All-Expenses Trip to Train on NIFI’s Online Deliberation Tool

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want our members to know that the Kettering Foundation and National Issues Forums Institute are offering an amazing opportunity for NIF moderators to attend an in-person training on their new online deliberation tool, Common Ground for Action, this May 18-19 in Ohio. Kettering is generously offering to foot the while bill, but you must register by April 29! Read more below or find the original announcement here.

“We need some way to be able to take National Issues Forums online.”

NIF moderators and conveners have been telling us this for years.

Well, we heard you.

NIFI and Kettering Foundation have been collaborating with a working group of NIF members for over two years on an online version of the NIF forums we all know and love. It’s called Common Ground for Action, and it’s now available to all NIF moderators to use anytime.

Best of all, there’s no technical mumbo jumbo – CGA runs in any web browser, and has a simple, intuitive design. If you’re an experienced in-person moderator, all you’ll need is a little practice with the platform.

And to do that practice, we’re offering a special in-person moderator prep workshop at Kettering Foundation May 18-19. We have 15 spots available for the workshop, and Kettering takes care of all travel and lodging expenses as well as meals. These 15 spots are available on a first-come, first-serve basis, so register right away if you’d like to attend. REGISTER NOW!

Once you register, we’ll be in touch shortly with instructions on how to make travel arrangements through the foundation, as well as an agenda and prep materials. All travel arrangements must be made by Apr. 30, so registration will close Apr. 29!

This workshop will run from noon, Monday May 18 – noon, Tuesday May 19. We’ll be splitting into small groups to give everyone the maximum opportunity to practice moderating, and we’ll have time for lots of feedback and questions. In addition to ensuring you master the technology, we’ll also be focusing on how moderators can make these forums as deliberative as possible.

If you have any questions, email Amy Lee at alee[at]kettering[dot]org, the Kettering Foundation program officer who developed the platform with NIFI.

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/attend-person-workshop-about-using-new-online-deliberation-tool-common-ground-action.

The Future of Civic Tech: Open Data and Open Gov’ts

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We recently saw a fascinating interview that NCDD supporting member Della Rucker recently published on her website EngagingCities that we wanted to share. Della interviewed the head of a key civic tech company, Accela, on the results of a recent paper on trends in civic technology, and the conversation is quite educational. We encourage you to read the interview below or find the original here.

How big is Civic Tech and where is it going? One on one with Mark Headd of Accela

In late 2014, Accela released a white paper with the International Data Corporation that quantifies the potential scope, value, and growth potential of the Civic Technology field. Accela’s Developer Evangelist, Mark Headd, appears frequently at EngagingCities through his thought-provoking personal blog, civic.io.

I caught up with Mark a couple of weeks ago to talk about the present and future of civic technology. We touched on the message that open data sends about a city, the unique challenges that smaller cities face in opening data, and the role of technology vendors in helping make that happen.

My thanks to Mark for the great conversation and to Accela for the white paper, which you can access here.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Della Rucker, Managing Editor, EngagingCities: First of all, tell me a little bit, in your own words, about Accela and why it is that Accela commissioned the study that IDC did?

Mark Headd, Developer Evangelists, Accela: Well, Accela is a company that provides software to governments in support of their business licensing, land management, permitting, food safety inspection, service requests, and so on, so we have a whole suite of software that helps government do the job of governing,

Our flagship product is the Accela Civic Platform. It’s used by hundreds of governments around the world. Several years ago, the decision was made to engineer it so that there was an API that would provide access to the platform so you could connect third party applications to it.

I think Accela very rightly could be described as a company that saw the potential of civic technology before it was cool. Before it was widely accepted as being cool.

We very much bet our hand on the fact that third parties, that civic software developers, civic startups, and others would want to build things on top of our platform. Because of the things that governments use Accela’s platform for, our platform is chock full of really valuable information. The transactions that our platform supports – business licensing, permitting, all of these things – are critical functions of government.

One of the things that attracted me to Accela was that the fact that we can open up this kind of data and support transactional interactions on our platform through an API and through publishing open data. It’s been really exciting.

The report is a complement to that earlier investment in the platform around civic technology. It looks at, where are we going? What does the future of civic technology look like?

We’re not the only ones who do this. The Knight Foundation did recently, too. The reason we did it was because we wanted to articulate one of the reasons why, several years ago, we started to position ourselves to be ready for this trend in civic technology. I think universally, the outlook for the development of civic technology is pretty bright.

Della: Was there anything in there that surprised you, that confirmed something that you were already sort of aware of but hadn’t fully seen documented? Was there anything in there that particularly was revelatory for you?

Mark: Well, certainly the size of the impact, which is in the billions, to quantify that impact, I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a really good outcome of the report.

Like anything else, predicting the future is difficult. To me, that’s the primary takeaway, that this is something we’re going to continue to see. Governments are going to start investing heavily in this area. It’s an area that’s going to start to mature. To me, that’s something that I think will resonate with the people, that I think most of them innately had this sense that it was going to mature and going to really start to solidify.

Even to folks that aren’t in the civic technology field, I think this would probably wake some folks up and really help to shine a light on what civic technology is and how it’s changing what governments do and the potential future benefit for that.

Della: The report does a good job at a high level of identifying a lot of the broad factors that are driving governments’ need, their impetus to be investing in civic technology. That ranges all the way from demands on their own budgets and the need to increase internal efficiency, to how citizens increasingly prefer, and assume that they should be able, to interact with a government of any kind, whether local or state or larger.

What do you see as the current and near future barriers? What’s keeping this from being a full‑blown thing already, for lack of a better word?

Mark: Well, I talked about this a little bit at the Code for America Summit last year. Open data is a really critical part of all this because it’s usually one of the core ingredients that we see in civic technology solutions. But, even where it’s not directly used, when governments publish even simple open data, the government is essentially saying, “We’re ready. We’re ready to collaborate.”

That kind of an expression is critical, because what’s unique about civil technology is that it’s something that’s not wholly in a government. It requires people outside of a government. It requires citizen engagement. It requires a new way of partnering.

Governments are able to articulate that they are ready to collaborate and willing to collaborate through opening data. Open data is sort of the expression of that intent; without that you have a big impediment to the technology. The ability of government to collaborate in a new way, that’s what makes civic technology special.

If we look at who’s doing open data right now, it tends to be larger cities. More and more of the larger cities are doing it and fewer of the small‑to‑mid‑sized cities are doing it.

If you just look at the city level, there’s a stark contrast between big cities, the biggest cities in the country. If you look at the 20 biggest cities in the country, the 10 biggest cities in the country, I think nine out of 10 are doing open data.

If you look at the cities that have populations between 100,000 and 500,000, and there are a lot more of those cities in this country than big cities, the minority of them are doing any sort of work on open data. We need more governments, particularly municipal and local governments, to embrace open data, even if they’re not releasing vast troves of data because they may not have them.

If you’re a city of 75,000, you may not have a vast trove of data. But by starting down the road of open data, you have expressed a willingness to work with people. You’ve expressed a willingness to collaborate in a new way and that’s an essential ingredient to civic technology. In my mind, that’s one of the biggest impediments.

Della: That’s intriguing because there’s a technical component or maybe a functional component to that. First of all, a smaller city typically has relatively minimal internal staff. And often they’ve got less exposure to broader trends in the world because they’re trying to manage the issues of their community with a very shoestring budget.

But there’s also the issue of, do they have the technology? Can they find the technologists or the technology‑savvy people within their communities, or that they can access in one form or another, to help make that happen? Do you have any thoughts on how these smaller communities where this need is so prevalent may be able to start overcoming some of those barriers?

Mark: I think one of the things these smaller governments can and should do is they need to start insisting that their vendors are building open data – or the ability to support civic technology, if you want to think about it more generically – into their products. One of the things we do at Accela, we try and educate our customers on civic technology, what it is, and how they can publish data, how they can leverage our platform to support civic technology.

I think that’s critical that the vendor community start to do this more, but to some extent they’re not willing to do it unless their customers demand it. I think that’s something we’ll start to see.

Whether they’ll work with groups like ICMA and National League of Cities and others who pool their influence, I think we’ll probably start to see that as well. But, that’s something they need to do.

Smaller governments, more than others perhaps, rely on outside vendors for technology expertise. It’s critical that vendors, and we’re one of them, start to walk the walk on civic technology.

Della: But it’s not in the vendor’s self‑interest typically to push the clients to take on something that the client doesn’t have any clue how to do yet, and I’m overstating that obviously.

Mark: Well, if we’re right that the market for government civic technology is north of $6 billion in spending, then even self‑interested vendors are going to see the benefit of that. They’re going to want to get with the program because it is in their interest to do it. I don’t think vendors who do that are acting in a particularly self‑interested way.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing, right? Companies have shareholders and their responsibility is to maximize the return for their shareholders. Also the government is getting the benefit. I don’t think those two things need to be at odds.

I think we’re approaching the place where vendors are acting in a predictable self‑interested way, also providing a benefit to their customers. It’s in vendors’ interest to make their customers look good and be successful.

Certainly it’s in our interest to do that. I don’t think that’s at cross purposes with governments wanting to make their jobs easier by being able to leverage civic technology more efficiently.

I think we’re coming to a point here, where it is beneficial for governments to get involved with civic technology and support it more. I think it will actually be profitable for companies to do as well.

Della: I appreciate you articulating that so clearly. Let me ask one more question and that is, we have here in this report a pretty concise picture of the existing and near‑term state of the broader market.

When we’re having a conversation like this two years from now, whether it’s at a Code for America summit, whether it’s a conversation like this, if you try to put on your prognosticator hat here, what do you think we might be talking about at that point, a couple of years from now?

Mark: Well, I don’t know if I can give you an accurate prediction two years from now. I think we’ll still be talking about open data. I think we’ll be talking more and more about open standards, standards for data. I’m optimistic that we’ll have many more of them in two years because they actually make it easier for governments to adopt civic technology.

I don’t know all of the things we’ll be talking about, but I guarantee you in two years we’re still talking about open data and, increasingly, we’re talking about standards for open data that make it easier for vendors, civic start‑ups, and even civic hackers to build things for one government that can be easily ported to another government without a lot of difficulties.

Della: That’s such a critical component. First of all, with the multi‑pronged ecosystem around this issue, there has to be a common language amongst them. Certainly, that’s starting to develop, but that’s something that, I think, is going to become more and more crucial.

That’s also, I suspect, going to take away some of the fear. Essentially, there’s a little bit of a fear of the unknown for a lot of governments and, probably, vendors for whom this is new territory.

I think that’s so insightful of you to put your finger on standards, which sounds boring, but that’s such a crucial piece for making this something that people from wherever within this system can transition into and make it effective. There’s a functional side, but there’s also a cultural side that

Mark: I don’t know that I can emphasize it more strongly than to say that the standards are what are going to take civic technology to the next level. The recognition that open data is more than just this raw material, even though it’s that, it’s more than that.

It’s a way for a government to advertise that they are ready to collaborate in new ways. To me, that’s one of those foundational agreements for civic technology. You can’t do this without governments making that articulation. Especially smaller governments.

Cities like New York and Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston – they’re big cities, so the data that they release, all on its own, is compelling because it involves so many people. Smaller governments don’t have that same kind of data. It’s more than just the data itself.

It’s a government’s way of advertising to the world that they’re ready to collaborate in a new way. If you don’t have that, I don’t think you can do civic technology correctly.

Della: At some point, it would be interesting to have a follow‑on conversation with you, maybe we can pull in some other folks, to talk about what is starting to emerge in the smaller markets. We’ve all heard a lot about Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, et cetera. That might be a really interesting follow‑up conversation.

Mark: Sure. Absolutely.

Della: Thank you so much, Mark, for taking the time to talk.

Mark: I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

You can find the original version of this EngagingCities interview at www.engagingcities.com/article/how-big-civic-tech-and-where-it-going-one-one-mark-headd-accela.

Register for Frontiers of Democracy 2015, June 25-27!

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

It’s time to start gearing up again for this year’s Frontiers of Democracy conference in Boston, MA this June 25th-27th! This anual conference has become a key civic infrastructure where leaders in the D&D field and democratic thought to gather to explore ideas at the forefront of advancing democracy, and we highly recommend you join us there!

Frontiers of Democracy is sponsored by Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, the Democracy Imperative, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, all of which have NCDD members in their leadership.

The organizers describe the conference this way:

While powerful forces work against justice and civil society around the world, committed and innovative people strive to understand and improve citizens’ engagement with government, with community, and with each other. Every year, Frontiers of Democracy convenes some of these practitioners and scholars for organized discussions and informal interactions.

Topics include deliberative democracy, civil and human rights, social justice, community organizing and development, civic learning and political engagement, the role of higher education in democracy, Civic Studies, media reform and citizen media production, civic technology, civic environmentalism, and common pool resource management. Devoted to new issues and innovative solutions, this conference is truly at the frontiers of democracy.

You can learn more by visiting the conference website at http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/frontiers and register here.

We know this conference will be a great space for NCDD members to be, and we hope to see you there!

New Research on Public Engagement Practitioners

Posted on April 21, 2015 by NCDD Community

This blog post was submitted by NCDD supporting member Caroline W. Lee, associate professor of Sociology at Lafayette College and author of Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry…

There has been a recent explosion of research interest in public engagement practitioners, much of which uses qualitative research methods and ethnography to capture the rich practices and processes in the field (see, for example, Oliver Escobar’s work here). In this vein, I wanted to share with readers of the blog about a symposium on public engagement professionals I participated in at the International Political Science Association conference in Toronto in July.

Organized by Canadian and French researchers Laurence Bherer, Mario Gauthier, Alice Mazeaud, Magalie Nonjon and Louis Simard in collaboration with the Institut du Nouveau Monde, the symposium was unique in that it brought together international scholars of the professionalization of public participation with leading practitioners of public participation from the US, UK, and Canada like Carolyn Lukensmeyer.

You can find the program schedule and more details about how to access the papers here. Topics covered participatory methods and strategies in a variety of public and private contexts in North and South America and Europe.

The organization of the symposium made use of participatory practices such as Open Space and a dialogic round table format bringing the scholars and practitioners together to comment on each others’ work. There was honest discussion at the symposium over the areas where practitioners and researchers might collaborate with and learn more from each other, and the areas where the goals and aims of researchers and practitioners may diverge. Of course, there was also acknowledgment that some researchers are also practitioners, although there seemed to be near universal rejection of the term “pracademic”!

Despite some tough criticisms of the results of participation efforts on the part of scholars, practitioners were extremely generous and open to debate. Simon Burall from INVOLVE and Peter MacLeod from MASS LBP in Canada both inviting interested researchers to study their organizations, practices, and processes in-depth (grad students, take note of this amazing opportunity!). Public engagement practitioners are eager to talk about the larger politics and micropractices of the field—even when some of the symposium attendees acknowledged that being subjects of ethnographic study was an odd and sometimes uncomfortable experience.

Despite the overview of exciting international research on participation, I left the conference with the sense that our work thus far has just scratched the surface of what it is like to be a democracy practitioner in a world of deep inequalities. The opportunities for additional research in the field and dialogue between researchers and practitioners are expanding—and even more essential at a time when participatory practices are proliferating across the globe.

For those interested in studies of the impacts of the public engagement field, many of the researchers at the IPSA Symposium have books on participation and deliberation coming out in 2015. Jason Chilvers has a volume coming out from Routledge with Matthew Kearnes entitled Remaking Participation: Science, Environment, and Emergent Publics. Genevieve Fuji Johnson’s book, Democratic Illusion: Deliberative Democracy in Canadian Public Policy, includes comparative case studies of “best case” deliberative efforts and their sometimes disappointing outcomes.

My own book, Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry, focuses primarily on participation professionals in the U.S. and how they manage D&D processes that are increasingly popular at times of economic crisis and retrenchment. For more on the prospects of all kinds of democratic participation in a landscape of economic and social inequalities, see my edited volume with Michael McQuarrie and Edward Walker, Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation.

The work of Laurence Bherer, Alice Mazeaud, and Magalie Nonjon presented at the conference looks more broadly at participation professionals in Europe and Canada, and is a valuable complement to prior work focused on Australian practitioners by Hendriks and Carson. Bherer is even organizing an edited volume with Mario Gauthier and Louis Simard on participation professionals in North America and Europe. The new French-language journal Participations has many articles that should be of interest to blog readers, as does the English-language Italian journal Partecipazione & Conflitto.

Do you know of new research on the growth of public engagement in the 21^st century? If so, please share links in the comments!

Ten Pointers for More Inclusive Public Engagement

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

Our friends at the Orton Family Foundation recently shared a list of 10 great tips for inclusive engagement that we wanted to share with our members. Orton’s tips come from lessons learned through their engagement work, especially with their Community Heart & Soul program – which is detailed in the full post. But the list was so good, we wanted to make sure our network saw it. Check it out below or read Orton’s full post here.

Top 10 Tips for Inclusive Engagement

1. There’s no such thing as the “general public”

Learn who your community is (its demographics, stakeholders, and networks) and how residents get their information. This knowledge is vital to designing effective community engagement and communication activities about your effort. Identify the key connectors who can help you reach these groups. At the same time, remember that no one person speaks for an entire group. See our Community Network Analysis Tool.

2. Keep your “promise” to community members

Be clear about how resident input will be used in your project (i.e. how much influence they will actually have). Be transparent about how residents’ input is used and what actions will result.

3. Go to the people

Change up how you gather community input. Go where people hang out, whether it’s physical gathering spaces, like a coffee shop or a brew pub, the senior center or a little league game, even online spaces.

Examples – In Damariscotta, Maine local organizers went to the town’s hugely popular annual Pumpkin Fest & Regatta, set up a booth, and used candy corn voting in jars to help with early priority setting. In the North Fork Valley, Colorado the Heart & Soul team held an event at the local brew pub and gathered people’s input on coasters—and from those coasters folks were lifting pints of Love It or Leave it Ale, brewed specially for the event!

4. Spread the word

Create a communications plan that includes project branding, messaging, and tactics for persuasively talking about your project. Use communication channels and messengers that have connections with who you are trying to reach.

Example – Victor, Idaho had a community wide Heart & Soul logo contest to help shape the brand and give it local flavor. The result: “Victor: What’s It to You?”

5. Ask for people’s personal stories

To draw in new voices, the Foundation begins Heart & Soul projects by gathering people’s stories about their town. Stories allow folks to express their experiences and opinions in their own words, without needing to understand planning or technical jargon. You’ll hear from people you wouldn’t have otherwise, and build new bridges and relationships through the process.

Example – In Biddeford, Maine story gatherers went to the local boxing ring and cigar shop, fishing areas and local diners to collect people’s stories of Biddeford. And they shared them in a public event with hundreds of folks as part of rebuilding pride in their town.

6. Understand the power dynamics

Be sensitive to parts of your population who may be uncomfortable participating (e.g. newcomers who come from a culture where participation was unsafe, people whose views have been marginalized in past community efforts). Find a safe way to talk with those groups about their concerns regarding participation and let them tell you how best to engage them.

Example – In Cortez, Colorado Heart & Soul project leaders communicated directly with the Ute Mountain Ute leadership to understand how to successfully bring information to the reservation and to listen to their concerns and advice. Through this listening and trust building, the tribe members became engaged in designing public art for the City’s southern gateway.

7. Engage in their interests

For some groups you may have to participate in something that matters to them first to make a connection.

Example – In Starksboro, Vermont our project began with cleanup activities because the first thing on peoples’ minds was to clean up the neighborhood. They weren’t talking about the future. After working together – accomplishing something – we were ready to engage in a broader conversation.

8. Think about the details

When hosting a community event, think through how you can make it more inclusive. Carefully consider the most convenient timing and location depending on whom you’re looking to engage. Provide childcare so young families can attend. Make sure to offer food. And consider transportation needs and whether a translator or facilitator could make a difference.

9. Use technology…if it’s a fit

There are many great new ways to engage people, such as online forums, cell phone voting, and social media. These tools can help make your efforts more inclusive if they are a fit with the crowd you are trying to reach. While not everyone has computer access, many more people have smart phones. But remember, good, old word of mouth and personal connections are still the best ways to get people to participate.

10. Make it fun!

When bringing people together for any meaningful discussion you are also creating the potential for a community building moment. Include lots of activities that make yours a real community event (e.g. local music and food, potlucks, poetry slams, and art exhibits).

Example – Golden, Colorado held a series of neighborhood block parties where you could have your pet checked out by a vet; get a bike tune up and a BBQ lunch while also getting project information, sharing stories and participating in a visual preference survey.

And don’t forget to celebrate your achievements with the community! It’s invaluable to mark your progress and honor your volunteers publicly.

You can find the original version of this Orton Family Foundation blog post by visiting www.orton.org/blog/top-ten-tips-inclusive-engagem.

See How PB Works Behind the Scenes on Apr. 18 in NYC

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

There is a unique opportunity that the Participatory Budgeting Project – an NCDD member organization – is offering to folks in NYC this week. PBP is running yet another participatory budgeting voting process in NYC this week, and is inviting folks to catch a behind-the-scenes look at the actual process. The next chance is on April 18th, so if you’re in the city, check it out! Learn more in the PBP announcement below or find the original one here.

We would like to invite you to join us at voting sites across NYC between April 11 – 19 to see PB in action!

As part of this year-long process, residents of the 24 Council Districts participating in this year’s PB cycle have gotten together to discuss local needs, brainstorm ideas, and develop proposals to help meet those needs. Now it’s time to decide through a public vote which of those projects should get funded with our tax dollars!

Find out where to vote on the Council’s website!

Regardless of whether you live in a participating district, please join our staff at the following vote sites, to get a behind the scenes look at democracy in action:

Saturday, April 11
- 11a-1p – District 8: Harlem RBI, 1960 1st Avenue at 101st Street, Harlem

Saturday, April 18
- 11a-1p – District 39: Windsor Terrace Library, 160 East 5th St at Ft. Hamilton Pkwy, Brooklyn
- 12-2p – District 3: LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th St at 7th Avenue, Manhattan
- 3-5p – District 38, Sunset Park Library Saturday, 5108 4th Ave at 51st Street, Brooklyn

Please RSVP to – info[at]participatorybudgeting[dot]org

APRIL 11-19 PBNYC 2015 GET OUT THE VOTE! from PBP on Vimeo.

Even if you can’t join us you can find out if your district is participating and where to vote on the Council’s website!

You’ll also find out what’s on the ballot, see a map of proposed projects, pledge to vote, and volunteer to help with the Participatory Budgeting vote.

Love and democracy,
PBP

You can find the original version of this PBP blog post at www.participatorybudgeting.org/blog/join-us-for-voting-in-pbnyc.

Should Leadership Be Rank-Based or Peer-Based?

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We wanted to share an interesting interview that the Kettering Foundation, an NCDD organizational member, recently shared on its blog. In it, several NCDD members discuss the ins and outs of what leadership looks like in different situations – which ones are more appropriate and when? We encourage you to read the interview below or to find the original post here.

A Conversation on the Nature of Leadership

As a topic of inquiry and self-help, leadership has been covered from many angles and by many disciplines. To learn more about leadership, former Kettering Foundation research assistant, Jack Becker, sat down at a recent Kettering Foundation research exchange with Tina Nabatchi, Martín Carcasson, and Jeffrey Nielson.

All three have written either directly or peripherally on leadership. Their conversation spans the nature of leadership, ideas for reform, claims to new thinking, and how we can better manage demands for high-functioning leaders and organizations.

JACK: You’ve each written on leadership in different ways. For Tina, part of your work has been thinking about how leadership is driving collaboration. And for Martín, much of your work has made the case for how the Center for Public Deliberation and similar centers can lead in improving public discourse. Jeff, you have written extensively on leadership, most recently on how we can and should deconstruct our dominant approach to how we understand the topic.

JEFF: Yes, my recent work is on deconstructing the supermeme of leadership. It was inspired in part by David Bohm’s book, On Dialogue (1996). I recall this line where he says, and I’m paraphrasing, all of society is pious to the belief we can’t function without leaders. Well, maybe we can. That was the moment when I began to think about why we think we need leaders, what dynamic leaders and leadership creates, and what would it be like to not have leaders. How would we manage ourselves?

What I challenge in my work is this idea that we have to have leader-based organizations and communities. That the only way to manage ourselves is to appoint a rank-based leader and allow someone to monopolize information, control decision making, and tell us what to do. It’s that kind of leadership model that I’m challenging.

TINA: When I think about leadership, and especially in the leader’s role in driving collaboration, I see multiple roles leaders can be playing. We have to expand our thinking beyond this “great-man” theory of one person in charge, directing and ordering. We have to think about cultivating and empowering people to take on different aspects of work at different times. And as things are in any collaborative and participatory process, the needs of the group and the needs of the moment will change. And we need to be able to empower people to be able to step up and move forward.

JEFF: That’s exactly what I’m working to create. And my thought is that whenever we use the word leadership, we immediately create a division of persons – we have leaders and followers. And we automatically have a division of power. Regardless of your good intentions, this is going to inhibit and impede the process of that initiative and effort. When we use the language of leadership we are immediately defining someone as having power and someone as not having power. And that relationship is quite inevitably of unequal power, and you can’t have collaboration with relationships of unequal power.

TINA: I would tend to agree with that, but I would say, for example, that if I have the skills to do data analysis and you don’t, well then you would follow my lead. Whereas if you have skills in community organizing and I don’t, I would follow your lead. I do think that leader-follower dynamic still exists. There is a power dynamic that still exists, and we are never going to eliminate that. Instead, what’s important is accepting that people have power and skills in some areas and not in others.

JEFF: Certainly I’m not saying we should get away from the professional roles of doctors or accountants or lawyers. We all have professional skills and occupations. But in terms of how we manage the strategy, the tactics, the operations, the resources, and the people themselves, that should be in a leaderless way. So if you have greater skills in a particular area, you take on the stewardship of a certain area in an organization or community. I call that using rotational stewardship positions. But as soon as we call someone a leader we’ve set up a dichotomy that creates unethical outcomes.

MARTÍN: A lot of the work of the center is focused on helping coalitions and organizations think about the tension between the top-down versus the bottom-up components of leadership. For example, we are working with United Way to help them manage that tension. A lot of the nonprofit organizations they work with are bottom-up, meaning more grassroots, but with all the collective impact stuff there’s recognition that there’s not enough money and perhaps too many bottom-up organizations recreating the wheel and siloing themselves, leading to a loss of efficiency.

We are finding there is a realization that we need top-down and bottom-up forms, and we need the strengths of both. Part of what I’m doing is helping organizations think through what happens when top-down works well and what happens when bottom-up works well. I think a good leader recognizes this and thinks through how to manage that tension.

JACK: So in your work, Jeff, are there specific terms, such as rotational stewardship, that you have adopted?

JEFF: I contrast rank-based organizations and communities with what I call peer-based. Every community and organization has to be managed. The rank-based management vehicles use permanent leadership positions arranged hierarchically. So what I’m trying to create are peer-based communities where in place of leadership positions you have peer councils, in place of fixed job assignments you have rotational stewardship positions, and in place of hierarchy you have mentoring. That is the different management model that replaces leadership as many people imagine it.

JACK: How much of the change that’s needed is institutional and organizational, and how much is cultural?

JEFF: If you decide you’re going to become peer-based and you don’t make systemic changes in your decision-making processes, the change will fail. Cultural, social, organizational and individual mindset changes will be needed.

JACK: Are there places in the world where peer-based is the norm?

JEFF: For the vast majority of human existence that’s how humans operated in hunter-gatherer societies. Kettering has done some work of its own examining the history of some forms of collaboration. It has a deep history in humanity. It’s only been since the Neolithic revolution and the emergence of settled and village-based life that we’ve had rank-based, leader-based communities, and that’s only been for around 10,000 years. So for 60,000 years we were peer-based. We have it in our genetic abilities. We just have to change the environment from which we collaborate.

MARTÍN: So from that argument, which I think is not unreasonable at all, humans are naturally more collaborative and deliberative. But when I look at all the brain science now around cognitive dissonance and selective listening, I can make the argument that we are inherently anti-deliberative, and we want things to be simplistic.

JEFF: We are actually both. We have the cognitive capacity to be peer-based or rank-based. And so what it depends on is our environment. Right now, rank-based propensities flourish.

JACK: Tina, in public administration we are clearly rank-based and hierarchical. This is especially true at the federal level. What do you think are the prospects for new leadership thinking within public administration?

TINA: I think some hierarchy is actually necessary when you have large organizations that are trying to accomplish huge tasks, such as in a large government agency. There has got to be some kind of systemic order given. And right now that’s given through hierarchy. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

What I do see changing that relates to leadership are the ways people are working with each other across boundaries, across sectors, across organizations, and across jurisdictions, and recognizing who’s bringing what to the table and validating and accepting those skills and abilities over known personal skills and abilities, stepping up when they have what it takes to step up, and then stepping back when they need to let others lead. And I think it’s got to be this kind of give-and-take leadership among different people that leads to a new era of collaboration. I don’t have as many challenges with leadership in name or practice. I think leaders are necessary.

MARTÍN: In our training we talk about the idea of a facilitator. Facilitators do lots of things; I think it’s the same idea with a leader. Sometimes the facilitator needs to be very top-down, perhaps we have a crisis or don’t have much time; in a sense, our best shot is having a benevolent dictator. Sometimes a leader is going to be a much more facilitative leader. So I think having leadership skills doesn’t mean you are this one kind of leader, but instead you need to have this broad skill set and then depending on the situation you need to be able to apply the right skill.

TINA: I think that’s right, and there’s this whole emerging literature on situational leadership that looks at the importance of understanding which particular lens needs to be applied to a particular situation. The best leaders are the ones that are able to see and react to the situation.
Tina Nabatchi, PhD, is an associate professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Though her scholarship is varied, the unifying theme is one of democratic governance in public administration. Her work has been featured in numerous venues, and she has two forthcoming books.

Martín Carcasson, PhD, is an associate professor of communication studies at Colorado State University and the founder and director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD). The CPD serves as an impartial resource for the community, dedicated to enhancing local democracy in Northern Colorado through improved public communication, community problem solving, and collaborative decision making.

Jeffrey Nielsen, PhD, is an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Westminster College, a program coordinator for the Utah Democracy Project at Utah Valley University, a blogger, founder of Literary Suite Publishing, consultant, and author of two books, most recently being, Deconstructing the SUPERMEME of Leadership: A Brief Invitation to Creating Peer-Based Communities & Leaderless Organizations (2014).

Jack Becker is a former Kettering Foundation research assistant. He currently works for Denver Public Schools Office of Family and Community Engagement. He can be reached at jackabecker@gmail.com. Follow him on twitter: @jackabecker

You can find the original version of this Kettering Foundation blog piece at http://kettering.org/kfnews/nature-of-leadership.

Register for the Teaching Deliberatively Workshop, Jul. 13-17

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want to make sure that our NCDD members who work with schools hear about the 6th annual Teaching Deliberatively workshop, which will take place this July 13-17. This great opportunity is made possible in part by the National Issues Forums Institute and the Kettering Foundation. You can learn more in the NIFI post below or by vising www.iowapartners.org.

Many believe public schools should teach students to weigh the costs and consequences of a range of “perspectives” (actions) that might be chosen – maybe in instances of provocation or over tough issues. Teachers and administrators can “lead” by demonstrating a preference for dialogue. Kids can learn to engage in substantive “talk” when schools make dialogue and deliberation a part of a school or classroom. This workshop teaches how to do that.

To view the schedule, see the workshop website at: www.iowapartners.org.

Sixth Annual Workshop

Teaching Deliberatively: Building “Leader-full” Communities of Teachers and Students

July 13-17 2015
ISEA Headquarters – Des Moines
2 Hrs. UNI Credit Covered By Grant

The one-week institute builds on the Charles F. Kettering Foundation’s (www.kettering.org) approach to issue deliberation, as adapted to classrooms, and blends with the Iowa Writing Project’s unique teaching methodologies. This results in a successful learning experience – and increases potential for more civil classrooms, schools and communities. Participants will:

Learn how to “frame” concerns for more engaged discussion, deeper insight, more learning.
Learn to convene, moderate, record, and report on deliberative discussions.
Learn how public issues and deliberative democracy come together, using writing to develop civic literacy – as per the Iowa Core and national standards.
Learn to bring issue exploration and deliberation into school curriculum and community life.
Develop a take-home discussion guide.
Be invited to share learning experiences with colleagues in follow-up sessions.
Use e-technology for building & sharing a repertoire of tools, materials, and lessons for teaching in schools back home.

This institute is a joint project of the Iowa Writing Project at University of Northern Iowa (UNI), the Iowa State Education Association, and the Iowa Partners in Learning – with generous support from the David and Elaine Wilkinson Family Fund for Democracy and Education.

A private grant supports the institute and underwrites full tuition costs for two hours of UNI graduate credit for 25 participants (preference to teams from same school). As an alternative to UNI credit, participants may enroll for license renewal credit. Priority for tuition-free participation will be given to interdisciplinary teams (pairs) of teachers from the same school.

Dr. James S. Davis of UNI, the Director of the Iowa Writing Project, is the principal instructor. Members of the Iowa Partners in Learning team co-facilitate.

For information: james[dot]davis[at]uni[dot]edu.

To register: Under its “programs” tab, the Iowa Writing Project will offer a registration link at its site on the UNI website at www.uni.edu/continuinged/iwp.

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at https://www.nifi.org/en/groups/teaching-deliberatively-sixth-annual-workshop-july-13-17-2015-des-moines-iow.

Experiment Shows Public Engagement Can Increase Tax Revenues

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

As public engagement practitioners, many of us have talked with public officials who want to know how engagement will improve a municipality’s bottom line. That’s why we appreciated NCDD member Tiago Peixoto‘s recent blog post on the first experimental – not just observational – evidence that our work can help cities collect more taxes. We encourage you to read Tiago’s post below or find the original here.

You can find the paper on the experiment by clicking here. There are caveats in the findings, but we hope this new evidence will help you strengthen your case with hesitant officials the next time you’re pushing for engagement.

New Evidence that Citizen Engagement Increases Tax Revenues

Quite a while ago, drawing mainly from the literature on tax morale, I posted about the evidence on the relationship between citizen engagement and tax revenues, in which participatory processes lead to increased tax compliance (as a side note, I’m still surprised how those working with citizen engagement are unaware of this evidence).

Until very recently this evidence was based on observational studies, both qualitative and quantitative. Now we have – to my knowledge – the first experimental evidence that links citizen participation and tax compliance. A new working paper published by Diether Beuermann and Maria Amelina present the results of a randomized experiment in Russia, described in the abstract below:

This paper provides the first experimental evaluation of the participatory budgeting model showing that it increased public participation in the process of public decision making, increased local tax revenues collection, channeled larger fractions of public budgets to services stated as top priorities by citizens, and increased satisfaction levels with public services. These effects, however, were found only when the model was implemented in already-mature administratively and politically decentralized local governments. The findings highlight the importance of initial conditions with respect to the decentralization context for the success of participatory governance.

In my opinion, this paper is important for a number of reasons, some of which are worth highlighting here. First, it adds substantive support to the evidence on the positive relationship between citizen engagement and tax revenues. Second, in contrast to studies suggesting that participatory innovations are most likely to work when they are “organic”, or “bottom-up”, this paper shows how external actors can induce the implementation of successful participatory experiences. Third, I could not help but notice that two commonplace explanations for the success of citizen engagement initiatives, “strong civil society” and “political will”, do not feature in the study as prominent success factors. Last, but not least, the paper draws attention to how institutional settings matter (i.e. decentralization). Here, the jack-of-all-trades (yet not very useful) “context matters”, could easily be replaced by “institutions matter”.

You can read the full paper here [PDF].

You can find the original version of this DemocracySpot blog post at http://democracyspot.net/2015/01/07/new-evidence-that-citizen-engagement-increases-tax-revenues.

5 Great Democratic Innovations from Around the Globe

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

Our friends at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation recently shared a great post on their Challenges to Democracy blog highlighting five examples of democratic innovation from Participedia that we found quite interesting (one even involves an NCDD member organization!). It’s invigorating to see concrete reminders that our work is making real changes, so we encourage you to check out the list below or find the original post here.

Looking for Inspiration? Five Noteworthy Innovations in Public Participation

Participedia is an effort that hopes to become a key resource for scholars, activists, policy makers, and citizens who are interested in new democratic practices and institutions. And it is always worth looking back to some of the most interesting cases recently added to Participedia for some inspiration. This selection from the frontlines of participatory innovation reflects both the diverse nature and the global span of Participedia.

1) Argentina – DEMOS

The purpose of the DEMOS project was to enable civic participation in the debate about high-profile law proposals in the Buenos Aires Legislature in Argentina, using the DemocracyOS software of the Democracia en Red foundation. The web app used was demos.legislatura.gov.ar and the initiative was open to civic participation for 35 days in November and December 2014.

In the project’s first phase, citizens were invited to rank their interests about 16 bills that had been introduced in DEMOS screenshot the legislature, corresponding to 12 political parties. The goal was for citizens to chose which were the 3 most important bills that should be debated online. And in the second phase, the top 3 bills were submitted for online discussion, both at an overall level and broken down into the sections of each bill.

Over 13,000 citizens visited the app and almost half of them signed up to participate. The online debate phase produced several interesting outcomes: there was one bill (about nurses’ working conditions) which received overwhelming support mostly because of the mobilization of activists from the party sponsoring that bill, and there was another very controversial bill (about informal parking guards) that led to high levels of polarization and disagreement among participants.

The DEMOS pilot was an unprecedented participatory initiative in Argentina’s history using online tools, and was relatively successful in terms of citizen turnout. The project was very innovative in enabling civic engagement in real-world bills that are important to the day-to-day life of citizens. One of the most interesting characteristics of DEMOS was that it was a success story of partnership with a government institution and with politicians from the whole political spectrum.

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