Category Archives: research

Update to Civic Tech Business & Investment Study

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Back in December, we posted about a new study that the Knight Foundation had just released about trends in “civic tech” business, and at the time, they were looking for more feedback from professionals in our field to bolster the analysis. Well they recently released an update to their study including the info from new contributors. We encourage you to read about the update below or find the original announcement here.

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You spoke, we responded.

In December 2013, Knight Foundation released an analysis of activity and investment in civic tech which captured 209 companies and more than $430 million in investment between January 2011 and May 2013. To build on that initial analysis, we published all the data and asked people to suggest additional data they believed was missing from the report. Since then, we’ve received dozens of emails from peers in the budding civic tech community proposing additions.

Today, we’re releasing an updated version of the civic tech investment analysis, which includes an additional 32 companies and $265 million of investment. That brings the total to 241 organizations having received more than $695 million in investment from 2011 to 2013. The data crowdsourced by you and your peers in the civic tech field was crucial for incorporating organizations and investment data missing from the original report. We also updated the report to include investments made through the end of 2013, providing an additional seven months of investment data not captured in the original report.

More than anything, we’re excited about all the conversations the report triggered concerning the ongoing development of the civic tech field. Take for example this Twitter civic tech group with Twitter handles of organizations identified in the report created by Scott Phillips of Civic Ninjas. Many more have reached out, especially funders, about convening funders around co-investment opportunities in this space.

By documenting a clearer picture of activity and investment, the report begins to set the stage for a discussion about the impact of civic tech.  Several people have asked us what’s known about the effectiveness of new civic tech tools identified in the report. In the months ahead, Knight will share insights from its own experiences supporting civic tech tools along with assessment resources for practitioners in the field. But we’re also interested in fostering a broader conversation geared around more consistently documenting the impact of civic tech tools and trends on open government, civic engagement and in promoting healthy, vibrant cities.

We also continue to welcome your feedback and suggestions so we can keep updating the analysis over the course of the year. Civic tech is a dynamic sector, and we want to continue to capture what’s happening. It will help the community better understand the opportunities that exist and to develop strategies that increase the effectiveness of new investments.

You can find the original version of this post at www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2014/2/26/civic-tech-analysis-expanded-with-your-feedback.

Improving Public Engagement with Games

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Public participation processes can often be boring, tedious things to participate in, and finding ways to make them more fun and engaging is a recurring issue. But that’s why a growing sector of our field and others have been turning to “gamification” as a model for making sure citizens get the most out of their participation and enjoy themselves, too.

Andrew Coulson wrote a great piece for commsgodigital about gamification and engagement that we encourage NCDD members to give a read. You can read the article below or find the original piece here.

Gamification in Community Engagement Part 1: Offline

One of the biggest franchises at the moment in both literature and film is the Hunger Games. The story of how a world, not to dissimilar to ours, pits its own young against each other as a way of sorting out an age old issue between communities.

OK, OK I’m adlibbing a bit and it has very tenuous ties to engaging the community… but I need an edge for the blog.

Many games use strategy (where to hide, what to take), team work (Katniss and Peeta) and problem management (How do we kill the others before they kill us?) to help the player achieve goals (survival in the Hunger Games), which, if used in Community Engagement opportunities, allows the right decision to be achieved through understanding barriers, working together, and setting joint achievable objects. We know gaming is not new, but Gamification in Community Engagement certainly seems to be on the rise and being used more and more in issue management and relationship building between communities and their councils.

From early use of established offline games to newly developed, all-whistles-blowing online options, games are now being used more and more in engaging the community or helping people understand and generally participate in having their say in the decision making process.

In true commsgodigital style, over 2 installments, we’re going list a number of on and offline Gamification offerings in the world of community engagement and communication in the hope you will like them and, in a spark of inspiration, look at them as options in the work you do during 2014.

(Warning: We are not advocating the use of the Hunger Games model as an option for community engagement… it just doesn’t cut the mustard with some stakeholders.)

Offline

When asking for examples using LinkedIn, a number of people shared their experiences with me on how they had used games, both traditional and newly developed, in engaging communities to do, it seems, 1 or all of 4 things.

  • To engage
  • To inform/build understanding
  • To build relationships/teamwork
  • Break the ice

Gwenda Johnson, a County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences, Kentucky, said, “I often use floor puzzles to demonstrate community and the role people play in building a strong community. Sometimes I reserve some pieces to start a conversation about people who don’t follow through with responsibility. The 48 piece floor puzzles works well in our small community. It’s a great inexpensive way to start conversation and build team work too.”

So a few of my favourite examples:

The Public Space Trading Cards by Learning from Barcelona

Do you remember as a kid those card games where some cards ranked higher than others and the object was to collect them all by outwitting your opponent with a card that scored higher than theirs? We called it “Top Trumps” in the UK.

Learning from Barcelona have developed a similar Trading Card game where neighbourhood kids are tasked with collecting sets of cards depicting places in their neighbourhood by answering questions on the back on how to improve the area. Once collected they can be played with and traded. Here’s a better description.
barcelonaThe game allows people to become a detective in the own residential area and look at the built environment in a different light as well as think how improvements can be made. This informs them on issues facing the area whilst the cards questions help the local authority/project management to collect useful insights for future development. The game also builds in a sense of ownership for the area.

Cards games are also popular with David Wilcox at socialreporter.com, London who, via LinkedIn, shared examples he had developed as well as others he had come across. Take a look at Useful Games and Ingredients and tool cards for examples.

I myself used the card option in a game format when supporting the engagement of a community around the renewal of a small reserve in Salisbury, South Australia. Using cards with potential options on for the renewal (trees, equipment, amenities, etc.) as well as a hypothetical budgetary value, we gave players a map, a budget, and a shopping list as well as a stack of cards. They then used the cards and map to plan what they would buy and then place in the reserve. Adding an element of role play encouraged discussions on the needs and wants of the community for this space. There was also a wild card that could be used if we had missed anything or they had a great idea they wanted added to the discussion.

The Game of Urban Renewal by Toronto visual artist Flavio Trevisan

This game builds on the traditional board game structure and is kind of a cross between Monopoly, a puzzle, and children’s favourite, Lego, and who doesn’t like that combination!

As a board game, it allows players to take on the role of those involved in a councils planning office making decisions on what to build and knock down in their local area to make the community a better place to live. Players use cards that depict tasks on developing areas with specific functions such as public spaces, schools, commercial buildings, and housing using a real satellite imaged map of the area and 3D blocks to represent urban development.

The game aims to get players discussing and visioning possible solutions to urban development and renewal. Find out more about the Game of Urban Renewal.

Via LinkedIn Paul Tucker, a Partner a GRIN SW, Exeter mentioned Boom Town from 1990 which seems to have similar feel. Here’s the games description:

“Famous rare game from Ian Livingstone’s company, players construct a 1950s English new town by laying tiles to show housing, shops, factories, etc. As parts of the suburbs are completed, scoring goes to the majority holder, but there are spoiler tiles, like the rubbish dump, which will reduce your score. There’s a strong element of mutual caution until somebody steps over the brink and lays those bad tiles.”

Whose Shoes? Toolkit,  My Life, My Budget and the Last Straw!

These three board games/toolkits are personal favourites of mine and are used to help the player build an understanding/appreciation around a certain topic. Often these games don’t have outcomes (as in there is no individual winner at the end) but educate those playing through promoting discussion about the topic; building empathy and encouraging learning in a fun and supportive environment.

All three are based around the health and social care of people in the community and were born out the many changes happening around the world in social care due to ageing populations and the effect of the worldwide recession on social care resources.

Whose Shoes? is a tool that encourages debate and understanding around social care and personalisation (UK) and has been used extensively in challenging Dementia. Developed by Gill Phillips during the introduction of Personalisation in Adult Care, the toolkit has been developed now as an electronic version in partnership with TLAP and is used by many local authorities and a number of universities in the UK to help students and staff understand the service user journey as well as grasp the idea of co-production.

My Life, My budget was also developed around the same time as Whose Shoes? in response to the Personalisation of care in the UK. The board game helps service users understand the concept and how personalised budgets work and can affect their lives. The game is no longer available but if you’re lucky and in the UK, your local council may have a copy.

The Last Straw! is a fun and exciting teaching tool on the social determinants of health developed by University of Toronto’s Dr. Kate Rossiter and Dr. Kate Reeve as part of a health promotion class. The website says, “Feedback consistently demonstrates that players gain a better understanding of the social determinants of health and the interplay between forces at individual and community levels.” Shared by Catherine Laska, a Community Developer, Ottawa via LinkedIn.

Final thoughts

Finally, I wanted to share this YouTube video that highlights the benefits in playing games to both break the ice with community members as well as build trust and teamwork both of which are important when engaging the community.  The video come from Jackson Dionne a Program Manager at The Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of BC.

[Unfortunately, the link to the YouTube video was broken at the time of publication. Please check back at the original post later.]

I would like to thank all those who contributed to the discussion on games in Community Engagement on LinkedIn. I apologise for not being able to mention all the contributions, however, if you would like to follow the discussion and see some other examples, please visit http://linkd.in/1g1XKiD. There are also a number of other examples via my Innovative Community Engagement board on Pinterest, including the brilliant use of a ball pit by Soulpancake, Lego pieces by Intelligent Futures, and even some of my own concoctions, including the award winning Heyford Reserve community engagement project where we used a board game to help gather and develop ideas with local school kids for the renewal of a small reserve and playspace in the City of Salisbury, South Australia. See more on my innovative community engagement Pinterest board.

Any further examples or comments on Gamification in community engagement please leave in the box below… we love feedback but please, once again, do not use the Hunger Games as a model for community engagement.

Part Two: Online Community Engagement will be appearing on commsgodigital in February/March.

The original version of this post can be found at www.commsgodigital.com.au/2014/01/gamification-in-community-engagement-offline.

Kettering Research Assistant Positions Now Open

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kfWe want to give a heads up to our NCDD members, especially student and researcher members: It’s the time of the year when our organizational partners at the Kettering Foundation are taking applications for full-time Research Assistants for the next year.  This is a great opportunity that some of you may certainly want to apply for.

Applications are due by March 15, so don’t make sure to get started soon!

Here’s a little snippet of how Kettering describes itself and the position:

Kettering is an operating research foundation that explores practical ways democracy can be strengthened through innovation in public practices. Its research, done in collaboration with people and organizations around the world, emphasizes the roles of citizens and the qualities of their interactions as decision-making actors in public life.

The primary responsibility of research assistants is to provide Kettering staff with reviews of relevant scholarly and professional literature. We seek candidates whose interests complement and will be strengthened by the foundation’s interdisciplinary research. The successful candidate will have strong communication and writing skills, especially the ability to understand and translate technical ideas and language into coherent written reports.

Minimum requirements for the position include a bachelors’ degree. We especially encourage applications from scholars who have interests in topics such as deliberative democracy, civic engagement, social capital, civic education, civil society, and social movements.

To apply, applicants should send an CV, letter of interest, writing sample, and 2-3 letters of recommendation to abd@kettering.org. You can find out more about the openings at Kettering by visiting www.kettering.org/how-we-work/research-positions.

Good luck to all the applicants!

Earning Trust in Public Institutions

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We recently read an interesting post on the inCommon blog run by our partners at the Davenport Institute – an NCDD organizational member – about trust’s relationship to engagement. You can read the post below or find the original here, and we also recommend you take a look at the study on trust the post refers to.

The Rand Europe Spotlight on 2013 is a bit broad, but the theme, “Building Trust in Policymaking,” is certainly relevant to civic engagement:

The relationship between citizens and public bodies relies on trust: we trust them to make good decisions on our behalf and implement them well. But public faith has been severely shaken in recent years. A global barometer of trust in institutions found that only 48 percent of people trust governments to do what is right, and that only 16 percent trust them a great deal…

The projects featured this year highlight three different ways in which policymakers can gain trust:

  • Working across boundaries to anticipate new strategic challenges.
  • Using robust methodologies to ensure that policy is grounded in sound evidence.
  • Providing effective, adaptive local delivery. (3)

Two sections are especially relevant to public servants in local government. One is “Grounding Policy in Evidence”:

Tight budgets, rising expectations and greater focus on accountability all add to the pressure on policymakers to show that their decisions are informed by sound evidence – whilst also addressing local needs, values and agendas.

But what constitutes evidence? While the tide of information increases daily, public [skepticism] of official figures is also high. Timeliness, relevance and data integrity are essential to build trust and refute the old charge of: ‘Lies, damned lies and statistics.’ (15)

The other is “Earning Trust at Delivery”:

At an individual or community level, all policy is personal. Whether policies are delivered directly by central government or local authorities, or through private or third-sector providers, good relationships are essential. Trust is created by getting the details right for successful local implementation. (23)

You can download the e-book at the Rand website here.

You can find the original version of this post at www.publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/incommon/index.php/2014/02/europe-spotlight-trust.

New Findings on Special Interests & Democracy

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Sandy recommended an important article today from Journalist’s Resource that details the results of recent empirical research on special interest groups’ influence on our democracy. The findings suggesting that interests groups contribute more to polarization than previously thought offer significant reason for us to pause and reflect as engagement practitioners. This must-read article is below in full, and you can find the original here.

Extreme voices: Interest groups and the misrepresentation of issue publics

by John Wihbey

The public’s ignorance on issues of policy and politics is frequently lamented — and little understood. On tests of civic knowledge, the results are often dismaying, although research suggests that asking about local and national issues can yield different results. Some of this ignorance may have a socio-economic basis. There are access to knowledge and media access issues that make the cost of understanding prohibitive for some. But one broader and more charitable way of interpreting this ignorance is as follows: Citizens are busy, and issues that are not salient or relevant in their daily lives are “costly” — in terms of time and effort — to comprehend. A 2013 study in Political Communication, “Self-Interest and Attention to News Among Issue Publics,” confirms that “individuals are more likely to follow news that affects their self-interest” — what academics call “selective exposure.” Why learn the tax code when you only fill out a simple return each year? What real advantage is it to know the names of all nine Supreme Court justices? Why spend precious time on development issues in South Asia when there are experts to take care of that? That’s why we have representative government, the argument goes, and advocacy groups on every conceivable issue to help figure out the details and produce policy. The people who really care about a given issue will organize a response.

That’s one political theory. For this theory to work in practice, however, there must be a basic match between some larger segment of the people and the strong, narrowly focused groups who shape the agenda. Otherwise, highly motivated groups just distort democracy, pushing agendas far more extreme than others who care about the same issue would favor. For a half-century now, political scientists have studied the behavior of what are called “issue publics,” or the groups who care about discrete issues. Think of issue publics as concentric circles of increasing interest, with the innermost circle as the actual “pressure group.” Hovering in the background, there remains a long-running debate about whether certain “special interests” corrupt the system, or whether the contending of interests in the public arena actually constitutes the very essence of democracy.

A 2013 study published in Public Opinion Quarterly, “Extreme Groups: Interest Groups and the Misrepresentation of Issue Publics,” looks to empirical evidence to help settle some of these debates, testing whether members of motivated groups are “giving voice” to wider public communities or pushing their own unrepresentative agendas. The authors — political scientists Ryan L. Claassen of Kent State University and Stephen P. Nicholson of the University of California, Merced — state that the prior “literature on issue publics has optimistically concluded that widespread political ignorance is not a problem for democracy because those affected by specific issues are well informed, involved, and represented.”

To assess this, Claassen and Nicholson analyze results from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) — comprising a representative sample of 36,500 people — and look at the views of 10 groups and their issues: AARP and social security privatization; unions and minimum wage; the Sierra Club and global warming; NARAL and abortion; National Right to Life and abortion; the Christian Coalition and gay marriage; the VFW and the Iraq War; the American Legion and the Iraq War; the Parent Teacher Association/Organization and education; and the NRA and gun control. By sorting among the citizens surveyed who have a “characteristic that is relevant to the interest group’s policy area,” Claassen and Nicholson attempt to compare the relative strength of views between active group members and inactive members of specific issue publics.

The study’s findings include:

  • The data furnish “consistent evidence that group members hold policy attitudes that are distinct from their counterparts in a broader issue public.” Distortion is a very real problem. In fact, the evidence suggests that a “policymaker guided by interest group representation, rather than a more comprehensive survey of issue public opinion, might actually come down on the wrong side of an issue in most cases.”
  • “Taken together, the results suggest that the policy distortion produced by interest groups may ultimately stem from those who are different, and more extreme, in their opinions, self-selecting into groups.”
  • These dynamics likely tilt the wider direction of U.S. politics: “Opinion distortion wrought by interest group representation is likely to contribute to political polarization more generally. When policymakers rely on interest groups to communicate the positions of issue publics, they perceive greater polarization than they would if they had a more accurate measure of issue public opinion.”

“A uniformly active issue public would ensure that the voices of those for whom the issue matters most are heard,” Claassen and Nicholson conclude. “But issue publics are not uniformly active. More problematic, those active in interest groups hold positions that are more extreme than, and often at odds with, the positions of less active members within the issue public.”

Related research: The findings line up with studies on what scholars call the phenomenon of “group polarization,” whereby like-minded individuals who affiliate tend to become more extreme in their positions over time. Recent research on political polarization, which has dramatically increased in the United States in recent years, has focused on the deep roots of the phenomenon as well as potential solutions. Further, scholars are studying whether or not the Internet is magnifying these trends more broadly.

Original article URL:  http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/polarization/extreme-voices-interest-groups-misrepresentation-issue-publics?utm_source=JR-email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JR-email#sthash.psRnh1at.dpuf

Sixth Annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies

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I am excited to share an announcement from NCDD supporting member Dr. Peter Levine about what has become an powerful tradition in our field – the Summer Institute of Civic Studies. I personally participated in the institute two years ago, and it was a pivotal experience for me that I highly recommend to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of citizenship and civic engagement.

We also encourage you to consider attending the Frontiers of Democracy conference directly after the Summer Institute. Both are wonderful experiences and great chances to network with leaders on the cutting edge of civic innovation. Find out more below or at the Summer Institute website.

Tufts-logoThe sixth annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together advanced graduate students, faculty, and practitioners from diverse fields of study.

Organized by Peter Levine, Tisch College, and Karol Sołtan, University of Maryland, the Summer Institute features guest seminars by distinguished colleagues from various institutions and engages participants in challenging discussions such as:

  • What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
  • What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
  • What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
  • What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?

The syllabus for the fifth annual seminar (in 2013) is here. The 2014 syllabus will be modified but will largely follow this outline. You can also read more about the motivation for the Institute in this overview page on civic studies.

The daily sessions will take place from July 7-17, 2014, at the Tufts campus in Medford, MA. The seminar will be followed by a public conference – “Frontiers of Democracy 2014” – that will conclude on July 18 at 6 pm. Participants in the institute are required to stay for the public conference. See information on the 2013 conference here.

Tuition for the Institute is free, but students are responsible for their own housing and transportation. A Tufts University dormitory room can be rented for $230-$280/week. Credit is not automatically offered but special arrangements for graduate credit may be possible.

To apply for the 2014 seminar, please send an email with an explanation of your background and interests plus a resume/CV and a graduate transcript to Peter Levine (peter.levine@tufts.edu). For best consideration, apply no later than March 15, 2014.

For more information, visit http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/summer-institute.

Improving Deliberation on Health Care

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We wanted to share this thought-provoking commentary on a recent study on health care opinions conducted by our friends and partners at Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation. As our nation continues to grapple with reforming our health care system, we in the engagement community have a special role to play in helping our communities decide how to tackle the big questions of reform. We hope you’ll take a moment to read the commentary below or find the original PA blog post here.

PublicAgenda-logoAs is evident in “Curbing Health Care Costs: Are Citizens Ready to Wrestle with Tough Choices?“, there are disconcerting contradictions and inconsistencies in Americans’ views on health care that indicate the need for continued public information and deliberation. Several of these contradictions are worth noting, as they may hold a key for developing successful approaches to engaging the public in policies and practices that enable quality care and controlled cost.

Disconcerting contradictions and inconsistencies in Americans’ views on health care indicate the need for continued public information and deliberation.

As the report notes in its introduction, the current cost crisis is certainly not new, yet public consciousness and a sense of urgency have begun emerging only in the past five years. The reasons are many: unlike all other consumer services, the majority of health-care costs are indirect, handled through a third-party payer. Out-of-pocket costs were historically an issue only for the poor, uninsured and underinsured. The rest of the nation remained fairly protected and blissfully unaware. But those days have passed.

Many of the findings in this study ring true with our own at the American Institutes for Research and our Center for Patient and Consumer Engagement. Recent deliberations across the country that we conducted for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found similar public interest in information, a variety of perspectives and a desire for a place at the table as solutions are found and implemented. As in the deliberations we conducted, the study participants walked in with both misinformation and an individual, rather than a social, perspective on costs.

It is no wonder that health consumers, who are informed more by direct marketing than science or policy analysis about health care, indicate in this study their belief that specialists and renowned hospitals justifiably cost more. Our own 2010 study found that most consumers believed that more care, newer care, and more expensive care was better. However, this study also shows the extent to which patients understand that doctors may order too many tests and treatments because they are financially motivated to do so.

These results, along with other similar findings, need to bolster the efforts now underway to engage consumers and patients in cost payment reform at a variety of levels.

There are many encouraging signs from this study, however, that need additional fostering. Our own experience echoes the experience in this study of witnessing a shift in perspective as participants become informed, an eagerness to learn more about the issue of health-care costs, and a sense of duty in “wrestling” with the complexities of health-care costs.

These results, along with other similar findings, need to bolster the efforts now underway — funded by both federal agencies and private foundations — to engage consumers and patients in cost payment reform at a variety of levels, ranging from cost-effectiveness conversations when deciding treatment with a doctor to engagement at clinics and hospitals considering new forms of payment systems, such as bundled payments.

Critical to the effort is the need for consumers to demand that cost and quality remain on the table together. Accountable Care Organizations, Patient-Centered Medical Homes, and a variety of new models for care are seeking both reduced costs and increased quality, and many are committed to involving patients and consumers in their efforts as the ultimate end-users of their work. We can only hope that a similar spirit of engagement can be found in public policy settings. Our patients have much to add to those discussions.

Insights from the Latino Participatory Research Project

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In case you missed it, we wanted to share a post from the inCommon blog, a project of our partners at the Davenport Institute, about a project in Oregon that holds valuable insights and best practices for engaging Latino/a populations. You can read the post below or find the original here.

DavenportInst-logoLike many part of the US, Lane County, Oregon is seeing tremendous growth in its Latino population. Unwilling just to say “this is a traditionally difficult population to engage,”  the Latino Participatory Research Project is looking at ways to reach out to the Latino community to build lasting relationships for public engagement:

The Latino Participatory Research Project, led by University of Oregon Professor Gerardo Sandoval in partnership with Sightline Institute, was completed in the Spring of 2013. The project developed best practices and test outreach strategies to reach the Latino community and identified economic and social indicators of importance to the Latino community through outreach and participation with the Latino community. The project utilized a wide range of methods including individual interviews with Latino leaders and immigrants, small focus groups, and two interactive community planning workshops that engaged almost 100 people. Two local community-based organizations that serve the Latino Community, Huerto de la Familia and Downtown Languages, helped organize and recruit participants for the community workshops. Unique and valuable resources developed during the project below are linked below, and should be used for all efforts to connect with and better understand this unique community in Lane County.

You can read more and find links to the studies, reports, suggestions, and resources of the Latino Participatory Research Project here.

A Special Issue of the Web Journal Lo Squaderno

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I always find it refreshing when people decide to investigate the commons from new angles and in transdisciplinary ways.  So it is a treat to learn about the web journal Lo Squaderno devoting its entire December 2013 issue (#30) to “Commons – Practices, Boundaries and Thresholds.”  The entire issue is available as a pdf file under a Creative Commons BY-ND-SA license.  

Lo Squaderno is “a free web journal devoted to exploring and advancing research movements…. [that] collects original short features by people committed to research in various fields.  Each issue is structured around a thematic focus around the topics of space, power, and society.”  This commons issue, edited by Giacomo DAlisa and Cristina Mattiuci, along with guest artist Andrea Sarti, consists of nine essays in English and three in Italian.   

Below, provocative excerpts from three of the essays.  In “Show Me the Action, and I Will Show You the Commons!” Helene Finiori, building on Silke Helfrich's observations, points out that the conventional ways of identifying common goods, based on their “rivalry” and “excludability,” is unreliable: 

Types of goods are traditionally distinguished based on their degree of rivalry (the extent to which the use of a good by one diminishes the availability for others) and excludability (the extent to which access to a good can be denied or limited). This perspective ignores for a large part the contextual and variable nature of goods in time and under the ‘stress’ of repeated activity. It does not take into account the fact that rivalry can be a matter of perception (a good may be categorized non rival because perceived as abundantly available irrespective of whether self-renewable or not, such as water in ‘wet’ places), of congestion (a good may be non rival up to a point of saturation, such as roads before they get jammed) or of yield point (a good may be non rival up to the limit beyond which there is no more resilience under stress and therefore no more self-regeneration, such as a savannah before desertification).  It does not acknowledge that low rivalry goods can also be depleted and made unavailable as a result of toxic outputs of activity (externalities). Neither does it consider the fact that property and access, in other words excludability, create artificial boundaries that businesses for example are constantly seeking to expand by inventing new property rights or business models, as part of their ‘natural’ quest to extend the perimeter in which they can generate and capture value. The examples of patented seeds and attempts to patent the human genome are the most striking.

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