open source policy
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Open-sourcing policy development Miriam Lyons, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Development (with thanks to Barry Saunders & sparksman)
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Transcript of open source policy
Open-sourcing policy development
Miriam Lyons, Executive Director, Centre for Policy Development(with thanks to Barry Saunders & sparksman)
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
...laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind...as new discoveries are made, new truths
discovered and manners and opinions change, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well
require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their
barbarous ancestors. Thomas Jefferson, 1816 Thomas Jefferson, 1816
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Why is this interesting?
• This presentation looks at specific experiments with online citizen engagement, but it's mainly about giving an overview of the broader trends that these tools and tactics are part of. If online engagement was just about making decisions and making policy in exactly the same way in a di!erent medium, none of this would be particularly exciting.
• What makes it exciting is that we are starting to see - both on and o"ine - a much-needed upgrade of democracy’s operating system - one which might be more capable of handling the ever more complex problems we expect it to solve.
• This presentation focuses on the online side, but it's important to recognise that innovations in o"ine engagement - like citizens juries, community cabinets, 'world cafes' and '21st century dialogues' are also important and are part of the same trend.
• This talk is building on some research our Democratic Renewal Coordinator and I are working on, please check http://cpd.org.au or http://policydevelopment.wikispaces.com/opensourcepolicy for more information (we'd love your input!)
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
What do you mean, open source?
Open source software:
•Code is published
•Code can be edited by anyone, without permission (or rather, permission is preemptively granted via open source licencing)
•Distributed community collaborates on continuous improvement of the code
Open source policy:
•Information behind decisions & decision-making process is readily available
•Participating in policy development is easy
•Culture & communities of collaborative policy development emerge
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Open Source cont.
• This is by no means a definitive list of the features of open source software, but the ones most relevant to policy development. Open source software was the first of many ‘open movements’ - closely followed by open publishing (indymedia), open editing (wikipedia) (both now called open content), and more recently ‘open access’.
• Important point: many brains better than one – most web2.0 icons - from wikipedia to amazon - rely on this.
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
What do you mean, open source policy?
Open source software:
•transparency (you can see its brain)
•participation (you can tinker with it)
•collaboration (the software is part of a community dedicated to improving it)
Open source policy:
•transparency/access (default disclosure of information by public bodies)
•participation (you can tinker with that information and/or contributing to policy is easy)
•collaboration (process of policy development opens up to a wider circle of contributors)
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
What doesn’t it mean?
• Getting rid of offline engagement
• Constant participation by everyone in everything
• aph.gov.au/bigbrother
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Let's not get carried away...
• digital divide still exists
• internet is not the only asset needed for effective participation
• not everyone is interested in everything
• Westminster tradition: public servants don't have opinions
• is that a problem?
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Background: open access
• Beyond Freedom of Information: proactive publishing of as much information as possible, in as timely, useful, and re-useable fashion as possible
• Access is about more than making data public, it must also be usable
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Open access goes beyond policy-making
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Shift to open access won't be smooth(The website of a federal open access enthusiast can be held back by the
websites of individual departments/other levels of government)
http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/accountability-and-transparencyhttp://www.economicstimulusplan.gov.au/community_infrastructure.htm
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
“
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Open Government Data Principles
Government data shall be considered open if it is made public in a way that complies with the principles below:
1. Complete: All public data is made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations. 2. Primary: Data is as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms. 3. Timely: Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data. 4. Accessible: Data is available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes. 5. Machine processable: Data is reasonably structured to allow automated processing. 6. Non-discriminatory: Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration. 7. Non-proprietary: Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control. 8. License-free: Data is not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.
Source: Open Government Working Grouphttp://resource.org/8_principles.html
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Who's driving the open access agenda?
• 'Open' enthusiasts
• Media & FOI advocates (more in the UK than in Australia, where there is not yet widespread recognition that investigative journalism isn't just about finding hidden data but also about finding patterns in public data)
• Content conduits (Google and Yahoo were both represented on the 'Open Government Working Group' which came up with the 8 principles on the previous page). Just as media companies support FOI, content conduits support open access.
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Who’s doing open access well?
• UK’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI)
• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
http://tinyurl.com/cak84whttp://www.opsi.gov.uk/iar/index
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Background: collaborative governance
• Proliferation of ‘influencers’
• Declining trust in large institutions
• Increasing proportion of public service work involves ‘wicked problems’ http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications07/wickedproblems.htm
• Need to solve complex problems and cut through information overload quickly and with limited resources
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
“
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Ego-centric thinking Network-centric thinking
Values
Ego, competition, cultures of
personality, resistance to
knowledge sharing, access to
information is seen as a
source of strategic power; the
organisation knows best
Information-sharing,
distributed power,
empowering people to seek
affinity and exercise influence,
promiscuously sharing
information; building
relationships, managing
knowledge; the network
knows more than we do
Structures
Top-down hierarchy; authority
and decision-making
reserved to the top or centre
Transparent, collaborative;
distributed decision-making
opening itself up to the
contributions of its members
Communication Members to 'centre' Members to each other
Source: Edited version of table in Martin Weeks' ‘From Control to networks’, in Beyond the Policy Cycle, 2006
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
“
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Experimentation and discovery are a more effective route to improving system performance than centralised design.
Jake Chapman, ‘System Failure’ Demos UK
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
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The best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas, and then to discard the bad ones
Linus Pauling
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Where’s Australia at?
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
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‘The Rudd Government is…keen to explore the ways technology can be used to establish more immediate and collaborative relationships between government and citizen. It is clear that in the long term the kind of output unlocked by Web 2.0 platforms will have a dramatic impact on policymaking processes and the institutions of government.’
Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance & Deregulation, May 2008
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Australia.gov.au:
•Single sign-on for multiple govt websites
•Portal for public inquiries
•So far focus is on services, not participation – e-governance, not e-democracy.
•Still early stages – may change. Minister Tanner pledged a focus on ‘innovation, collaboration and reuse’
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
What tools are being used?
•Modernised-traditional (web1.0 government sites with a few more convenient features – e.g. online submissions)
•Blogs (Digital economy blog trial, HREOC listening tour blog)
•Forums (Early Childhood Learning Framework)
•Wikis (Melbourne future plan)
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
DBCDE: trial consultation blog
Blog was flooded with protests against net filtering, & reception to blog itself was mixed...
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
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1. It looks like a government department website2. It reads like a government department website3. There's an uncomfortable distance between the bloggers and the readers4. Comments only during business hours5. It's only open for two weeks6. Will your words be twisted into a mandate?7. It has a "terms of service"8. It's only open to over 18s9. Readers must agree to pay all Australian government legal costs10. P.S. Please excuse any lies we may tell
Source: Dan Warne, editor of computing mag APC ‘The 10 sins of Senator Conroy, the blogger’
http://apcmag.com/the_10_sins_of_senator_conroy.htm
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
• Trial blog was a commendable initiative - in one way the Department of Broadband, Communications & the Digital Economy did exactly the right thing - trial. Experimenting even if the tools aren’t quite right & you don’t know exactly what you’re doing is how good websites evolve.
But some lessons can still be drawn from DBCDE's teething pains:
• pick the right tool for the job (a forum may have worked better in this case, allowing the cleanfeed debate to sit alongside debate on other questions, which were also important)
• know the culture of the tool you’re using (regular responses, not once every 2-3 days)
• If you don’t have a good internal website set-up, why not use an o!-the shelf open-source platform that everyone’s familiar with? A wordpress blog would have been much easier to manage and use.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
“
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HREOC listening tour blog featured personal stories which encouraged readers to respond with their own stories
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick's posts were signed 'Liz' & included comments about having the kids in tow on the tour.
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
2020 summit online
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
appropriate tech
• 8000 submissions
• simple to use
• participation beyond the bleeding edge l33t nerds
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
But did miss opportunities. Citizen-to-centre participation, not citizen-to-citizen collaboration. Search function is basic – doesn't allow people to easily discover whether someone else has submitted the same idea
Contrast with Getup.org.au's 2020 website:members can rate each other's ideas & add comments – categorisation is intuitive.
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Submissions to tax review – sort by date or author – no information on which of the terms of reference are referred to
Submissions to National Human Rights Consultation – contributors select primary & secondary categories while making submission online. Published submissions can be browsed under these categories.
Other tools: wikis
Melbourne City Council used a wiki to get feedback on its strategic plan. The site received 30,000 page views from 7,000 unique visitors while the wiki was active, with 200+ edits made by 150 participants. Wikis work best as a crowdsourcing tool – there are as yet no examples of a government wiki attracting a crowd. This may not be a handicap for some purposes, such as facilitating the contributions of an interested & informed community to a specific document. But there are easier jobs that can be crowdsourced...
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Active crowdsourcing: research
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Passive crowdsourcing: taxonomy & navigation
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Ingredients of successful online engagement
Right tool for the right job:
•blogs
•forums
•wikis
Culture & leadership:
•starting small
•willingness to experiment
•adapting as much as possible to the culture of the medium
•independence?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
The right tool...• Blogs: targeted short-term consultations
with clear terms of reference, or long-term platforms for discussion & ideas development
• Forums: consulting on a wide range of topics, sparking discussion & throwing up ideas rather than developing in-depth & considered position statements. Can hand more power over to participants by allowing anyone to start a new topic
• Wikis: facilitating group collaboration on a single text, work most effectively when used for collaboration between like-minded contributors, or to quickly compile fact-based content (such as directories and encyclopedias). Successful wikis tend to have a core ‘community’ of contributors who have a clear understanding of the purpose of the site and act to mediate contributions which deviate from that shared understanding. As such, they take time to reach their full potential.
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Recap: advantages of online engagement
• Accessible : online forums are more accessible to people in remote areas or less mobile people who rarely get a chance to participate in public meetings.
• Engaging : some tools, such as consultation blogs, can be more informal and inviting than formal inquiries. This can open up opportunities to involve a wider group of people in generating more creative ideas.
• Collaborative : Most consultation processes focus on the communication of groups and individuals’ ideas to a central committee, with little opportunity for horizontal communication between those being consulted. Used well, online tools can potentially increase the quality and depth of ideas that emerge from a consultation process.
• Cheap : it’s cheaper to run a website than a series of public meetings, cheaper to collect & compile more information more quickly using a wiki, etc.
• Easy : Tap into the energy and ideas of busy people who find it difficult to make time for traditional forms of community involvement but love having a say through a quick and simple online form.
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Ideas
• ‘Open inquiries’: policy sandboxes, contributor profiles, tag-based search & indexing, rss feeds
• ‘Open briefings’: what if general public could also make requests for research papers & background notes from the parliamentary library? What if these briefings were crowdsourced?
• ‘Open images’: all government departments release images on flikr under creative commons licenses
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http://cpd.org.au | Level 7, 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Phone 02 9264 0263 | Email [email protected]
Further reading
• http://cpd.org.au/category/all-articles/democratic-renewal
• http://policydevelopment.wikispaces.com/opensourcepolicy
• http://twitter.com/centrepolicydev
• http://delicious.com/tag/opensourcepolicy
