ***
To comment/for links: http://dowire.org/notes/?p=380
To network: http://groups.dowire.org
Submit posts: http://dowire.org/submit
In my "Democracies Online" life, I help host online communities of
practice about e-democracy/e-participation in general.
One practitioner forum that may of interest to all of you is ...
Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation - an online
community of practice for "e-participation" practitioners involved
with government, parliamentary and civic online consultations, public
hearing, and townhall events as well as e-petitioning and e-
rulemaking
http://groups.dowire.org/groups/consult (150 members)
The second, particularly for those in the UK and Ireland is the new
UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange ...
http://groups.dowire.org/groups/ukie (71 members)
Cheers,
Steven Clift
^ ^ ^ ^
Steven L. Clift - - - W: http://publicus.net
Minneapolis - - - - E: email obscured
Minnesota - - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667
USA - - - - Skype/MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift
Join Democracies Online: http://dowire.org
Start an Issues Forum: http://e-democracy.org/if
From: Gavin Sealey <email obscured> > Post-moderation can be a problem since it is through practice or > design difficult to remove posts from the archive and impossible to > expunge from memory once emailed to the list. > For web-based forums post-moderation it is easier. With Issues Forum, where we use a mix of e-mail and the web, it is relatively meaningless unless an a web version of post is a top Goggle search results for someones name. In one case E-Democracy.Org edited the subject line of a rule violating post. We'ved focus our "guidence" (or control) on the forum on the overall accountability of the participants. If you violate rules and receive warnings, your ability to participate is limited for specific durations of time - an e-jail so to speak. This is even less resource intensive than the time required for balanced post- moderation and may actually encourage folks to be more responsible and toughtful about what they post. (Real names helps too.) Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - - - W: http://publicus.net Minneapolis - - - - E: email obscured Minnesota - - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - Skype/MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift Join Democracies Online: http://dowire.org Start an Issues Forum: http://e-democracy.org/if
Carol Hayward <email obscured> > I'd be interested to hear how our stats compare with issues forums > or other epanels who have collected data if anyone has any. Anecdotally, those numbers seem similar to my experience. It seems to be biased towards over-thirties and often involves people who feel disenfranchised or detached from other council consultations. Unfortunately, most e-democracy has no easy transition to other consultations and it's a painful experience when new activists hit the brash processes of local government. I think that's one problem most places have yet to work out. Another one - and the one I think may have scuppered me - is that the different demographics(?) of e-democrats makes it hard to connect with what I think is the younger/whiter/localer/maler membership of other local online communities. I may be wrong on that - there's even fewer statistics about them than e-democrats. Thanks for the numbers,
Today is EPIF posting day! If you'd like to join an international exchange with fellow e-participation practitioners check out: Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation - An online community of practice for "e-participation" practitioners involved with government, parliamentary and civic online consultations, public hearing, and townhall events as well as e-petitioning and e-rulemaking Join from: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/consult This group replaces the old do-consult@ yahoogroup. Cheers, Steven Clift
Quoting Carol Hayward <email obscured>: > > Dear all, > > Apologies for the multiple posts today but in response to my earlier email, I > was approached by a district council who are trying to sell the idea of > e-panels to their ICT development group who were > > "scared at the thought that anyone could write something and have it > posted live without moderation." > Part of this fear is cultural. ICT folks are training to provide network "security" so any form of openness generates concern. It is important to note that openness is a democratic value. It is also significantly cheaper to post-moderate. Also, with Issues Forums we don't pre-moderate to help limit our liability as a potential publisher.
Dear all, Apologies for the multiple posts today but in response to my earlier email, I was approached by a district council who are trying to sell the idea of e-panels to their ICT development group who were "scared at the thought that anyone could write something and have it posted live without moderation." My answer was: There's nervousness from most councils about the idea of not premoderating posts but from our own experience, we haven't had many posts we've needed to remove. Including our e-petitions forums, we've only had to remove less than a handful in total since they've been live. It's the 'hot topics' where there's more heated debate/polarised views that are more likely to attract offensive posts or swear words. eg We've got a very lively issue at the moment about a new 'Banksy' street art image which has gone up on a council building. The council's asking members of the public if it should stay or go. Most people support it but there are a few people against it - a couple of whom have had rather rude and personal responses to their comments. Out of around 200 comments I've removed two (I think they're the first I've needed to within Ask Bristol which has now been live since January 2005) - one included swear words, the other was personally offensive towards another participant. As long as you deal with the situation, the council shouldn't receive too much criticism. To allow posts to appear without premoderation shows that you trust people. This encourages more participation and helps to show that you're willing to listen without censorship. To manage the forums, I check at least once a day (depending how lively they are) and sometimes at weekends. My policy is to be reasonably relaxed about it. I don't mind the council being criticised. I don't mind a bit of bantering as normally the participants handle themselves quite well and point out factual errors etc. For people who swear or who are offensive, my policy is to remove their post and email them to say why, asking them to resubmit without the swear words/offensiveness if poss. But, as I said, it's been rare we've had to do so. -end Does anyone have any other thoughts that could add help the district council in their deliberations?
Dear all, I had to do some research to prepare for a presentation I gave a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to come across a statistic that came out of the e-panel evaluation last year which I thought I'd share. The statistic was that 44% of Ask Bristol (our e-panel) members had not participated in public meetings or filled in surveys before. One of the criticisms levelled at these kinds of online consultation activities fairly often is that by taking consultations online, all I'm doing is providing a new way for the 'usual suspects' to give their views. This statistic helps me to disprove this. The other criticism of online consultation/forums I've seen recently is that the only people who participate are young, white and male. The statistics from our users (about a third have given us some demographic data out of nearly 1500 members), don't disprove this completely but there is definitely a good range of age groups (including some who are over 80 years old) and although there are more males (60%) than females (40%), it's definitely not just males participating. Other headline stats are just over 90% are white and 6% have a disability. Age groups are split as follows: under 16 - 1% 16-19 - 3% 20-24 - 13% 25-34 - 35% 35-44 - 21% 45-54 - 17% 55-64 - 8% 65-74 - 1% 75 and over - 0.5% I'd be interested to hear how our stats compare with issues forums or other epanels who have collected data if anyone has any.
Hello everyone Just to let you know that the Bristol ePanel (see www.askbristol.com) is available to all on a pilot basis at very reasonable rates. CommunityPeople would, as we do for Bristol, host the application for you and do the Âlook and feel branding to whatever designs you require. All you need is to come up with the debates and conversations! The whole system is very easy to use and would take you no time at all to master. Before you know it, you will have created a truly superb way of engaging with citizens and stakeholders, of involving councillors and officers, of building relationships and generating first-hand experience. Here's another example: www.communitypeople.net/chex This for the Health Service. Your ePanel could be any group - citizens, businesses, special interest groups. As a way of combining the tools of online community, consultation and surveys (as well as deliberative polling) it is unrivalled in its capability and the perfect way  with no risk  to experience the benefits and advantages of an interactive online community designed to support and extend traditional citizens panels(more details at http://www.communitypeople.net/epanel.htm). Give me a call on 01292 440280 or email email obscured and letÂs get started! Cheers Jim P.S. Also available and FREE of charge are the courses developed as part of the eDemocracy National Project in relation to management and moderation of ePanels. Have a look at www.communitypeople.net/courses. Let me know and I will register you for all three - public, eModerators and eManagers. P.P.S. Our award winning application eDecide (from Royal Town Planning Institute) is part of the tool set in our ePanel. Have a look at www.edecide.net to see what I mean. Have a go at the Tall Buildings eDecide process. Then look at the library of eDecides. Regards Jim Jim Sproat eNeighbourhoods and eNeighbours - www.helpingcircles.com
Here are announcements about two upcoming workshops for council officials and community organisations on initiatives supported by the Local eDemocracy National Project. Both workshops are FREE, please contact Tim Erickson to indicate your interest in participation and get detailed directions. contact: Tim Erickson (email obscured)
Friends:
I'll be in the UK from May 7-17th offering workshops and meeting with local
councils and community organizations interested in launching local Issues
Forums in their communities. Please note the following opportunities:
#1) FREE WORKSHOP: Building & Sustaining a Local Issues Forum.
This will be a 3 hour workshop that will cover the details of
how to plan, build, and sustain a local Issues Forum - drawing
extensively on my 5 years of personal experiences with the
St. Paul Issues Forum (in the US) as well as lessons from
the UK pilot projects in Newham and Brighton & Hove. This workshop
will go beyond the introductory information and provide participants
with specific tools and skills to launch or sustain a
local Issues Forum.
May 11th at 1:00 PM - Newham Council Chambers
Contact Tim Erickson if you wish to participate
(NOTE: We are looking for someone to host this workshop somewhere
in the north, if there is sufficient interest. Please, contact me
if you are interested in attending or even hosting such a workshop
anywhere in the Leeds/Manchester region)
Contact me at: email obscured
#2) Host an INTRODUCTION to Issues Forum workshop in your community.
The best way to launch a local Issues Forum is to schedule a
meeting and invite local voluntary organizations and council staff
to attend. E-Democracy.Org can do a 30 minute presentation on
what local Issues Forums are and then find out who is interested in
participating on the necessary steering committee to launch one in
your community.
If you provide the space and invite 15 - 20 possible local partners
to attend, I'll show up with a presentation and help facilitate the
meeting.
Again, contact me at: email obscured
Dates currently available:
May 8, May 10, May 15, and May 16.
#3) I'm also scheduling visits (as time permits) with local council
officers who are in the exploratory stages of thinking about
Issues Forums. Let me know if you are interested - email obscured
#4) Finally, you can always visit our UK Issues Forum web page for lots
of valuable information and to download our 60 page Issues Forum
Guidebook.
http://www.e-democracy.org/uk/
http://www.e-democracy.org/uk/guide.pdf
Best wishes,
Tim Erickson
Project Manager
E-Democracy.Org
+1-651-246-5045
Please, keep in mind that the EPIF forum has been set up for those of you considering launching an Issues Forum or ePanel in your home community. Last month, I had a very productive two weeks of doing workshops and meeting with local councils to talk about setting up Issues Forums. It appears that I'll be back in the UK the last week of March, for more workshops and training. If your council is considering an Issues Forums, please let me know. Here is an update on what is happening in the world of E-Democracy.Org Issues Forums. I look forward to hearing updates or questions from others.
I'd like to quickly thank all of you who participated in our online workshop in early December. I hope that you found the content useful. I apologize for the lack of any clear conclusion to the workshop, it was a crazy time for both Carol and myself, but we really wanted to initiate this discussion - so we pushed ahead with the workshop, despite our hectic schedules. At this point, it is our intention to transition this EPIF online group into something of an ongoing support group for anyone exploring or beginning to launch either an ePanel project or a Local Issues Forum. We'll be posting interesting information and updates and hope that you'll continue to post your own questions, comments, or wisdom. We'll ask that we keep the focus fairly tight around the specifics of ePanels and Issues Forums. For those who would prefer to "leave the boat" now, please feel free to unsubscribe yourself - or contact me for assistance (instructions in footer). For those who plan to stay aboard - WELCOME! I hope that this will be a successful trip! If you have unanswered questions from the workshop - or ideas/suggestions, please post them to this group anytime. We expect this group to be fairly low volume, with occasional bursts of activity. Please, feel free to contact either Carol Hayward or myself with any questions, Thanks, Tim Erickson E-Democracy.Org
As noted by Carol Hayward, I'll be in the UK from Jan 30 - Feb 9th,
to participate in the Local eDemocracy National Project conferences
that she mentioned (see below).
If you are interested in the possibility of launching a Local Issues
Forum in your community, you are invited to attend one of these
conferences (encourage others from your community/council to attend)
or contact me about a possible meeting.
I've allocated several days during this trip to meet with communities
interested in potentially launching an Issues Forum. I'm available
for an informal meeting to explore to the idea of an Issues Forum or
to conduct more detailed training sessions/workshops.
Please, contact me if you are interested. At the moment, I've not yet
booked anything on:
Jan 30
Feb 2, 3, 4, 6, 9
But I expect to fill at least three of those dates with communities
that have already contacted me.
If your not in the position to start an Issues Forum, but are still
interested in possibly meeting sometime during my visit to chat about
eDemocracy and online citizen participation - please let me know. I'm
anxious to learn more about other projects taking place in the UK.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Best wishes,
Tim Erickson
Dear all, Just to let you know that a series of eDemocracy conferences are being organised by the Local eDemocracy National Project and the Information and Development Agency (IDeA) and will be taking place during the next month as follows: 31st January - London, CBI centre 1st February - Bristol, Marriott Hotel 8th February - Leeds, Hilton Hotel View programmes and workshop summaries, and register your FREE place at www.idea.gov.uk/events Tim and I will both be there running workshops on issues forums and epanels respectively, so if you're interested in coming along, it would be good to see you there Best wishes
Hello everyone Jim Sproat of CommunityPeople here (creators of www.askbristol.com). I've really enjoyed the discussion and my apologies for not participating earlier. I thought I might make amends by simply wishing all of you a great 2006. Regards Jim Jim Sproat t 01292 440280 m 078 432 432 22 email obscured our site: www.communitypeople.net ePanel site: www.askbristol.com Training courses: www.communitypeople.net/courses Deliberative Polling www.edecide.org
Great question. I think most other forms of e-participation start with the premise that the Internet will help improve the quantity of citizen input as well as hold up the idea that diverse groups of citizens, like young people, will show up. This "build they will come" approach doesn't work very well in reality. We are beginning to see a greater focus on the quality of input, particularly with the idea of targeted online consultations. With Issues Forums, our frame of reference in terms of quality is that what exists in the "real" online world. Meaning, how do existing local online forums compare in terms of quality, focus, local issue relevancy, civility, agenda-setting, etc. to an Issues Forum. Comparing Issues Forums to more academic ideals of deliberation or perhaps the practice of in-person, higher budget, facilitated democratic deliberations/consultations sets the bar quite high. I've often said, "That 95 percent of political discussions online are pure junk and our's are only half junk. The miracle is the half has value." So if you have a low cost model to generate 50 percent value (signal) and people accept/figure out how to deal with 50 percent noise, you've created an online public space with value where none existed in practice. (Tim Erickson will tell you he thinks the St. Paul Issues Forum is closer to 75 percent signal and 25 noise. The local UK forums are definitely above my 50 percent signal baseline.) So from the online reality perspective, in Newham you'll note that the only online forum space for all citizens (not Newham Young People Online or the history forum) at the local newspaper is completely dead. It is a virtual ghost town. There is no local blogosphere that we can find. You could dig into the UpMyStreet forums at bit I would suppose. More: http://e-democracy.org/wiki/Newham_online_forums In Brighton and Hove, the most active online forum space is at the Argus newspaper. While local bloggers abound, there does not seem to be much blogging (and commentary) on local issues. We've linked to that an a number of other local forums/listservs: http://e-democracy.org/wiki/Brighton_and_Hove_online_forums A content analysis of the local politics section on the Argus forums (which allow anonymous/alias-based posting) compared to our Issues Forum would be quite informative. Down the road, qualitative interviews with Councillors on which environment they find more attractive for participation (reading and/or posting) would be interesting as would interviews with local media about story ideas or reactions to having their stories commented upon publicly in the Issues Forum. If the OII is game, we'd love to help collaborate with such an independent study. Overall, what seems to be a lack of local media transfer (forum topics generating local media stories) in the UK deserves exploration. First, I'd like to see more outreach by the local steering groups to make sure the main local beat reporters in Newham and Brighton are subscribed to the forums. This agenda-setting aspect is key the success of our Minnesota-based forums and we need push it more in the UK. Local media is the route to a more democratised and accessible Issues Forum, just like any community event, Council report, etc. that generates broader awareness via mass media coverage. To be honest, the relative weakness in UK local media and your greater focus on national news presents a bigger challenge to local democracy in the UK than anything else I've seen to date. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org
I've been out with a cold or I would have responded earlier. Council policies about "external" links seem to vary widely. In Newham, the Council added a link to "discuss local issues online" in the main page of their Council and Democracy section: http://apps.newham.gov.uk/democracy/home.htm In Brighton, I recall discussion of such a link request needing to go through proper channels ... I would guess some follow-up is required. In general, linking campaigns by local steering committees need to be much more aggressive. The honest truth is that often takes one by one e-mail and telephone requests. This, like most other aggressive outreach, would be strengthened by dedicated outreach funding. In terms of being realistic, all you need is a council interested in epanels/online consultations where citizens are also interested in Issues Forums. Obviously, promoting online town hall events/consultations in Brighton & Hove or Newham would be a good test of the one-two punch. In also might add, with the other leading online consultation providers in the UK participating in this workshop (thank you), perhaps you might encourage Issues Forums in the communities/with the Councils where your services are requested. This might strengthen the overall climate and demand for effective e-consultation. Let us know if you see merit in this idea. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org
Carol Hayward <email obscured> > If there's anyone on the list who is interested in becoming > an online discussion facilitator/host, a course is taking > place in January. [...] > If you're interested, please see the information at > http://www.communitypeople.net/courses/ for more details How much is it? I see comments about payment in the pages, but the forms are Microsoft Word DOC files (why not HTML or xhtml forms?) and we're not all Microsoft customers.