All posts in the topic Benefits & Drawbacks (Short link)
Summary
- There are 15 posts — by 6 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by MJ Ray at 2005 Dec 06 21:52 UTC
>I'm also interested in the potential drawbacks of adopting digital
>approaches to local democracy, especially in terms of moving from a
>representative ('ballot box') model of governance to a more direct,
>'real time' approach.
Some of the obvious benefits of Issues Forums, epanels, and other
e-democracy projects are:
1) Anytime, anywhere participation for citizens
Citizens don't have to show up at a specific location
at a specific time to ask questions or give testimony.
2) Peer to Peer nature - An Issues Forum provides citizens
with an opportunity to talk to each other, not just
government. Sometimes, issues can be resolved or
questions answered thru the citizen to citizen network,
without the intervention of local authorities.
3) The online format is an opportunity for people who
are uncomfortable in face to face meetings, to express
their ideas and concerns. An online forum, levels the
playing field, from some participants (not for all).
Some of the obvious concerns:
1) The Digital Divide - Not everyone has equal access to
the internet or internet forums. One concern that we
must watch out for, is that we do not make access to
government easier for some and more difficult for others.
2) The fast pace of the internet.
Sometimes, the internet can drive the discussion of an
issue at a speed that is difficult for any individual
participant to keep up with.
Would anyone else like to mention and benefits or concerns that they
have, in regards to e-participation at the local council level?
<email obscured>
Best wishes,
Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
2) The fast pace of the internet.
Sometimes, the internet can drive the discussion of an
issue at a speed that is difficult for any individual
participant to keep up with.
This is one of the reasons we use a 'time windows' approach when we are dealing
with complex issues. We start a topic - effectively setting a 'task' for
participants, such as responding to certain questions - and invite responses
for anything from 3-12 weeks, depending on the timeframe, the subject matter,
and the requirements of the sponsoring organisation.
We then take down the site, collate all the comments, and post them back up in
a format that allows people to search for particular ideas or follow certain
themes. We then create a new task and a new time window - maybe prioritising
the issues raised in the first session, or responding to further questions
based on participants' responses.
It is a less spontaneous process than the normal forum approach, but it does
prevent issues getting lost because of the speed aspect Tim mentions, and it
also levels the playing field for those who would otherwise miss parts of the
debate.
Also, incidentally, it can help addres the Digital Dive because we can scan in
paper-based responses to the online database and provide paper summaries of
online responses to people without access to the technology. (It is so
important that this matter remains up front.)
Andrew
www.dialoguebydesign.net
PS: This is fun!
Tim Erickson <tim@politalk.com>
> Would anyone else like to mention and benefits or concerns that they
> have, in regards to e-participation at the local council level?
* Astroturfing - fake "grassroots" involvement from parties
involved in the subject of a consultation. How can you spot a
fake? Early on here, we had accusations about outsiders from
the local media: in fact, the people accused were the author of
a book about the town who used to live here, and an invited
helper from the city with our ITV station and the developers.
* Persistance - is this a temporary enthusiasm or sustainable?
* Connection - is it making things happen or has it become a
worthless and ignored talking shop?
Some interesting concerns and I don't have answers to them all but so far, we haven't had much experience of astroturfing. Back in January, we did ask people to vote whether or not to control the local gull population and I suspect that in the later stages of the vote, it might have fallen victim to multiple votes from the same person (voting not to control the gulls) as the percentages for and against changed quite a lot. However, in balance the votes were still in favour and so action was taken. From that experience, we decided that people would only get one vote per registered user which potentially makes it more of an effort to try to swing the vote. I think we can also look at IP addresses which I know doesn't answer all concerns but might help flag up potential problems. As a lot of our consultation is reliant on the content from the discussion forums, I think it's easier to spot the lobbyists and we try to make sure that people aren't overwhelming the discussions unfairly. Does anyone else have any related experiences to share? Carol Carol Hayward Project Manager, local e-democracy Chief Executive's Office - Corporate Communications Bristol City Council Telephone: (0117) 922 2809 Fax: (0117) 922 2948 Have something to say about Bristol? Why not join our new online citizens' panel at http://www.askbristol.com Do you feel strongly about an issue affecting Bristol? Why not start an e-petition? http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/epetitions Find out more about the work Bristol has been carrying out on the Local eDemocracy National Project at: http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/edemocracy >>> MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> 11/30/05 08:55am >>> Tim Erickson <tim@politalk.com> > Would anyone else like to mention and benefits or concerns that they > have, in regards to e-participation at the local council level? * Astroturfing - fake "grassroots" involvement from parties involved in the subject of a consultation. How can you spot a fake? Early on here, we had accusations about outsiders from the local media: in fact, the people accused were the author of a book about the town who used to live here, and an invited helper from the city with our ITV station and the developers. * Persistance - is this a temporary enthusiasm or sustainable? * Connection - is it making things happen or has it become a worthless and ignored talking shop?
>* Astroturfing - fake "grassroots" involvement from parties
>involved in the subject of a consultation. How can you spot a
>fake?
One of the features of an Issues Forum, is that it is an ongoing
sustained project within a local community. Its very hard to "fake" a
grassroots movement (even in a city of 250,000) over a sustained
period of time. In addition, we require that every participant
indentify themselves and where they are posting from, so that we have
a way of checking their identity if there is any suspicion that they
might be posting under false pretenses.
Occasionally, we get folks who try to "game" the system or post
misinformation under a false name. BUT, they are usually identified
very quickly by our 300 regular participants - who collectively have
a pretty good idea of what is going on in our city.
We also encourage face to face meetings (and social gatherings), so
that the participants can get to know each other. We believe
strongly, that an Issues Forum should be connected to other meetings
and networks. The more integrated the Issues Forum becomes in other
processes in the community, the harder it becomes to "fake" anything.
An Issues Forum is very different from a stand alone consultation in
this and many other respects.
>* Persistance - is this a temporary enthusiasm or sustainable?
The St. Paul and Minneapolis Issues Forums have both been active for
at least 6 years each. The Winona Issues Forum has been active for
about 5 years. Brighton & Hove and Newham are both still active after
9 months.
The only Issues Forums that I have seen struggle or really disappear,
are those that did not really have the enthusiasm at the start to
keep them going (I've seen 1 or 2 examples of this).
As long as you have a committed and active forum manager and steering
committee, you should be able to keep your Issues Forum active. There
are "up" phases and "down" phases in the life of an Issues Forum.
Sometimes, it can take a year or two for an Issues Forum to hit
critical mass and really begin to have an impact. AGAIN, an Issues
Forum is intended as a long term project and requires a long term
commitment.
>* Connection - is it making things happen or has it become a
>worthless and ignored talking shop?
I'll try to address this question in a separate post. Its a big topic
worthy of attention.
Best wishes,
Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
We've had a couple of examples of people trying to 'swing' the process by
organising a mass lobby, but it's quite easy to guard against. For a start, if
you get lots of sumbissions using very similar wording you can reckon there's a
lobby going on, and of course lots of submissions from the same address is a
giveaway.
Where we have received absolutely identical submissions we collate and treat
them as a single submission - though reporting how many times it has been
received. This tends to reduce the impact.
I think there are two other ways to prevent too much of it (because we have to
rememebr that people have a perfect right to lobby, build alliances and gather
allies). The first is to ask people to register for the process which tends to
create more of a personal relationship with the participants; the second is to
anticipate lobbying in the ground rules and say what you will do with it if you
find it.
But I think this raises a wider and more interesting point: namely, is it
appropriate to use this medium for quantitative processes, and base decisions
on the results, if the participants are not representative or there are not
enough of them to constitute a reasonable quorum?
I think this is a fabulous medium for qualitative processes where the main
purpose is to gather ideas; I am more hesitant about its value for quantitative
purposes - notwithstanding the success of YouGov.
Andrew
Andrew Acland
Director
Dialogue by Design
Ambassador House
Brigstock Road
Thornton Heath
Surrey
CR7 7JG
T: 020 8683 6602
F: 020 8683 6601
M: 0778844 7221
W: www.dialoguebydesign.net
I meant to add something about 'astroturfing'.
The best remedy is to identify and actively invite as many participants as you
can, and ask them to identify and invite others: stakeholder analysis should be
part of the initial design process anyway. And of course stand-alone
electronic processes are rarely enough: as Tim says you need proper meetings
and social interaction as well.
At 4:58 AM +1300 12/1/05, Andrew Acland wrote:
>I think this is a fabulous medium for qualitative processes where
>the main purpose is to gather ideas; I am more hesitant about its
>value for quantitative purposes - notwithstanding the success of
>YouGov.
Andrew made a number of great points.
Issues Forums in particular should not be looked to for
"quantitative" feedback on an issue. Meaning, that the viewpoints
raised in an Issues Forum are highly unlikely to be STATISTICALLY
representative of those held by the community. I think that the same
can be said for e-panels.
An Issues Forum is great for creating discussion and gathering ideas.
It works well for gaging the range of opinions within a community and
getting a sense of why people feel that way. It excels at connecting
citizens with similar interests and facilitating the sharing of
information within a community. An Issues Forum can provide deeper
insight into how sections of the community feel about an issue, but
its unlikely to accurately represent how the entire community feels.
At this stage, an Issues Forum is generally not statistically
representative of a community. It is a self selected (open to anyone)
group of individuals with a strong interest in public policy. Its a
mixture of folks who are generally interested in policy discussions
with those who have particular policy agenda's that they are
campaigning for.
Its critical that each Issues Forum reach out into the community and
work to include as broad and diverse a group of participants as
possible, but even then its unlikely that we will be able to say that
our forums are statistically representative of the community (its not
our goal).
E-Democracy.Org is currently working to improve our knowledge and
skills about how to reach into some of the underrepresented groups in
the communities where we are active and engage them in our forums. We
are looking at both electronic and old-fashioned community organizing
models for ideas.
We welcome suggestions...... :-)
This has got a bit long, so a quick summary: I ask whether we
can return to astroturfing (not lobbying in general), whether
identification is a benefit or a drawback and how well
consultations are conducted at present.
"Carol Hayward" <carol_hayward@bristol-city.gov.uk>
> As a lot of our consultation is reliant on the content from the discussion =
> forums, I think it's easier to spot the lobbyists and we try to make sure =
> that people aren't overwhelming the discussions unfairly.=20
I feel that this strayed from astroturfing (faking of grassroots
support by interested parties) to lobbying (coordinated
participation of groups of people). I'm disappointed by that:
if electors feel strongly enough to organise themselves into a
lobby group, that's probably a signal itself and councils should
not dismiss it. I had a problem with that locally, even though
our group was barely organised enough to call it a lobby...
Lobbying can be astroturfing, but it's not necessarily so.
I believe we've had historic buildings groups (HBGs) rubbishing
or dismissing green groups in consultations because they've
been misinformed that their buildings will only get funding if
the environment lobbying is ignored. That's silly, as built
environment and natural environment should complement each other.
One example: dozens of trees planned for felling were marked with
paint by activists and slogans daubed on the ground (milder than
other graffiti in the area at the time), and I heard multiple reports
of HBG leaders saying the wrong trees and too many were marked.
When I checked against the official maps, nearly all were correct.
The HBGs are real grassroots lobby groups, who tend to be
older and more political, can spend more time on consultations
and are quite well-connected with the council through town
planning and so on, but I believe they were being used to
astroturf the debate. We guessed that after using freedom of
information act (FOIA or "fire") requests to get some details
of the communications and liaisons. Is there anything that is,
could be or should be built into e-panels and issues forums to
make astroturfing detectable without FOIA and guesswork?
Tim Erickson <tim@politalk.com>
> One of the features of an Issues Forum, is that it is an ongoing
> sustained project within a local community. Its very hard to "fake" a
> grassroots movement (even in a city of 250,000) over a sustained
> period of time. [...]
This may be a deterrent, but very hard isn't impossible. When
there's a multi-million-pound grant involved, that can make it
seem worth doing to some people. It's "for the good of the town"
even if the townspeople hate it, the damn ingrates.
I'm still a little uneasy about requiring identification. With
a 150 years of bad history between government and some residents,
there just isn't the trust from the residents today. There are
people who want to stay hidden in order to make it easier to use
civil disobedience later. I feel that valuable contributions
were made by "Nazrat" and other pseuds, both in direct action
and the debate. If we don't engage them, their views might never
be taken into account, so we get the riotous acts for sure. If
we involve them, maybe their concerns can be satisfied too.
Is this an either/or choice? How tightly is it enforced? Do
council officers check names against the electoral roll?
I'll leave the part about meetings and connections for later posts too.
Andrew Acland <andrew@dialoguebydesign.com>
> [...] is it appropriate to use this medium for
> quantitative processes, and base decisions on the results,
> if the participants are not representative or there are not
> enough of them to constitute a reasonable quorum?
No.
If they are representatives, it's not appropriate because it
can mask minority concerns. For government, representatives
of the community should sit as councillors. All others are
interests, voices to be heard, experts to be questioned.
There are few issues (money!) where it's impossible to make
everyone happy, but other divisions should be caused sparingly.
I'd agree with quantitative consultations suggested by these
groups, or carried out by them, but not made of them.
Even if there are enough members, it's still not appropriate
unless they are reflective of the constituency. Many consultations
seem to forget to gather demographic info so we can't confirm
or deny it without repeating the work (which my group did).
Finally, many consultations I have seen are self-selecting,
biased and/or mis-analysed. (One example: distributing a
questionnaire asking what issues are important, along with a
leaflet about the history of the area, at an exhibition of
that history which spent a lot of its time in a local history
space at the local library... can you spot a source of bias?
Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk, December 1998)
Do any councils use representative surveying like pollsters?
How current is the statistical training of consultation officers?
On 01/12/05, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> I feel that this strayed from astroturfing (faking of grassroots
> support by interested parties) to lobbying (coordinated
> participation of groups of people).
Yes, I was disappointed by that as well and I'd like to offer two
possible explanations.
1) The term "astroturfing", delightful as it is ( and new to myself )
was not sufficiently well explained when introduced.
2) The misinterpretation stems from two funtamentally different
viewpoints, that of the citizen activist and that of the governing
body. The ordinary citizen is concerned that the governing body
might use the e-democracy system as a cover and justification for
obtaining an appearance of widespread consent for whatever they wanted
to do in the first place, and the governing body is concerned that
unrepresentative or possibly inconvenient opinions might prevail,
perhaps through groups of citizens getting organised by themselves -
perish the thought.
Thus there is a tangible mutual distrust between the stakeholders and
the ordinary participants.
Iis it perhaps a worthy and optimistic goal of the whole edemocracy
project that this mistrust might somehow be overcome through dialogue
in the forums?
Astroturfing ... In the past I have often suggested that governments allow members/representatives of "interest groups" to post in online consultations in a way that allows/encourages them to state that affiliation. You could even have an ethics code the requires those "paid" to participate (lobbyists, others?) to disclose that affiliation. In many cases, government decisions mediate among competing interests in society. Using online consultations to add transparency those efforts would add value. The challenge is that those with insider access won't "waste" their time in an online consultation unless they think it politically matters or if their traditional forms of influence trump in-person/online consultative processes. However, this is why we have elections, if things are bad enough representatives can be replaced if those upset get their act together and mount a challenge. (Yes, I know easier said than done.) 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
>Tim Erickson <tim@politalk.com>
>> One of the features of an Issues Forum, is that it is an ongoing
>> sustained project within a local community. Its very hard to "fake" a
>> grassroots movement (even in a city of 250,000) over a sustained
> > period of time. [...]
>
>This may be a deterrent, but very hard isn't impossible. When
>there's a multi-million-pound grant involved, that can make it
>seem worth doing to some people. It's "for the good of the town"
>even if the townspeople hate it, the damn ingrates.
I'd just like to repeat the fact, that Issues Forums are not the same
as consultations. The connection between the forum and any particular
policy decision is less direct, which removes some of the incentive
for "astro-turfing." We've not seen it happen in over 6 years on our
three oldest forums.
In theory, its possible. BUT - I think that its possible for any
political process to be manipulated in unethical ways. I don't think
anyone can give you a process that is impossible to manipulate by a
determined group.
The key here, is that the Issues Forum is governed/regulated by a
group of citizens (or an non-partisan assortment of local officials)
who are not connected to any particular issue, but have as their
primary objective to preserve the credibility and integrity of the
forum. One must approach an Issues Forum with some trust in the team
that is managing it and give it time to develop.
Best wishes,
Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
At 6:29 PM +0000 12/1/05, David R. Newman wrote:
> > I'd just like to repeat the fact, that Issues Forums are not the same as
>> consultations. The connection between the forum and any particular
>> policy decision is less direct, which removes some of the incentive for
> > "astro-turfing."
>
>Well, could a lobby group keep raising an issue until it gets taken up
>by a council?
Yes, of course. An Issues Forum can be used by a lobby group to
directly impact an Issue, this happens all the time. We've seen
issues raised in Issues Forums, go on to influence media coverage in
the local paper, get items on the council agenda, or spark a public
reaction from the head of city department.
BUT, an Issues Forum differs from a consultation in that the citizens
set the agenda. Any citizen or citizens group can raise an Issue and
use the Issues Forum as a tool to influence government on that Issue.
This happens frequently in our forums.
However, this if very different than the government saying "we're
going to spend 1,000,000 GBP on a development project and we're
taking citizen input for the next two weeks."
Another point, is that a simple "letter writing" campaign in an
Issues Forum is theoretically possible. However, the effect is very
different than letters to a newspaper. In an Issues Forum, someone
who shows up and suddenly posts a note on a NEW issue, is very likely
to be questioned by other participants. They might also get a private
note from a council member asking for more information. Either way,
the information that they have posted will be subject to interactive
public scrutiny, before its likely to have an impact. We see this all
the time in our forums.
An Issues Forum can be used by grassroots groups to lobby government,
but for an "astroturf" effort to be successful in St. Paul, the
organizers would have to be able to bluff all 350 participants
(ranging greatly in political background and ideology). The openness
of the forum makes it possible for any one or two people to
completely discredit any effort that is insincere or based upon false
pretenses.
This combination of interactivity and "public scrutiny" makes it VERY
hard (but not impossible) for one person or one organization to
somehow artificially "create" a fake grassroots movement.
I hope that this helps.
Tim Erickson
E-Democracy.Org
On 01/12/05, Tim Erickson <tim@politalk.com> wrote:
> >Tim Erickson <tim@politalk.com>
> >> One of the features of an Issues Forum, is that it is an ongoing
> >> sustained project within a local community. Its very hard to "fake" a
> >> grassroots movement (even in a city of 250,000) over a sustained
> > > period of time. [...]
> >
> >This may be a deterrent, but very hard isn't impossible. When
> >there's a multi-million-pound grant involved, that can make it
> >seem worth doing to some people. It's "for the good of the town"
> >even if the townspeople hate it, the damn ingrates.
Tim, I don't know who you are quoting here.
is this another victim of the imposed default reply-to-sender problem?
Andy Roberts <aroberts@gmail.com>
> Tim, I don't know who you are quoting here.
> is this another victim of the imposed default reply-to-sender problem?
More likely, accidentally deleting too much and deleting the attribution
line too. I can't see why this list's correct reply setting would
affect attribution: are any email programs that buggy? Reply off-list.
(In general, email programs which do not support mailing lists through
Internet Engineering Task Force RFCs 2369 and 2919 really ought to be
repaired or replaced but last I looked, it was still a poor situation.)
Best wishes,