Listen to Confab Recording on Using Slack for Democratic Movement Building

Posted on June 11, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

We had a wonderfully engaging call last Thursday to learn more about the capabilities of using the collaborative platform, Slack, to further connect the D&D field and growing Democracy Movement. The call was co-hosted with our friends at the Bridge Alliance who discussed a new effort launched recently on the platform called the Democracy Movement Slack Forum and gave us a preview of the new space. If you weren’t able to join the call, we encourage you to listen to it now!

We were joined by Walt Roberts who gave the 45 participants on the call a quick tour of Slack and how the platform streamlines communication by bringing text, email, and direct messaging altogether. The way the platform is designed lends itself well to the growing Democracy Movement Slack Forum (DMFS), in how it offers space for participants to self-organize and create action together. Walt shared with us how this space was developed; growing from the Unrig the Summit 2018 conference and catalyzed by the desire to fix our broken and rigged political system. He discussed the evolution of the working title, the Democracy Movement, and how it is really a movement of many movements, across the spectrum of ideologies.

Phase two is currently in progress, in which the organizers of the Slack space are looking to bring in those groups and leaders who are doing Democracy building work. It’s meant to be a collaborative space for people to work together in nonpartisan ways and co-develop this growing Democracy Movement. If you are interested in participating in the DMFS, please reach out to keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org for the information on how to join! We’ve set up a channel on the DMFS called #group_ncdd_forum that we encourage you to join if you’re already onboard the Slack space!

Here are some of our favorite takeaways from the Confab call:

Slack brings an “open space” like way of self-organizing conversations and helps bring order to the chaos of multiple streams, threads, and branches of conversation.
The Democracy Movement is a broad term that encompasses all efforts to get our country back on track and spans the ideological spectrum.
The Democracy Movement Slack Forum is a collaborative work, conversation, & community space for those who seek to work together in nonpartisan ways to co-develop a big democracy movement, reduce silos & build a shared infrastructure.

We had an engaging conversation in the chat discussion and you can view saved the transcript of it here. We recorded the whole presentation in case you weren’t able to join us, which you can access by clicking here. While access to the Confab recordings is usually a benefit of being an NCDD member, we have made an exception with this one in order for more folks to join the DMSF and co-create this movement. If you like what you experience, we’d love for you to join as an NCDD member (if you haven’t already!) and learn more about the sweet benefits of being part of the NCDD Coalition here!

Confab bubble image

We want to thank Walt, Jeremy and the Bridge Alliance team, for making this call happen! And an equally large thank you to all the Confab participants for contributing to this conversation! To learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and hear recordings of others, visit www.ncdd.org/events/confabs.

Finally, we love holding these events and we want to continue to elevate the work of our field with Confab Calls and Tech Tuesdays. It is through your generous contributions to NCDD that we can keep doing this work! That’s why we want to encourage you to support NCDD by making a donation or becoming an NCDD member today (you can also renew your membership by clicking here). Thank you!

See you on Slack!

Democratic-Renewal News Site Launches – TheFulcrum.US

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

It’s a big week of website launches for the dialogue, deliberation, and engagement community! In case you missed it, Participedia launched their new Wikipedia-like website for resources related to civic engagement and democratic innovation earlier this week. A new site launched yesterday called The Fulcrum, a digital publication that will serve as a news source for national efforts going on that strengthen American democracy. Our field knows there is great work going on across the country to improve the quality and state of our democratic republic, and this site is a great amplifier to spread awareness for this work! Check out the press release below shared with us via the team at The Fulcrum and we encourage you to contribute to this premier news source.

News Release: TheFulcrum.US Launches

Today we are launching the only news site dedicated exclusively to covering the community of people and organizations seeking to improve American democracy.

The Fulcrum is a hub of original reporting, coverage from around the country, opinion and more for readers seeking to learn about efforts to strengthen American democracy.

The Fulcrum is staffed by award-winning journalists who report on the efforts to make our democratic republic less tribal, our elections more competitive, our politicians less beholden to moneyed interests, and our officials more attentive to real evidence in policy-making so Congress may become more effective, ethical and civil.

The Fulcrum follows these issues exclusively, like no other news site. We track efforts to help government be more responsive to the Americans who want these changes. Our team decodes behaviors threatening (or protecting) the principles of the Constitution. Most importantly, we explain how you can get involved and why our democracy depends on it.

“We’re thrilled to launch The Fulcrum during this time of intense interest in fixing our country’s political system,” says Publisher and Executive Editor David Meyers, who previously held a number of senior roles at CQ Roll Call. “The data clearly shows that people care about these issues and through The Fulcrum we will help them better understand what is happening, who is doing the work and how to better connect.”

The Fulcrum’s nonpartisan political reform coverage began in December 2018 with the email newsletter known as The Firewall. Its popularity has grown, and it is now available under The Fulcrum brand, as well as our robust website filled with the latest reform-related news and opinion pieces from leaders of the reform movement. The readership includes reformers, philanthropists, reporters, editors and the general public.

While rooting for the political system to strengthen, The Fulcrum’s journalistic role is to bring a clear and unbiased eye to the debates. Doing so requires freedom from partisanship and journalistic independence from those supporting our mission. So while we are incubated by Issue One, which describes itself as “the leading cross-partisan political reform group in Washington,” we are editorially independent of Issue One and its funders.

“American democracy has become fundamentally challenged since I started covering D.C. 30 years ago, decoding policy and politics for voters,” says Editor in Chief David Hawkings, most recently senior editor at CQ Roll Call. “I’m passionate about the need for more clear-eyed, unbiased reporting that boosts understanding of the dysfunction that is threatening our collective future. We’re working together to illuminate the efforts to help our government serve the people.”

The Fulcrum was conceptualized by Issue One Founder and CEO Nick Penniman who says, “Across the country, Americans are more eager than ever to fix our broken political system. The Fulcrum will highlight the people, organizations, and efforts that are doing this work. Renewing our republic for the next generation requires all hands on deck, and the Fulcrum will be the destination site for change-makers working to strengthen our democracy. Issue One has been proud to conceive and sponsor this project. We look forward to seeing it flourish under the leadership of veteran political journalists David Meyers and David Hawkings.”

The Fulcrum is funded by the Hewlett Foundation, the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, Arnold Ventures and the Lizzie and Jonathan M. Tisch Foundation.

You’re invited to visit our new website, and subscribe to our newsletter, on TheFulcrum.US.

Please connect with us:

Twitter – https://twitter.com/fulcrum_us

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheFulcrum.US

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/14036411

David Hawkings has been a reporter, editor and columnist focused on the policies, politics and people of Congress for three decades. Most recently he was the senior editor of CQ Roll Call, wrote the “Hawkings Here” column, and hosted a series of videos and podcasts dubbed “Roll Call Decoder.” He is a regular guest on Fox News, Federal News Radio and Newsy and has appeared as an analyst on CNN, MSNBC and NPR. Follow David Hawkings on Twitter.

David Meyers has spent the past two decades immersed in political media. He was most recently vice president of business operations for CQ Roll Call, and prior to that was the organization’s vice president of research and content development. Meyers served as director of StateTrack, managing editor for Roll Call, and ran the day-to-day newsroom operations and led development of RollCall.com. He served as president of the Washington Press Club Foundation from July 2013 through June 2015. Follow David Meyers on Twitter.

Nick Penniman is the founder and CEO of Issue One, the leading cross-partisan political reform group in Washington that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system. He co-authored “Nation on the Take” in 2016 and was previously the founder and executive director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Washington director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and publisher of Washington Monthly.

You can check out The Fulcrum site at www.thefulcrum.us/.

Participedia.net Launches New Website – Contribute Now!

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

The good folks at Participedia shared with us an exciting announcement – the launch of their newly revamped open collaboration website! The new Participedia.net site operates in a similar way as Wikipedia and is open for anyone to add resources related to civic engagement and democratic innovation. We encourage you to peruse the fresh site and contribute to it! You can read the announcement below and find the original version on Participedia’s Medium site here. And since we’re on the subject of collaborative efforts, we want to offer a final reminder to join for today’s free Confab call on using Slack for connecting and building a democratic movement – register here!

Crowdsourcing Participatory Democracy

Starting today, the @ParticipediaProject will use Medium as our primary news channel. We will share relevant content about participatory democracy around the world, generated by and for our community of academics, practitioners, and engaged citizens, and we invite you join us.

As our premiere Medium post we’re excited to announce the launch of our newly redesigned, open source, open edit website: Participedia.net! We’ll give you a sense of what the Participedia Project is all about and what makes it relevant in today’s global context, and how our open source and participatory approach to website design created new opportunities for collaboration and impact.

Known as ‘the Wikipedia of public participation’, Participedia content is created, edited, and accessed by anyone on the internet as part of the Creative Commons. Our new website is designed to inform and inspire policymakers, community organizers, and citizens. We are a resource for anyone interested in the new forms of civic engagement and democratic innovation being developed around the world.

The content published by our community of users reflects important global issues. The Citizens Assembly on Brexit case entry highlights the use of deliberative public engagement on a complex and polarizing issue, and Girls at Dhabas highlights a grassroots initiative that leverages social media to empower women and non-binary individuals in Pakistan. You too can help to collaboratively document the global phenomenon of public participation by joining the community at Participedia.net, where nearly 2000 entries have already been published and edited by close to 3000 users.

Our new website is being developed using open source, transparent, and participatory methods, and has created new opportunities for collaboration and experimentation that span political and geographic boundaries. For example, the Privy Council Office of Canada discovered and engaged with Participedia on Github, a platform for open source development where our new code and ongoing design process is available publicly. The resulting collaboration will use Participedia to document case studies of public engagement conducted by the Canadian Government. As well, student computer scientists in the UK connected with our developers while prototyping new tools for the platform using our open source API. In addition to other new features for the website that will soon be released, a tech-driven engagement plan for localization is in place that will connect and empower our community to translate site content into multiple languages, and share knowledge and resources in a more accessible and inclusive way.

Participedia is made possible by a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The project was founded by principal investigator Dr Mark Warren of the University of British Columbia and co-investigator Dr Archon Fung of Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. The new Participedia website was designed by the project’s Design & Technology Team, led by Amber Frid-Jimenez, Canada Research Chair in art and design technology and director of the Studio for Extensive Aesthetics at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Join Us!

Website: Participedia.net

Facebook: Facebook.com/Participedia

Twitter: @Participedia

Linkedin: Linkedin.com/company/Participedia

Github: Github.com/participedia

Medium: medium.com/@participediaproject

You can find the original version of this announcement on the Participedia Medium site at https://medium.com/@participediaproject/crowdsourcing-participatory-democracy-4ffe11116e84.

Don’t Miss Confab Call on Using Slack for D&D Movement Building

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

Friendly reminder about our upcoming Confab Call happening this Thursday with our friends at the Bridge Alliance to explore the use of the collaboration tool, Slack! We learn more about the development of the Bridge Alliance’s new joint project, the Democracy Movement Slack Forum, and discuss some best practices of the platform for movement building around civic action.

This free call will be on Thursday, June 6th from 2-3 pm Eastern, 11 am-12 pm Pacific. Register today so you don’t miss out on this engaging call!

For this Confab, we hope to explore how can Slack be used to further reduce silos amongst people doing dialogue and deliberation work and better cultivate connections to facilitate change. Our hope is that all of us who drive civic change can learn from other’s experiences with the platform to help our collective efforts thrive.

We will be joined by the Bridge Alliance and their partners, who will share more about the new Democracy Movement Slack being developed and how the experience has been so far. We’ll also ask others on the call to share their experiences or questions. The Confab will be an opportunity for those on the call who are also Bridge Alliance members to learn more about how to join the Slack group.

We’d love for folks who have used Slack or are still currently using it to join the call and share their experience. What are some of the benefits of using it and are there any challenges? This conversation will offer insight for a new effort underway on Slack by the Bridge Alliance, called the Democracy Movement Slack Forum; a co-creation with the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers, RepresentUS, and Unite America. This new project is in its developing stages now and is intended to be a transpartisan space for those in the Democracy Movement to communicate and collaborate.

Make sure you register today to secure your spot!

About Our Confab Co-Hosts

Bridge Alliance is a coalition of over 90 organizations dedicated to rejuvenating America. With each organization focusing on a different sector of the movement, our members represent a combined three million supporters in the burgeoning field of civic reform and civil discourse.

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

June Confab on Using Slack for D&D Movement Building

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

We are excited to co-host another Confab Call at the beginning of June, this time with our friends at the Bridge Alliance to explore the use of the collaboration tool, Slack. We will discuss the capabilities of the platform for movement building around civic action and learn more about the development of Bridge Alliance’s new joint project, the Democracy Movement Slack Forum.

This free call will be on Thursday, June 6th from 2-3 pm Eastern, 11 am-12 pm Pacific. Register today so you don’t miss out on this engaging call!

Slack is a collaboration platform that streamlines communication amongst members by consolidating text, email, group and instant messaging into one app. For the last few years, the platform has quickly grown in popularity as a great tool for connecting individuals and driving action. For this Confab, we hope to explore how can Slack be used to further reduce silos amongst people doing dialogue and deliberation work and better cultivate connections to facilitate change. Our hope is that all of us who drive civic change can learn from other’s experiences with the platform to help our collective efforts thrive.

Make sure you register today to secure your spot!

About Our Confab Co-Hosts

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

National Civic League Publishes New Edition of Civic Index

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

One of the nation’s oldest civic engagement organizations, The National Civic League – also an NCDD member org, recently released the fourth edition of The Civic Index, a set of guidelines developed over the last 30 years to measure the civic capital of a community. Civic capital measures, “the formal and informal relationships, networks and capacities that communities use to make decisions collaboratively and solve problems” and The Civic Index offers the framework for assessing these factors and relationships to determine a community’s civic strength. You can download a free version of the NCL Civic Index by clicking here. Read more in the announcement below and find the original version on the NCL site here.

The League’s Civic Index: Measuring Your Community’s Capacity to Solve Problems and Thrive

What makes some communities better able than others to solve the tough social, political, economic or physical challenges they face? This was a question the National Civic League set out to answer over 30 years ago. On-the-ground research revealed a set of factors that we call civic capital — the formal and informal relationships, networks and capacities that communities use to make decisions collaboratively and solve problems.

Somewhat like social capital, but not to be confused with financial capital, civic capital can be found in all sorts of communities, not just the most affluent, educated or advantaged. While myriad other factors contribute to community progress, civic capital is the core factor identified by the National Civic League as the primary explanation for long-term community success.

At the National Civic League, we know of many communities with an abundant supply of civic capital. The All-America City program has recognized over 500 of these communities during the past 69 years. All have varying degrees of civic engagement, collaboration and leadership, and have been able to tackle tough issues in a sustainable manner–by bringing everyone to the table and creating equity.

Earlier this year the National Civic League released the fourth edition of the Civic Index, a self-assessment tool consisting of a set of questions that provide a framework for discussing and measuring a community’s civic capital. Since it was first developed in 1986, many communities have used the Civic Index to better understand their civic strengths and to identify gaps or areas in need of further attention, soliciting community input to create a baseline measure of their civic capital and monitor progress over time as they work to enhance their internal capacity.

The Seven Components of Civic Capital

The Civic Index describes the seven components of civic capital, provides examples of each, lists the 32 questions that are used to gauge each component and provides ideas on how to use the index. Here’s a synopsis of these seven components.

Engaged Residents: Residents play an active role in making decisions and civic affairs.
Inclusive Community Leadership: The community actively cultivates and supports leaders from diverse backgrounds and with diverse perspectives
Collaborative Institutions: Communities with good civic capital have regular collaboration among the government, business, nonprofit and other sectors, as well as structures in place that facilitate such collaboration.
Embracing Diversity and Equity: Communities with healthy civic capital recognize and celebrate their diversity. They strive for equity in services, support and engagement.
Authentic Communication: Healthy communities need credible, civic-minded sources of information presented in a way that residents can use.
Culture of Engagement: Involvement by residents, businesses, nonprofits and other stakeholders in every aspect of civic affairs should be part of local culture—an expectation, not an afterthought.
Shared Vision and Values: Communities with shared values and civic pride have a common foundation for addressing public matters.

Summary

Nearly a hundred years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis, a one-time member of the League’s executive committee, called states “laboratories of democracy.” That mantle has now been passed to the local level, as cities, counties, towns and other local communities create innovations and regional or national networks to tackle such issues as climate change, health, education and economic prosperity.

At the same time, local governments cannot solve problems on their own. As Bruce Katz points out in The New Localism, community problem-solving depends on “multi-sectoral relationships,” with government often serving as a convener or catalyst. What happens next depends on the civic capacity of the particular locality. It is the communities with civic capital — the full engagement and collaboration of its residents, businesses, nonprofits and other stakeholders–that have the resources and persistence to successfully address difficult issues and build a sustainable future.

For a free copy of the National Civic League’s Civic Index, please visit www.nationalcivicleague.org/resource-center.

You can find the original version of this announcement on the National Civic League site at www.nationalcivicleague.org/the-leagues-civic-index-measuring-your-communitys-capacity-to-solve-problems-and-thrive/.

JPD Seeks Submissions on Upcoming Special Issue

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

The Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is currently looking for contributions on an upcoming special issue, Citizens, Media and Politics in Challenging Times: Perspectives on the Deliberative Quality of Communication. JPD is a peer-reviewed journal on deliberative democracy and is a collaboration between the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) and the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). We encourage folks in our network to learn more about the opportunity in the post below. Manuscripts need to be submitted by July 31st and decisions will be made this November with the goal of a 2020 publication date. Read the announcement below and find the original information on the IAP2 site here.

Journal of Public Deliberation: Call for Papers for Special Issue

Journal of Public Deliberation is a peer review, open access journal with the principal objective of synthesizing the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the multi-disciplinary field of “deliberative democracy.”

Manuscripts due on 31 July 2019.

Growing anti-immigration attitudes, rising nationalist tendencies, landslide victories of populist figures as well as the dissolution of national and supranational entities – these are just some of the multiple political and societal challenges western democracies are facing nowadays. These challenges have been said to affect the way citizens, the media and political actors communicate among and with each other. More specifically, concerns about the deliberative quality of these communications have been put forward. While this observation has so far been corroborated by a series of isolated studies, which produced not more than a few islands of analysis, an integrative and comprehensive perspective on the deliberative qualities of citizens’, journalists’, and politicians’ communication is yet missing.

The special issue Citizens, Media and Politics in Challenging Times: Perspectives on the Deliberative Quality of Communication thus addresses this gap in the literature by systematically bringing together different strands of research on the deliberative qualities of citizens’, journalists’, and politicians’ communication. The special issue thus aims at providing an integrative and comprehensive picture on modern political communication in times western democracies are facing a multitude of disruptive challenges. Theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions focusing on the deliberative qualities of citizens’, journalists’, and politicians’ communication are welcome. Topics and questions of interest include, but are not limited to:

The deliberative quality of political debates: To which extent do political debates come close to the genuine benchmarks of deliberation? How deliberative is political communication transmitted via different channels (e.g., media types, media formats) as well as by different actors (e.g., journalists, politicians)? How is the deliberative quality of these debates perceived by the public?
Determinants and consequences of citizens’ deliberation: Which role do arguments and scientific evidence play in promoting the quality of citizens’ deliberation? Does civic deliberation indeed result in “better” outcomes? To which extent is civic deliberation positively related to political participation?
Uncivil online communication and deliberative interventions: To what degree does the deliberative quality of user comments reflect the deliberative quality of the news coverage? How does online deliberation via user comments develop over time? How do users interact when encountering dissonant viewpoints? To which extent are online civic interventions a panacea for disruptive and uncivil online behavior?

Submission Guidelines

Submissions need to speak to the deliberative democracy and democratic innovations literature.

When preparing your submission, please check the JPD website for guidelines on style and paper length: https://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/author_instructions.html

Please submit your manuscript to the following email address: si.jpd@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

Questions about the special issue shall be directed to the guest editors Christiane Grill and Anne Schäfer under the email address: si.jpd@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

The deadline for manuscripts to be considered for the special issue is July 31, 2019. Manuscripts will be peer reviewed and a decision rendered until November 2019 with a target publication of the issue in 2020.

Editorial Information

Guest Editor: Christiane Grill Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim

Guest Editor: Anne Schäfer Department of Political Science, University of Mannheim

Join in as The Public Square Academy Launches Beta Group

Posted on May 2, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

The Public Square Academy, a modern civics education and service club, recently announced the launch of their new beta group and they are currently seeking participants to join! NCDD member Michael Freedman shared this opportunity to join this new beta group which seeks to explore journalism’s impact on society, improve how we engage with the media, and provide a space for folks to build deeper relationships with each other. The group will test the short, interactive program, Media Meal Planning, which works to help you improve your personal media consumption practices. You can learn more in the announcement below and find the original version on The Public Square Academy’s site here. We encourage interested folks to sign up ASAP, as the group is starting soon and will run from May 13 to June 7th, 2019.

Join Our Beta

At The Public Square Academy, we believe that a democracy is only as good as the citizens who care for it. We support individuals on their journeys to becoming educated, empowered, and engaged citizens serving the greater common good.

PSA is a modern civics education and service club for today’s fast-paced, tech-enabled world. We would like to invite you to participate in the beta program of The Public Square Academy’s interactive subscription.

Join with other Public Square Members to tackle issues affecting our democracy, our society, and our communities. The Academy is a team-based approach to self-improvement and for the common good. Each month our learning teams focus on important topics, engage in challenges, and craft solutions to share with the community.

Our Beta group will explore Media Meal Planning, a short, interactive program to help you improve your personal media consumption practices. Learn about the fundamental role of Journalism in society, what practices make for good reporting, and how editorial policies shape what you read. Working in small groups, you will participate in a virtual Pub Crawl, to test develop your criteria for selecting and judging media outlets. The results of this challenge will be a collective rating of media outlets to be distributed broadly. Come join the fun!

Program Objectives:

You will become more savvy media consumers, selecting higher quality media, outlets, and journalists.
You will be more efficient in staying up to date on current events and news – freeing up your time for other pursuits.
You will become better informed, which will get you invited to all the right dinner parties!
You will have fun and make new connections while learning!
And… maybe we can raise the level of intelligent, civil dialog on the planet! Even just a bit.

Our beta group will run from May 13 to June 7th, 2019. We will send you more details on May 10th.

Expect to spend an hour or so per week on your own study, and participate in a weekly video conference meeting with your learning team.

You can learn more about the beta group on The Public Square Academy site at https://thepublicsquare.academy/.

Listen Now to Tech Tuesday Recording Featuring Ethelo!

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

Last week, we held our first Tech Tuesday of 2019 and took a deep dive into the participatory decision-making platform, Ethelo! We were joined by 40 participants as founder and CEO of Ethelo, John Richardson, shared the ins and outs of this civic tech tool that empowers groups to collaborate on complex challenges. If you weren’t able to make the call, we encourage you to listen to the recording of it here.

We first learned about Ethelo back in 2014 when the platform was still in its beta form and NCDD members had the opportunity to test it out then. It is phenomenal to see how robust Ethelo has evolved over the last five years and we’re grateful to John for showing us its new capacities!

On the call, John shared how the collaborative decision-making platform inherently brings in participants’ values into the process, allows space for people to weigh priorities, engage with each other, and take action on complex issues. Ethelo is great for any size group or organization and can be applied in business settings like project management and strategic planning, and in community applications like policy-making and participatory budgeting. We learned about an exciting new development on the call – Ethelo is merging with the budget simulator software tool, Citizen Budget (used by 1/3 of the Canadian municipalities) and will now offer the Citizen Budget tools as part of the Ethelo platform. John shares a special offer for NCDD members that we encourage our network to utilize, but you have to listen to the recording to find out the details!

Here are some of our favorite takeaways from the Tech Tuesday call:

Ethelo started as a non-profit organization in 2011 with a vision to improve democratic policy-making using Internet technology.
The platform gives participants a meaningful role in the decision-making process, enabling them to evaluate options, discuss and add ideas, weigh priorities and do trade-offs.
What makes Ethelo unique is the voting function and ability to prioritize the options in order of support (AND with multiple visual options on the results)
Ethelo brings together a decision-making framework where participants apply the same criteria to whatever is being evaluated and prioritize the criteria (this brings in peoples’ values to the process).

THANK YOU to John and everyone who joined this call! We recorded the whole presentation if you were unable to join us, which you can access here. We had several excellent questions offered in the chat, which you can find the transcript of here.

To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/tech-tuesdays. Archives access is a benefit of being an NCDD member, so ensure your membership is up-to-date (or click here to join). If you have an idea for a future Tech Tuesday event, please email keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org with your great ideas!

PBP Releases New Data Map on Participatory Budgeting

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Keiva Hummel

The Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD member org, has developed a new map of the participatory budgeting (PB) processes happening across the US and Canada, both current and past efforts. PB is a process in which community members democratically vote on a portion of the public budget, and as the map shows, the process has been growing rapidly across the country. We encourage you to learn more in the article below, view the live map here, and find the original version of this piece on PBP’s site here.

Speaking of cool tech tools, make sure you register for our FREE April Tech Tuesday happening in just a few hours (from 2-3pm Eastern, 11am-12pm Pacific), where we will explore the new participatory decision-making platform, Ethelo. You won’t want to miss it – register ASAP!

New Data-Driven Map Shows Spread of Participation in Democracy

As we celebrate the first 30 years of participatory budgeting (PB) in the world and the first 10 years of the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), we reflect on how far and wide PB has spread–and how it continues to grow! We’re thrilled to introduce a new tool to help us look back as we plan for the next 30+ years of PB. And so we’re introducing a map of PB across the U.S. and Canada. Each dot on the map represents a place where democracy has been deepened by bringing people together to decide together how to invest public resources in their community. (Below is a screenshot of the map, but make sure you view the real interactive map here!)

How can you get the most data out of this map?

Try playing with the “widgets” located to the right of the map that visualize different classes of data.

By default all of the processes show up first but you can select any particular year you are interested in.
You can also view a count of how many PB processes of a particular sort took place within the portion of the map you are viewing. For example, you can find out that in 2018 there were 56 PB city-wide, county-wide, and district-level processes in the US and Canada–our biggest year for PB yet!
Or, try selecting one year and zooming in to your own neighborhood to find active or pending PB processes in your community. If you click on a dot you can get more info about the process, such as how large the budget was, how many voters turned out, and where to find its website.

The map is linked to the database that PBP maintains to try to track every PB process in the U.S. and Canada. Inevitably some PB processes aren’t on our radar.

If you know that PB exists somewhere not seen on our map, or you have additional data about a PB process, please fill out this form to let us know!

If we listen closely, we hear messages from this data.

This data sheds light on larger questions, such as what is the relationship between the size of PB budgets and the number of people who participate? Looking at PBP data on processes in counties, cities, and urban districts, we find a positive correlation between the size of the PB budget per person and the number of people who take part in a PB vote (r=.22, n=245). In other words, where officials make a stronger commitment to funding PB, more people take part in the process–all the more reason to continue growing PB!

This year, as we reflect on the first 30 years of PB and the first ten years of PBP, we also look ahead to filling out more of this map. Will you join us as we celebrate and vision – by joining us at our Anniversary Benefit on May 23rd or becoming a PB Amplifier?

You can find the original version of this article on The Participatory Budgeting Project site at www.participatorybudgeting.org/pb-map/.

Civic Studies

An intellectual community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to building the emerging field of civic studies

Category Archives: collaborative action