Category Archives: collaborative action

DeKalb, IL Plans for Future with Conversation Cafe Model

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We recently heard the story of an exciting project that the City of DeKalb undertook to engage citizens in its strategic planning process that we wanted to share here. With a few of our NCDD members’ help, DeKalb held a series of Conversation Cafe-style public meetings and will turn the input they gathered into a 10-year vision for the city. We encourage you to read more about the process in NCDD member Tracy Rogers-Tryba‘s write up of the project below.

The City of DeKalb enlisted the assistance of the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University to embark upon a multi-year, collaborative, grassroots strategic planning effort. Utilizing a modified Conversation Cafe model, the City has turned to city residents, students, workers and employers to share their ideas about DeKalb’s future. Responses to these questions will help shape a vision for the City of DeKalb.

The goal is to provide an understanding of the City’s assets and improvement opportunities, suggestions for change strategies, and ways for the City to maintain ongoing dialogue and communication with people who live, work or attend school in DeKalb.

“These meetings have been excellent opportunities for us to hear first-hand the hopes and aspirations that DeKalb residents, students, and workers have for our city,” said Mayor John Rey. “We want a vision of DeKalb that is meaningful to everyone, and we also want to hear the ideas people have for realizing that vision.”

Eight open Conversation Cafes, entitled Community Conversations, were held throughout July. All community conversations were open to anyone from the public. Conversations were held at facilities located on public transit routes and transportation was made available for those individuals needing assistance. Interpreters were also made available for non-English speaking participants. Prior to the Conversation Cafes that were open to anyone from the public, the Center held smaller targeted meetings for homeless populations, international and high school student populations, as well as for various sectors of leadership throughout the community.

Results of the outreach efforts, and information collected by the Center for Governmental Studies will be transmitted to the City. Resident populations have expressed appreciation and encouragement for the City to continue this form of collaborative engagement as it reflects efforts of a more open collaborative community dialogue.

dekalb process photo

City Administrator Anne Marie Gaura opens an citizen input session in DeKalb

Following up on the dialogue efforts, Janice Thomson and Hubert Morgan – both of whom are experts in D&D and NCDD members – provided an introductory workshop entitled Conversation for Vibrant Communities on the four streams of engagement in D&D practice on August 5, 2015.

All the data has since been collected, and the Center continues to work with the City’s administration and senior elected leaders on drafting new mission, vision, values, and strategic initiatives for the 10 year visioning plan. This work product has been handed over to the City’s administration and employees so that they can also provide their input. The Center will then take this information and look to connect it to work done by residents, leadership, and employees to build out a plan that has community input.

The final 10-year plan and results of the process will be presented back to the Council and residents in October.

Thanks so much to Tracy Rogers-Tryba for writing this piece and for sharing it with us!

Guide to Choosing Tools for Digital Engagement

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Choosing the right methods for digital engagement can be disorienting, and that’s why we were happy to find this helpful guide to picking appropriate e-democracy tools that Geoff Mulgan of Nesta recently published at www.nesta.org.uk. The guide is aimed at supporting public officials, but can be helpful for anyone looking to engage stakeholders in decision making. We encourage you to check out Geoff’s piece below or find the original Nesta post here.

Designing Digital Democracy: A Short Guide

I’ve written quite a few blogs and pieces on digital technology and democracy – most recently on the relevance of new-style political parties.

Here I look at the practical question of how parliaments, assemblies and governments should choose the right methods for greater public engagement in decisions.

One prompt is the Nesta-led D-CENT project which is testing out new tools in several countries, and there’s an extraordinary range of engagement experiments underway around the world, from Brazil’s parliament to the Mayor of Paris. Tools like Loomio for smallish groups, and Your Priorities and DemocracyOS for larger ones, are well ahead of their equivalents a few years ago.

A crucial question is whether the same tools work well for different types of issue or context. The short answer is ‘no’. Here I suggest some simple formulae to ensure that the right tools are used for the right issues; I show why hybrid forms of online and offline are the future for parliaments and parties; and why the new tools emphasise conversation rather than only votes.

Clarity on purpose

First, it’s important to be clear what wider engagement is for. Engagement is rarely a good in itself. More passionate engagement in issues can be a powerful force for progress. But it can be the opposite, entrenching conflicts and generating heat rather than light. The goals of engagement can include some or all of the following: legitimation, or public trust; better quality decisions and outcomes; or a public which better understands the key issues and choices. These goals can often coincide. But there will be many times when they directly clash with each other.

A related question is how direct democratic engagement relates to representative democracy. Sometimes these align – when a political leader or party creates new forums to complement the paraphernalia of elections and manifestos. But sometimes they conflict – with Iceland’s attempt to involve the public in writing a new constitution an important recent test case (the new constitution was drafted by a broad based commission with online inputs from the public, and endorsed by public referendum, but then rejected by a newly elected parliament). One lesson is that it’s wise to involve elected politicians as directly as possible – since they continue to hold ultimate authority.

Clarity on who you want to reach

Second, who do you want to reach? Even in the most developed nations and cities there are still very practical barriers of reach – despite the huge spread of broadband, mobiles and smart phones. Recent experience suggests that engagements which only use digital tools rather than print, radio, TV and face to face, can get very skewed inputs.  That’s fine for some kinds of engagement – 1% involvement can greatly improve the quality of decisions. But it’s vital to keep checking that the participant groups aren’t unrepresentative. Even very tech savvy cities like New York and Los Angeles have repeatedly found that participants in purely digital consultations are much more male, young, well-educated, affluent and metropolitan than the population as a whole.

Clarity on what tools for what issues – navigating ‘Belief and Knowledge Space’

Third, even if there were strong habits of digital engagement for the whole population it would not follow that all issues should be opened up for the maximum direct participation. A useful approach is to distinguish issues according to two dimensions.

The first dimension differentiates issues where the public has expertise and experience from ones where the knowledge needed to make decisions is very specialised. There are many issues on which crowds simply don’t have much information let alone wisdom, and any political leader who opened up decision making too far would quickly lose the confidence of the public.

The second dimension differentiates issues which are practical and pragmatic from ones where there are strongly held and polarised opinions, mainly determined by underlying moral beliefs rather than argument and evidence. Putting these together gives us a two dimensional space on which to map any public policy issue, which could be described as the ‘Belief and Knowledge Space’.

Diagram: Belief and Knowledge spaces

Public engagement, and the use of digital tools to widen engagement, is possible on all points. But different types of issue need very different tools, depending on how open or closed public views are likely to be, and how inclusive or exclusive the knowledge needed for participation is.

For example, an issue on which there is widely shared knowledge but strongly contested values (like gay marriage) requires different methods to one which is both more technical in nature and dependent on highly specialised knowledge (like monetary policy). A contested issue – in the top left quadrant – will bring in highly motivated groups who are very unlikely to change their views as a result of participation. New fora for debate give added oxygen to pre-existing views rather than encouraging deliberation.

With very specialised issues, by contrast, wide participation in debate may risk encouraging unwise decisions – which will subsequently be rejected by voters (how much would you want the details of monetary policy, or responses to a threatened epidemic, to be determined by your fellow citizens?). So in this, bottom right, quadrant some of the most useful tools are ones which mobilise broader bodies of expertise than the ones immediately accessible to government, but try to filter out inputs based on opinion rather than knowledge or experience.

Another interesting category, however, falls roughly in the middle to top right of the table above. These are issues involving scientific choices that include ethics, some highly specialised knowledge, but also significant public interest. For issues of this kind, open public deliberation may be important both to educate the public and to legitimise decisions. Stem cell research, genomics, privacy and personal data are all issues of this kind. The issues surrounding mitochondrial research are a good recent example.

But the formats need to involve smaller groups in more intensive deliberation and engagement with the facts, before the process is opened up. The challenge then is how to use these exercises to influence a wider public, which in most cases must involve mass media as well as the internet.

I’m sure there are other issues and dimensions to consider and would welcome suggestions on improvements to the model I’ve set out here.

Clarity on requisite scale

Fourth, engagement looks and feels very different at different scales. A small city like Reykjavik can run a fantastic online tool for citizens to propose ideas and comment. There’s a directness and authenticity about the points made. At the other end of the spectrum a nation of 300 million like the US, or 1300 million like India, is bound to struggle with online engagement, since well-funded lobby groups are likely to be much more adept at playing the system. More systematic rules; more governance of governance; and a bigger role for intermediaries and representatives is unavoidable on these larger scales. Democracy isn’t fractal – instead it’s a phenomenon, like much biology, where larger scale requires different forms, not just a scaled up version of what works in a town or neighbourhood.

Clarity on identity and anonymity

Modern democracy allows people a secret ballot (though we sometimes forget that this is a relatively recent idea, sometimes attributed to the Australians, though I think France got there first). But we usually make votes in parliaments visible. The modern internet allows for anonymity which has fuelled some its worst features – abuse, extreme views etc. So any designer of democratic engagement tools has to decide what levels of anonymity should apply at each stage. We might choose to allow anonymity at early stages of consultations, but require people to show and validate identities at later stages (eg. to confirm they actually live in the neighbourhood or city involved), certainly as any issue comes closer to decisions. The diagram below summarises these different steps, and the block chain tools being used in the D-CENT pilots bring these issues to the fore.

The 2010s are turning out to be a golden age of democratic innovation. That’s bringing creativity and excitement but also challenges, in particular around how to relate the new forms to the old ones, online communities to offline ones, the democracy of voice and numbers and the democracy of formal representation.

Crowds can help with many tasks. But they are particularly badly suited to the job of designing new institutions, or crafting radical strategies, or combining discrete policies into coherent programmes. This still tends to be the preserve of quite small groups, in intense face to face conversation.

As a result my guess is that the most successful models in the next few years will fuse representative and direct elements. They will be honest that the buck still stops with elected representatives – and that the online tools are inputs and supplements rather than replacements. They will present conversation and deliberation as preferable to relying on occasional elections, and the odd binary petition. But they will also be clear that the 21st century parliament or city council has to be a hybrid too – physical and digital.

You can find the original version of this Nesta blog piece at www.nesta.org.uk/blog/designing-digital-democracy-short-guide#sthash.qXW93aMa.dpuf.

Building on the “Hope Spots” in Our Democracy

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Our friends at NCDD member organization The Harwood Institute recently shared an article that Rich Harwood wrote on the state of our democracy for the Kettering Foundation‘s “Connections” newsletter that we want to share. It features relevant insights from Rich, prominent D&D leaders, and a few NCDD members on the question of how to scale up the nation’s democratic and collaborative efforts, and we encourage you to check it out.
An article excerpt from the Harwood blog is below, and you can find the rest in the full newsletter here.

Yes, Our Democracy Is a Mess, and Yes, Our Opportunities Are Real

HarwoodLogoAs part of the Kettering Founda­tion’s efforts to take stock of trends affecting citizens and communities, I have recently held 10 in-depth conversations with leading thinkers and practitioners in the areas of democracy and American life.

In these discussions, we talked about the current condition of the country and the forces that are shaping it today. I asked those I interviewed about the positive trends they see among people engaging and working together in communities. I also asked how widespread these positive developments are, what is driving them, and how we can acceler­ate and deepen them. And I explored with these individuals what they believe resulted from the so-called civic renewal movement of the 1990s (the attempt to build new civic capacities and practices among organizations, leaders, networks, and citizens) and the implications of that movement for us today.

When I combine these conversations with what I have seen and heard working in communities over the past few years, it seems that the 1990s movement was simply too shallow and narrow in scope to withstand larger economic, political, and social trends, such as the Great Reces­sion and the September 11 attacks. While the leaders I interviewed differed in their interpretations of what exactly happened, there was general agreement that the ideas behind those civic activities did not penetrate American society widely or deeply enough. The innovations simply failed to be adopted and embedded into the necessary structures, processes, and organizations. Indeed, the civic renewal movement didn’t succeed in permeating our collective sense of how we want to connect with one another, work together, and get things done.

Harry Boyte, codirector of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augs­burg College, told me, “In some ways the civic impulse spread in spaces that were less structured and bureaucratized, where the politics of knowledge was not as hier­archical and rigid. But that was also the weakness because it was quite vulnerable.”

Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, highlighted many of the positive elements of that earlier period while suggesting that the efforts did not go far enough. She observed that while the civic renewal work “was incredibly important on shifting professional practices . . . it didn’t get embedded into ongoing medi­ating organizations in the communities it was attempted in.”

What I kept hearing, in other words, is that the civic renewal movement faded away. Without question, it made a differ­ence at the time: it changed how people, organizations, and communities worked and helped establish a foundation for many of the positive actions we see today. But it did not firmly take hold…

Read the Full Article

You can find the original Harwood Institute posting of this excerpt at www.theharwoodinstitute.org/2015/08/yes-our-democracy-is-a-mess-and-yes-our-opportunities-are-real. You can find the full Kettering Foundation Connections 2014 publication where the article first appeared at www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/product-downloads/Connections_2014.pdf.

Everyday Democracy Wins CT Humanities Award

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In case you missed it, we wanted to share the press release that Everyday Democracy – a long-time NCDD member organization – published last month about an important grant they’ve received that will help them plan for a statewide civic health project. We encourage you to join us in congratulating them! You can read the release below or find the original here.

Connecticut Humanities Awards Planning to Grant to Everyday Democracy in Support of its Projects “Connecticut’s Civic Health: A Humanities Perspective”

EvDem LogoHartford, Connecticut: Connecticut Humanities awarded Everyday Democracy a planning grant in the amount of $9,999 in support of its humanities project “Connecticut’s Civic Health: A Humanities Perspective.”

The grant will support research and data gathering on Connecticut’s civic health conducted by the National Conference on Citizenship that will help Everyday Democracy frame a strong humanities program that connects this topic to various humanities themes. Part of the grant will also cover the cost of a consultant who will develop lesson plans on Connecticut’s civic health utilizing various humanities themes for civics and social studies teachers to use beginning in the fall of 2016. The grant also supports planning of an event to be held next year featuring Mr. Eric Liu, co-author of Gardens of Democracy, as a speaker and panelist. That event will take place at Connecticut’s Old State House on April 7, 2016 and will be produced in partnership with The Connecticut Network (CT-N), Connecticut’s Old State House, and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.  Planning of the event will be done by the Connecticut Civic Health Advisory Group between June and December 2015.

Everyday Democracy partnered with the National Conference on Citizenship and various state partners, including the Secretary of the State of Connecticut Denise Merrill, Connecticut’s Old State House, The Connecticut Network (CT-N), and other members of the Connecticut Civic Health Advisory Group to publish and disseminate the 2011 Connecticut Civic Health Index Report. This report released findings on various indicators of civic health in the state, including voting, volunteering, donating to charities, contacting public officials, working with neighbors on local problems, joining groups and organizations, talking about public issues, attending public events, etc.

The humanities program supported by the grant will highlight similar civic health findings to be published in January of next year in the 2016 Connecticut Civic Health Index Report under the auspices of the National Conference of Citizenship. That report will be published in partnership with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, DataHaven Inc., and other members of the Connecticut Civic Health Advisory Group. The program will offer various humanities perspectives on the importance of civic health to the economic resiliency of Connecticut communities. It will also examine opportunities and barriers to civic participation and draw strategies and best practices from Mr. Liu’s talk and the panel discussion. Drawing from Mr. Liu’s work and that of local scholars and civic leaders, the humanities program will address such topics as the meaning of “great citizenship,” civic engagement and public participation, and the role of everyday people in finding solutions to local problems. This humanities program draws from the underlying message of William D. Adams, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, that “the common good is central to democratic political theory and expresses both the right and the obligation of citizens to debate and determine the general welfare; it is the aspirational goal, the guiding ambition that anchors citizenship and participation in democratic politics.” The program will create a space for conversation and learning on how the humanities can play a vital role in public life. The “civic health” and “great citizenship” narratives will contribute to this conversation in unique ways.

Funding for “Connecticut’s Civic Health: a Humanities Perspective” is made possible by the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Humanities, both of which provide significant support to Connecticut Humanities.

Everyday Democracy thanks the entire Connecticut Congressional delegation, especially Congressman John B. Larson (1st Congressional District) and Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, for supporting funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thanks also to Governor Dannel P. Malloy, State Representative Angel Arce (State House District 004), and State Senator John Fonfara (S01) for supporting Connecticut Humanities. It also thanks Connecticut Humanities, Connecticut’s Old State House, The Connecticut Network (CT-N), and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill for supporting this program.

Founded in 1989, Everyday Democracy is a project of The Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a private operating foundation dedicated to strengthening deliberative democracy and improving the quality of public life in the United States. Since its inception, Everyday Democracy has worked with over 600 local communities nationally by providing advice, training, tools and resources, so that they can engage their residents in meaningful and inclusive ways to build communities that work for everyone. It has also partnered with national and local organizations to strengthen the field of dialogue and deliberation and promote a stronger, more equitable democracy.

Join Journalist & Community Gathering for Civic Impact

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We hope our members will consider attending the Experience Engagement gathering this October 1-4 in Portland. This unique gathering is being supported by NCDD Board member Marla Crockett and NCDD Sustaining Member Peggy Holman, and we encourage you to learn more in the announcement that Peggy recently shared with us below. Take advantage of their freelancer and student rates by registering here!

Experience Engagement

Experience Engagement, How Journalism and Communities Can Thrive Together takes place October 1-4 at the University of Oregon’s facility in Portland, Oregon.

This meeting is unique in both format and intention.

  • Unique in format because it brings together a diversity of people for a peer-based learning exchange, including journalists, community activists, students, educators, researchers, funders, artists, social entrepreneurs, librarians, technologists and urban planners.
  • Unique in intention because we see it as a working session to not only meet personal and organizational needs but to advance the field by producing an interactive field guide – a site that articulates the best of what we learn from each other, for example, principles and practices for engagement and evaluating its impact.

We are looking for a mix that would include about 40% journalists, 40% community connectors and story tellers, and 20% students, academics, and people from organizations that support journalists and community connectors.

Please bring your brilliance to the conversation on community engagement and civic life. Together, we can make visible the best of what is and imagine a great future for news and information that supports communities to thrive.

Space is limited to 125 people so register soon.

To learn more or to register, please visit www.journalismthatmatters.org/experienceengagement.

Bridge Alliance Launches Declaration of Engagement & New Website

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We want to encourage our NCDD members to check out the newly-launched website of our partners with the Bridge Alliance – a new organization that “exists to upgrade our democratic republic by serving organizations and citizens who are uniting Americans across the political divides to improve civility and collaboration.” You can find their new web home at www.bridgealliance.us.

NCDD is proud to be one of the Founding Members of the Bridge Alliance, which we’ve been supporting and involved in since its early stages. The Alliance is an exciting effort to bring together and support many groups in and beyond the D&D field that are working to overcome the limitations that the bitter, partisan divides in our political system place on our ability to solve problems for our communities, our nation, and our world.

One of the first steps that the Alliance is taking together is to encourage everyday citizens to sign their Declaration of Engagement, which acknowledges that we all have a part to play in the solution. The pledge is simple, and it reads:

I am part of the solution to political dysfunction. Through my actions I commit to:

  • Engage in respectful dialogue with others, even if we disagree
  • Seek creative problem solving with others
  • Support elected officials and leaders who work together to address and solve our nation’s challenges.

Through the actions of all of us, together, we can achieve a more perfect union.

We encourage our members to sign the Declaration and familiarize yourself with the work that the Bridge Alliance is doing. You can start to get a sense of what the Alliance is about from their website and by checking out the recorded talks from their Transpartisan Conference in Boston.

Either way, keep an eye out for the great work that the Alliance has coming in the future!

Recap of Confab Call with “21st Century Democracy” Authors

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Earlier this month, we had yet another great NCDD Confab Call, this time with 55 of our members. We had a ver informative presentation from and lively discussion with prominent D&D scholars Matt Leighninger and Tina Nabatchi, all of which was centered on the lessons on public participation infrastructure that they’ve compiled into Confab bubble imagetheir new book, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy.

If you didn’t participate in this one, you really missed out! The discussion was so lively and the questions were so rich that we couldn’t even fit it all into the 60 minute call. But don’t worry, we recorded the presentation and discussion, which you can see and hear by clicking here.

Want to learn more about Matt & Tina’s work on public participation? You can find some great downloads from their book at http://bit.ly/PP21CDresources.

Looking for more confab inspiration? We encourage you to check out some of our past Confab Calls for more great conversations and ideas.

Register for Aug. 5th Confab Call with Matt Leighninger & Tina Nabatchi

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As we mentioned last week, we preparing to host another great NCDD Confab Call this Wednesday, August 5th from 2-3pm EST, this time with D&D gurus Matt Leighninger, executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and Tina Nabatchi, associate professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell Confab bubble imageSchool of Citizenship and Public Affairs! The call will focus on Matt & Tina’s new book, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy. Have you registered yet??

You won’t want to miss this call because not only will Matt & Tina be sharing some of their knowledge about the most cutting edge D&D practices, but they will also be welcoming input from our community to help improve and expand upon the book.

Make sure to mark your calendars and register today because spots on this free call are filling up! We can’t wait to have you all join us on the 5th.

Never participated in one of our confab calls? You can learn more about what they’re like by visiting www.ncdd.org/events/confabs.