| Participation Issue1 #20846 Redacted proposals from the White House's Open Government Brainstorming on Participation. |
From the OSTP blog: "As the President noted in his January 21st Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, participation is essential because: “Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge.” In the Open Government Brainstorm, you suggested many ideas for how to create and improve opportunities for public participation in government. In the next four days, we will take the next step in translating those ideas into concrete, measurable and cost-effective solutions.
We’ve heard from so many of you just how important public participation in political life can be. Several groups sent us lofty participation principles, such as these from the International Association of Public Participation and these from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. We read and considered all the participation ideas you generated during the Open Government Brainstorm hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). We also reviewed ideas submitted by federal employees, who were particularly engaged and lively on this topic. NAPA did an analysis of the Brainstorm (pdf).
We grouped the participation-related suggestions you submitted into four topics that we want to discuss with you this week:
- Enhancing citizen participation in government decision-making
- Promoting civic education
- Improving Web 2.0: technology and policy frameworks
- Enhancing e-rulemaking."
|