“Open data unleashes the creative potential of citizens and private enterprise to create new services, software applications, and insights that the government cannot do by itself. The shear numbers tell the story. Millions of citizens and hundreds of thousands of companies of all sizes uniting to independently create value and enhance the common good.”

This is exactly what you are seeing below. Bachman breaks down the 2011 Federal budget in a surprisingly simple graphic, showing total spend per category, percent change, and size relative to other spending priorities (click the image for the interactive chart).

Admittedly, I’m a little late to the party on this one. Bachman has being doing this since 2004 and has been featured in numerous publications as well as on national television. Still, if you’re like me and haven’t had a chance to check it out, definitely set aside some time to do so. There’s a new graphic every year, so even if you saw the chart a couple of years ago, it’s probably worth a revisit. This will be particularly relevant for U.S. readers who can calculate where their tax dollars are going at a fairly granular level. For example, in 2011, the average American tax payer will give $3,565 to the Department of Defense, $249 to the Department of Education, $218 to Homeland Security, $93 to NASA, $53 to the Environmental Protection Agency, $35 to Nuclear Weapons Activities, $27 to financing foreign militaries in Israel and Egypt, $22 to Postal Service, $14 to National Parks, $12 to HIV/AIDS, $6 to counter-insurgency in Pakistan, and $2.21 to Obama (Executive Office of the President). As Bachman notes:

“Thousands of pages of raw data have been boiled down to one poster that provides the most open and accessible record of our nations’ spending you will ever find. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. ‘Death and Taxes’ is an essential poster for any responsible citizen or information junkie.”

The next order of sophistication for something like this would be an interactive budget chart a la Freiburg model, where citizens could use the visualization to propose their own balanced budgets as a way to provide feedback about their priorities. Imagine sliders that would allow you to ratchet-up or ratchet-down the relative size of spending categories.  These individual budgets could then be aggregated into a ‘citizen budget’ that would go beyond simple ‘suggestion box’ initiatives to provide a truly useful piece of information for policy makers.  I’m guessing a collaborative citizen budget would look a lot different than the one shown above.

6. The world needs better governments.

Some governments in Central America and Africa are just holding on and many are dysfunctional.  But governability is becoming an issue for G20 countries as well.  One leader said the US is on the brink of being “ungovernable.”  One Chinese executive responded thusly when asked to defend his country’s lack of democracy:  “So we should adopt the American system where lobbyists run everything and nothing happens?”

Democracy was still seen as an unstoppable force but in many regions of the world it is becoming stalled, and in some cases losing ground.  Basic democratic institutions are at risk and in danger of failing part due to the economic crisis in poor countries.  The best predictor of democratic survival is per capita income.  In some countries portions of the government have been captured by interest groups. Other non-democratic countries are proving competitively stable and economically healthy.  And the current economic crisis shows that national governments and domestic regulation are inadequate to deal with the challenges of the global economy.   There is also danger of protectionism and isolationism.

7. It turns out the internet DOES change everything

The much-discredited phrase from the dotcom period is not just geek speak.  The Internet and Social Networks were central to many of the discussions here.  The digital age seems to be coming of age.  I participated with CEOs of most of the important social networks in a session called The Power of Social Networks. It got a lot of buzz at Davos.  A few minutes into it the session we solicited questions from Facebook.  6,000 questions appeared in first 2 minutes.

The growing consensus is that new business models are emerging in every industry and throughout society.  I’ve argued that social networking is becoming social production and that a new mode of production is emerging – changing not only how we make software or encyclopedias but physical goods like motorcycles.

Most leaders love that a web company – Google –  is taking on China. The circumstantial evidence that the China-based hacking of Google was conducted by authorities looking for information about activists was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Talking to Google execs I’m convinced they not going to back down.

8. Girls, women and gender. A sea change is underway.

There was lots of buzz about women’s emerging purchasing power, known as the Power of the Purse.  The expected worldwide increase of women’s income by 2013 is $5.1 trillion, which is greater than China’s expected growth of $3 trillion for the same period.

Deep interest in the so-called Girl Effect, i.e., investing in girls offers the biggest ROI in the developing world.  In African countries female illiteracy is almost a third higher than that of men.  But every year of schooling increases a girl’s future earnings by 20 percent.  And by earning more and influencing how dollars are spent, women would acquire a stronger voice in all aspects of their lives.

Although women are becoming stronger financially, they are still very weak politically.  Countries should be more aggressive in finding female candidates for public office, and look outside the regular channels. But increased financial and political power brings responsibility. Woman could be key in refocusing our political and economic efforts away from consumerism.

9.  We need new measures of progress

There is growing agreement that GDPs and GNPs are flawed tools for measuring the health of country, and we should instead emphasize the idea of Gross National Well-Being or something similar.  Just as some companies have moved to “triple-bottom line” reporting for their impact on society, many economists argue that GDPs and GNPs measure activities that are detrimental to society and ignore activities that are beneficial.

A pandemic will increase drug sales and visits to doctors, thereby driving up GNP.  Volunteer work or work in the home is not recognized as contributing to GNP.

There is no lack of research and creativity on this issue, as some governments and academics have developed a wide array of yardsticks to more accurately capture how well and healthily a country is growing.  The key now is to have these new tools recognized as legitimate and encourage their widespread adoption.

10. A new big idea.  The Global Commons.

Like a park in a village we need new global parks in the global village. Some of the global commons areas are well-recognized, such as our atmosphere, oceans and space, but there are less obvious areas that exist, or should be created, such as know-how concerning sustainability

Conventional wisdom says you should control and protect proprietary resources and innovations – especially intellectual property – through patents, copyright and trademarks. If someone infringes your IP, summon the lawyers out to do battle.  That’s often the wrong approach.  Contributing to “the commons” is not altruism; it’s the best way to build vibrant business ecosystems that harness a shared foundation of technology and knowledge to accelerate growth and innovation.

A good private sector example is when more than a dozen pharmaceutical firms abandoned their proprietary R&D projects to support open collaborations such as the SNP (single nucleotide polymorphisms) Consortium and the Alliance for Cellular Signaling.  Both projects aggregate genetic information culled from biomedical research in publicly accessible databases. They also use their shared infrastructures to harness resources and insights from the for-profit and not-for-profit research worlds. These efforts are speeding the industry toward fundamental breakthroughs in molecular biology – breakthroughs that promise an era of personalized medicine and treatments for intractable disorders. Nobody gives up their potential patent rights over new end products, and by sharing some basic intellectual property the companies bring products to market more quickly.

One overarching theme at the conference is the confidence that young people have such great potential. Obviously we have a lot of work ahead of us if we don’t want to pass on a deeply damaged planet to our children.  At the final session at Davos, we heard from six inspiring young people on stage on their hopes and ambitions.  There were more than a few tears in the audience.

1. The state of the world is not good.

The theme of Davos was Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild, which may sound a bit grandiose to some people. I doubt many attendees think this now. The world clearly needs fixing.

Figures cited at the Forum show we’re a long way from being out of the woods on the global recession. Jobs are and will continue to be a huge issue. It is estimated the unemployment in the word jumped by 50 million during the recession, and the working poor increased by 200 million.

But the financial meltdown and recession are arguably symptoms of a bigger systemic crises and deep institutional failures. There is growing recognition that many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, even centuries, are no longer able. Many of the pillars of economic and social life have come to the end of their life cycle. In 2009, the American auto industry — the epitome of the industrial economy — collapsed. The upheaval is now spreading to other sectors — from the universities and science, to entertainment and media, to government and democracy. The continuing collapse of many newspapers in the United States is a storm warning.

Many other serious problems loom. Lack of access to fresh water is a catastrophe for humanity, as 2.8 billion (or 44%) of the world’s population already live in high water stress areas, increasing to 3.9 billion by 2030. In a world of growing capacity, global poverty is getting worse. Ten children die of hunger every minute and a third of the world’s population fester in slums. Almost everyone, especially the scientists at Davos is deeply troubled by climate change. We need to reinvent out energy grids, transportation systems and reindustrialize the planet. And we’re running out of time.

As Bill Clinton said to a few of us at a cocktail party, “The world is too unequal, unstable, and unsustainable.”

2. Everywhere there are new collaborative models emerging to solve global problems

Our systems of global cooperation are not rising to the many challenges we face. The global warming conference in Copenhagen has become a metaphor for failure.

I believe the Forum itself is an example of the global multi-stakeholder cooperation that is picking up where nation states and formal institutions left off.

The global humanitarian response to the Haitian earthquake is showing us what is possible. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake not being just a Caribbean island crisis, but a world crisis. Millions of people and thousands of institutions have responded in non-traditional ways. They are donating their time, money, goods and services. Charitable organizations such as the Red Cross received donation of tens of millions of dollars within days by using new technologies such as texting, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media has become the pre-eminent tool to connect people around the world, and help empower people become active participants in relief efforts.

There are 100 million people on Facebook Causes – the biggest application on Facebook. These are not just people talking to each other. They are now organizing activities in the physical world. I heard of dozens of examples at Davos.

3. There is a profound rethinking of the financial services industry and its role in society.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy put it well: “The banker’s job is not to speculate, it is to analyse credit risk, assess the capacity of borrowers to repay their loans and finance growth of the economy. If financial capitalism went so wrong, it was, first and foremost, because many banks were no longer doing their job. Why take the risk of lending to entrepreneurs when it is so easy to earn money by speculating on the markets? Why lend only to those who can repay the loan when it is so easy to shift the risks off the balance sheet?”

The mood at Davos was widespread: Banks need to be reined in, the sooner the better. US banking executives used to be the stars of Davos. Now they are a low-key, humble and dour looking group. Last year at Davos everyone was in a degree of shock. This year, a better term would be “fed up.” Fed up with banks that are “too big to fail,” with government bailouts, with the human costs of this crisis and with an industry that basically got out of control. For some CEOs the crisis warrants a critical re-evaluation of market capitalism.

4. Executive pay, especially for bankers, needs fixing.

There was a very strong sentiment that the issue of exorbitant executive compensation needs to be corrected. The biggest targets of discussions were bankers and other architects of the financial crisis. Many heavily damaged their own firms, some to the point of bankruptcy, paralyzed the commercial credit market for tens of thousands of companies, and today are not able or willing to loan money to entrepreneurs. To set aside $billions for bonuses just after they had been bailed out by the government was viewed by almost everyone as unconscionable. Even those banks that didn’t need a bailout cannot justify 8 digit compensation packages.

5. Sustainability is an idea whose time has come. Business is moving from talk to action.

As one executive put it: “It’s no longer about the Green Economy; it’s about the Economy.” Sustainability is the central issue many businesses face.

A few short years ago, sustainability was buried in a company’s PR department and it was primarily a matter of spin. But then governments began forcing certain reporting and behaviors, and the corporate issue became compliance. Then sustainability became a matter of competitiveness and cost reduction, by capturing efficiencies such as reducing waste and energy use. CEOs everywhere at Davos said we’ve now arrived at the point where sustainability must be integrated into the business strategy — what is a business, and how it does it operate and relate to the rest of the world.

We’ll see if they walk the talk.

I’ll post themes 6 – 10 tomorrow.

With the conspicuous exception of global warming, Harper acknowledged that many challenges face the world, but told delegates that the two most appropriate arenas for discussion and decision making are the G8 and the G20.  He described the latter as “the world’s premier forum for economic cooperation.” And each country should be guided by “enlightened self-interest” and a better “attitude.”

But the mood in Davos is that the planet is facing urgent, complicated, 21^st century problems, and we need to craft 21^st century systems to develop the answers. We should involve all of our planet’s best talent in the solution-seeking process, including the private sector, civil society and individual citizens.

Doubtless Harper placed emphasis on the G8 and G20 because this year’s meetings will occur in Canada and he is the Chair. But that doesn’t mean he should be indifferent to the enormous contributions that could be made by others, or closed to the exciting new approaches to solving global problems.

Following last year’s World Economic Forum at Davos, many delegates went on to participate in the Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative in meetings around the world. The Initiative brought together diverse stakeholders to develop fresh solutions to the many challenges facing our small and fragile planet.  Much of this year’s Forum was devoted to discussing the proposals developed by the Initiative.

The Initiative itself was driven by the belief of Forum members that our international collaborative processes are tired and too constrained to meet current needs.  In Davos, the failed Copenhagen global-warming conference was frequently cited by delegates as a metaphor for the inadequacy of existing processes. To be sure, no one is suggesting that nation states do not need to sit down and hammer out accords. But many Davos delegates believe that such meetings, while necessary, are by themselves insufficient to grapple with the thorny issues confronting us.

Davos delegates feel all issues on the global agenda should be addressed in a systemic, integrated and strategic way, and are frustrated many government leaders aren’t embracing this view.

Had Harper come a day earlier, he would have heard French President Nicolas Sarkozy deliver a withering critique of how the planet’s issues are managed today. “From the moment we accepted the idea that the market was always right and that no other opposing factors need be taken into account, globalization skidded out of control,” Sarkozy said. Many systems in the world, including capitalism, were in serious need of reform.  “Each of us must hold the conviction that the world of tomorrow cannot be the same as the world of yesterday.”  A text of Sarkozy’s remarks can be seen here.

While Harper promotes the notion of enlightened self-interest, that got us nowhere in Copenhagen.  . And the irony of Harper’s remarks is that many here think one country with needing a better “attitude” on climate change is Canada. And it is an uphill battle for Canada to turn around its reputation as “the dirty old man of the climate world.”

In fact Harper further damaged Canada’s reputation on this issue, and undermined his approach to global cooperation in a panel discussion after his speech. When questioned about Canada’s position he said that countries needed to take into account the economic costs of being green.  To be sure Canada, as an energy producer has more complex issues than European countries. But some in the audience were disturbed by the remark.

Liberal MP Scott Brison said to me that Prime Minister Harper was “the only leader at Davos who didn’t understand the opportunities for economic growth and jobs in becoming a green nation. Environmental laggards will become economic laggards in the emerging global carbon-constrained green economy.”

Yes the G8 and G20 meetings will be important and they may even make some progress on climate change.  But today there are collaborations involving millions of people, along with governments, private companies and civil society organizations that are actually doing something about climate change. Government leaders need to listen to fresh thinking about how to harness this power, rather than relying on old approaches that have the world stalled.

“Throughout August, members of Congress are back home, where the hands they shake and the voices they hear will not belong to lobbyists, but to people like you,” Obama wrote.

“Home is where we’re strongest. We didn’t win last year’s election together at a committee hearing in D.C. We won it on the doorsteps and the phone lines, at the softball games and the town meetings, and in every part of this great country where people gather to talk about what matters most. And if you’re willing to step up once again, that’s exactly where we’re going to win this historic campaign for the guaranteed, affordable health insurance that every American deserves.”

Healthcare reform, writes Obama, is the issue “our movement was built for.”There is no possible compromise on health care and the myth of Obama as a “post-partisan” president is exactly that — a myth.   The health care industry generates billions of dollars in profits and many people are seething that these profits might be curtailed.  This issue can never be negotiated in Washington back rooms as there are huge interests vested in the status quo — such as the big insurance companies, health maintenance organizations and pharmaceutical giants.  Like many social changes, for this one there will be winners and losers and an historic battle will determine the outcome.

As Obama noted in his message to supporters, “In politics, there’s a rule that says when you ask people to get involved, always tell them it’ll be easy. Well, let’s be honest here: Passing comprehensive health insurance reform will not be easy. Every President since Harry Truman has talked about it, and the most powerful and experienced lobbyists in Washington stand in the way.”  But this time Obama has what those presidents lacked:  the Internet and a powerful social movement that potentially can shift the relationship of forces in America away from the traditional entrenched interests towards the needs of the population.

One of the principles of the New Media Group in the Obama presidential campaign was that “online activity exists to support offline activity.”  The goal of the online media specialists was to motivate and energize volunteers to be active in their communities.  This principle is being carried into the battle around healthcare:

Obama’s email says:  “That’s why Organizing for America is putting together thousands of events this month where you can reach out to neighbors, show your support, and make certain your members of Congress know that you’re counting on them to act.” He says:  “These canvasses, town halls, and gatherings only make a difference if you turn up to knock on doors, share your views, and show your support.”

He asks his supporters:  Can you commit to join at least one event in your community this month?

The battle will be fierce.  Already, opponents to health care reform are starting to sabotage the first of thousands of these town-hall meetings.  Protesters are being bussed in to disrupt information sessions and help spread myths that Obama’s plans are socialist or fascist or both.  The protesters are fueled by the rhetoric on Fox News and use the same sleazy tactics as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth used against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

“So yes, fixing this crisis will not be easy,” concludes Obama  “Our opponents will attack us every day for daring to try. It will require time, and hard work, and there will be days when we don’t know if we have anything more to give. But there comes a moment when we all have to choose between doing what’s easy, and doing what’s right.  This is one of those times.”

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Open Government and Innovations Conference in Washington, DC. The two-day conference was a fantastic opportunity to hear some of the leaders in open government thinking, including:

• Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO – “The Innovation Imperative“
• Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO – “Town Hall Meeting – The IT Dashboard“
• Dave Weinberger, Harvard Law and Cluetrain Manifesto – “Transparency as a Virtue“
• Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media – “Government as a Platform“

(If you’re interested, those talks are available via Adobe Connect here. Click on the linked headshot of the speaker you’d like to watch.)

I sat in on some great panel sessions as well:

• Openness, Information Sharing, and the Use of New Media in DoD
• Case Studies in Citizenship Engagement
• Transforming Citizen Engagement with Congress
• Embracing a Collaborative Culture

It was also great to connect with some of the participants and speakers through the conference’s live Tweet grid. If you’re interested in more links and insight, just search the hashtag #OGI on Twitter.

Throughout the conference I picked up on a few core themes that seemed to run through all the sessions. While the official themes were Government to Government, Government to Business and Government to Citizens, the following seemed to be the three focal points for moving forward with open government initiatives.

1. Despite the hurdles, collaboration is possible

You may be familiar with the memorandum President Obama issued in January to all heads of departments and agencies in the Federal Government. Aneesh Chopra highlighted this in his opening address, crediting the memo with enforcing the ‘three pillars of open government’: transparency, participatory and collaborative. Since that memorandum, new government collaboration projects have surfaced and already-existing projects have enjoyed being in the spotlight of case studies and media writeups.

One great example is the Transportation Security Authority’s (TSA) ‘Idea Factory’, which is also featured in the White House Open Government Innovations Gallery. The Idea Factory, boasting the slogan “Innovate. Collaborate. Succeed”, is a two year old project connecting some 50,000 geographically dispersed employees across countries. Tina Cariola, the Idea Factory’s Program Manager, said the TSA needed a way to tap the knowledge of all of their employees across the organization. She had clear guidelines: the site had to be up and running within only a few weeks and was to be designed as more than just an online suggestion box.

The result was a dynamic community allowing employees to interact and collaborate with each other around ideas. What’s really interesting is the fact that the Idea Factory was originally rolled out as an innovation program, yet the community has turned into a powerful tool for employee engagement and communication. TSA management is actually using the Idea Factory as a way to monitor the workforce ‘pulse’, providing insight and awareness of key trends among employees.

Currently, the Idea Factory is seeing around 300 ideas submitted per month, and after community and management review, 1-2 of those are being implemented.

Tina’s tips:
-Establish cross-functional teams when originally establishing your collaboration strategy and reviewing user generated ideas (lawyers, IT, management, HR)
-Publicly recognize key contributors and leaders within the community. This could mean award ceremonies as well as involving that individual as ideas are selected to advance to the next stage of development.

Cases like these demonstrated for the audience that despite the oft-cited security and IP risks, collaboration within, and even across, government departments is possible. In many instances, government employees’ experience in dealing with sensitive information was seen as a real asset when making the shift to a culture of collaboration.

2. Open innovation on a continual basis

Perhaps my favourite part of the conference was hearing about departments opening up and making considerable efforts in the areas of citizen and business engagement. By governments building an effective platform for participation, sharing information and inviting participants to build off of that, communities can be established where innovation can come from anywhere at anytime, RFP issued or not. Aneesh Chopra presented the platform idea via a “Menu of Open Government Tools”, empowering others to develop their own initiatives in a cost-effective manner:

A shining example here is the Department of Defense website DefenseSolutions.gov:

“A portal through which innovative companies, entrepreneurs, and research organizations can offer potential solutions to the Department of Defense. This portal, and the team behind it, are designed to encourage companies that have never considered doing business with DoD to participate.”

Aneesh Chopra also outlined the open dialog initiative wherein the White House invited citizens to draft policy recommendations for a Presidential Directive. Using well known collaborative tools such as IdeaScale and MixedInk, the three stage process produced thousands of votes and comments and can still be seen at each individual phase here:

1. Brainstorming
2. Discussion
3. Drafting Recommendations

For me, this marked the transition from a mindset of closed, project-based, incremental innovation to a government prepared to take good ideas from anywhere. As Aneesh pointed out, “Great ideas get funding, regardless of the rules“.

3. The need to provide compelling experiences

Last, but not least, I felt a real sense of urgency for government agencies to rethink their interactions with participants; the need to provide compelling experiences. This includes with other agencies, government employees, businesses and citizens.

Tammy’s talked about the power of great experiences before. As the idea of government as a platform takes off, I think this becomes even more crucial. Talent, customers, processes and selected information reside outside of the traditional boundaries of the organization. How people interact with the platform out ‘there’ is what’s important. Why should they engage? What’s the reward of doing so?

Part of this comes in presenting information in a consistent, clear, interactive and useful way. The IT Dashboard, as presented by Vivek Kundra, was a great case study here. The searchable and customizable dashboard is so compelling it has attracted more than 30 million visitors since it was launched…on June 30! It’s been effective, too. One presenter spoke of a case where nearly 45 projects were halted at once when someone interacting with the data raised some red flags about cost management.

By making all this data available for mashups and other innovative services, everyday people are allowed a view into government with far more relevance on their personal lives than, say, just tables of data. And when people are compelled to take action, change happens (e.g. 45 projects get halted because of poor contractor performance). A few weeks ago I posted an interview I did with Zappos about engaging potential talent. The same principles apply here when engaging the public. Compelling comes in the form of personal, emotional, and/or relationship-based interactions.

David Weinberger labels this human touch as ‘the spiritual lure of the Web’, in the The Cluetrain Manifesto:

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates that something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice.

The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice.

Citizens and business are beginning to engage with government in interesting ways because of new expectations of a two way exchange of information and learning. New social tools are combining with changing mindsets on openness and collaboration and are starting to demonstrate the real power of that ‘return of voice’ in the form of effective citizen and business engagement.

Wikipedia goes to great lengths on it’s NPOV (Neutral Point of View) policy page to explain how and when an article can be considered “neutral:”

The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting verifiable perspectives on a topic as evidenced by reliable sources. The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as “the truth”, in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one.

This sounds great, but I’m concerned that the Wiki system as a whole might have considerable bias built-in. First, consider what Wikipedia is. It’s the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” but not anyone does — instead, most prefer just to read (it’s the 7th most visited site online). Just as visiting the site is an opt-in process, so is editing it; the community that creates and polices content is very much self-selecting. This is where I think the problem arises.Something is only neutral within the context of its community. That is, an issue is neutral (in my mind at least) when it exists perfectly balanced between the centres of gravity of two or more conflicting views. Given that the population of people who edit Wikipedia is necessarily drawn from the people who read Wikipedia — but also have the inclination, be it technological or ideological, to edit the site — there is the concern that the editing community has a different makeup with regards to their opinions on issues than the reader community, and the world at large.

Wikipedia attempts to address this by saying that in order for something to be cited as a reference, it needs to refer to a reliable source — one that has a reputation for fact checking and integrity. There are two problems with this:

1. “Reliable sources” have bias built in too. Al Jazeera is reliable to one subset of people, FOX News is reliable to another. Fans of either source would be offended to hear that the other is placed on the same level as their own.
2. The community gets to decide what sources are reliable (because who else is there to, Wikipedia is a community based effort).

The first problem doesn’t have any easy solutions; individual bloggers may be telling the truth with every word they write, but until they have a sufficient following and track record, there’s not really any reliable metric to decide if what they’re saying is admissible. Wikipedians could do research to bolster one-off claims found on blogs, but this practice would be awfully close to original research, something the site strives to avoid.

The second problem is simultaneously easy and hard to solve. The more people edit Wikipedia, the more accurate the alignment of “neutral” to the Wikipedians and “neutral” to everyone else becomes (unless of course people with a specific agenda flood into the site en-masse to try and shake things up). But this is counterbalanced with the issue of getting people involved. Not everyone wants to edit Wikipedia, and not everyone who wants to knows how.

Interestingly, I read this result as meaning that Wikipedia is consistent from first to last. In principle, the more people edit Wikipedia, the better it gets; similarly, the more people edit Wikipedia, the more its version of neutrality becomes one that reflects the world at large. It’s a fantastic resource, and if we want it to continue to improve, at some point, we’re all going to have to get involved.

(A special thank you to my friends Danielle, Eve, and Josh, with whom I had the conversation that resulted in this post. Also of note is that XKCD, did, in some measure, address this long before we did.)

Directed by Ivo Gormley, the film explores how the web is changing the many ways in which we can organize ourselves. From a democratic football club where the fans pick the team to a lending service where everyone can be a bank manager, Us Now brings together the leading thinkers in the field of participation and web culture to describe how mass collaboration could change society. As the co-author of Wikinomics:  How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, I was asked by Ivo Gormley to participate.

The UK documentary had its North American premiere 2½ months ago in Toronto.  One of many attending the premiere was Ruby Ku, a self-described 20-something SciBus student at the University of Waterloo.  Ruby was good enough to track down the URLs for many groups featured in the film:

1. School of Everything – a website that helps people who want to learn meet up with people who want to teach.
2. Zopa – a market place where people lend and borrow money to and from each other, sidestepping the banks.
3. Couchsurfing – a worldwide network making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit; participate in a better world, one couch at a time.
4. The People Speak – a campaign to engage young people on the global issues that will shape their future – an initiative from the United Nations Foundation.
5. Slice The Pie – a music financing company that aggregates thousands of people’s opinions about upcoming bands and allows fans to invest in producing albums.
6. MyFootballClub – join members from over 80 countries who own Ebbsfleet United and vote on all key decisions from team selection to financial budgets.
7. Mumsnet – a social enterprise + community of parents sharing their know-hows on the net and meeting up in real-life.
8. Open Everything – global conversation about the art, science, and the spirit of “open.”

It would be great to see the documentary go viral.  If you haven’t seen the film, please give it a try.  And if you like it (which you will) tell as many friends as you can.

Some early examples exist. One of the better known initiatives is called “Help a London Park – You Vote, We Makeover”. The idea was to give citizens of London a voice in deciding which parks would receive upgrades. A green twist on a budget consultation process. The site is very simple to use and allowed citizens to vote on their top choice. The process helped city officials select 10 parks that will receive up to £ 400 000 in improvement grants. Although not perfect the initiative illustrates a way governments can reach out to their citizens to inform their decision making. Similar 2.0 consultation processes have sprung up, mostly around budgeting, in Germany, Canada and Brazil. We would be very interested in hearing about any other initiatives that our readers might have heard of that focus on environmental issues.

At noon yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation announced the winners from the Apps for America contest.  The top prize (which came with a $15 000 reward) went to the makers of Filibusted.us, a web-based application that sheds light on which Senators have been filibustering legislation in the US Senate.  There were 16 prize winners in total, and I definately recommend checking out the winners for yourself (my favorite is Legistalker.org).

Next came the recently-launched INCA – the Innovative and Creative Application Contest, based out of Belgium.  This contest is open for anyone to submit an application, be it a website, widget, google mashup or mobile application, to be used by Flemish citizens to help solve “collective and social problems.”  Prizes will be awarded to the ten best submissions, with the top developer receiving a prize of 20 000 Euros (about $25 ooo USD).  Deadline for submission is April 27th. 

With INCA, Apps for America and last November’s Apps for Democracy, we’re starting to see a very exciting trend in the Gov 2.0 space:  software developers and programmers engaging in social causes and public sector development.  Can these contests help spur the creation of new services along the lines of fixmystreet or transparency tools like opencongress?  After speaking with Sunlight’s John Wonderlich and Apps for Democracy architect Peter Corbett over the past two weeks, I’m convinced that they can.

The key to improving on these contest models is to create, in the words of Peter Corbett, a “Cradle-to-Grave” strategy to promote citizen-driven innovation in the public sector.  Corbett’s Cradle-to-Grave approach seeks an 8-step process for future application contests:

1.  Problem Sourcing:  Idea-sourcing, in this case, will work best when a specific problem/social issue is being targeted (such as crime, traffic congestions, etc.)

2.  Open Data:  A key to the success of Apps for Democracy was that Vivek Kundra made DC’s government data openly available with over 240 data feeds. 

3.  Government Sponsorship:  To support the idea-sourcing contest.  This was done in DC’s Apps initiative.

4.  Establish Contest Framework: Well-constructed in all three above examples.

5.  Launch and Run the Contest:  Also well-done in the three above-cited cases.

6.  Award:  All three contests had multiple award winners (not just financial – the recognition is probably a more powerful incentive to participation).

7.  Absorption by Government:  For the best applications to live on after the contest and provide real value to the public sector, they need to be adopted, maintained, and ideally, improved upon.  This represents a murky point, and an area where the initial contests haven’t found a working model.  It’s unclear how this is best handled.  Should the government provide ongoing grants for development of applications?  Should government internalize the best applications?

8.  Commercialization:  Lastly, Corbett believes that the applications need to somehow become commercialized, although it’s unclear whether or not government should be involved.  Could iLive.at or DCHistoricTours have a business model, wherein they could be licensed to other cities to use?  Another possibility might be a sponsorship arrangement with a private company.

Overall, citizen-driven idea sourcing and app creation represents a means of maximizing web 2.0 potential in public sector development.  The room for improvement is massive – outside of DC, for example, very few governments have truly open data (Corbett’s 2nd step).  But even if we’re still years away from widespread adoption of this model, at least we have the model (or rather, a model), with forward-thinking governments seeing the merits and beginning to move in this direction. 

If you’re really into this space, there’s a major development coming over the horizon – but that’s a whole other blog post in itself.

Incredible Edible Todmorden was started by two women who decided that more local food should be grown and eaten in their town. The two have rallied the community to help them achieve this goal – a reminder that collaboration needs effective leadership. The town council was persuaded to donate public land. As has the old age home, railroad station, local school and a number of individual landowners. Hundreds of volunteers have been mobilized to help with the creation of gardens and orchards. Local businesses are contributing resources as well. The initiative is supported by a community website complete with RSS enabled news bulletins, blogs and maps. All in all, the initiative is an effective example of grassroots collaboration.

The story is even more interesting due to the speed in which it has spread. The initiative was started less than a year ago and picked up by a local newspaper. This quickly generated a story in the regional newspaper and ended up on the radar of the nationwide U.K. media. The BBC is in Todmorden this week shooting a documentary. Blogs like TreeHugger also picked up the story and quickly publicized it to millions of readers. The result is a number of similar initiatives that have been, or are being, launched across the world. One of the most advanced is in the nearby city of Huddersfield.

Although the local food growing movement is unlikely to solve the climate crisis, it may prove to be one of the puzzle pieces that will help society tackle this complex problem. Most importantly, it seems to be a cause that galvanizes certain communities into action. The combination of leadership and collaboration exhibited by Incredible Edible Todmorden provides a model while the various media forms have allowed for that model to be publicized and replicated across the world. It is likely that other successful grassroots initiatives will go through a similar process, and when added up, will amount to a significant reduction in our environmental impact.

In the initial round of protests on January 26th, when traditional media reports were unavailable to and from many regions, social media played an important role in information relays.  Now, crisis reporting is made even more transparent with an open platform developed by Ushahidi.  Ushahidi (meaning “testimony” in Swahili) was first developed to report on violence during the 2008 Kenyan election, using a collaborative base of citizen journalists to map crisis information and gather insights.  The platform has also been in used in Gaza and Congo.

Here, you can see the Madagascar-specific site, where citizens can check the Google Maps mashup to learn where crises are occurring (and have occurred previously).  They can also view a listing of all reports, submit their own (via internet or mobile) and receive SMS alerts on their mobiles about any developments in their locality. 

The functionality and ability of citizens to text-in and receive updates (with a proper verification process) can go a long way to reduce harm in crises.  Also, in many of the developing regions where such crises are most prevalent, the mobile is an ideal channel for this information.  At the end of 2007, there were 280 million mobile subscribers in Africa, representing a 30% penetration rate.  In Congo, for instance, there are only 10 000 fixed-line telephones, but over 1 million mobiles.  If you want to read on about mobile penetration in Africa, check out this article that appeared in The Guardian in January.

In a study by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiaitve on last year’s post-election violence in Kenya, Ushahidi’s data was compared to the information released by bloggers and traditional media.  Not only is Ushahidi able to get infomation out quicker, but in many cases, it helped with reporting information that was “off the grid”.  Whereas bloggers and news media often focus on the same areas and echo one another, Ushidi allowed coverage of a much broader area.  Here’s a more in-depth blog from last October that covers this and other findings in more detail.

Twitter, microblogging and citizen journalists may be excellent tools for crisis reporting.  But to take it a step further, platforms like Ushahidi, which can properly aggregate the information and feed it back to those who need it, greatly improves the potential for rapid aid deployment and optimal use of response resources.

While information is available, you generally have to search for it.  Admittedly, while I care a great deal about ethical corporate behaviour, I simply don’t have the time to research the companies that produce all of the goods and services I pay for.  I suspect that many consumers would be interested in more accessible information regarding corporate behaviour, but are limited by this same constraint.

Slowly, information is becoming available about products attached to “good” practices, as we’ve seen with fair trade labelling organizations.  But what about labelling the “bad” products?  Producers aren’t going to do this, nor will retailers.

This is where Knowmore.org can play a role.  Dedicated to revealing unethical business practices, Knowmore has 2 main features.  First, the site is based on a wiki, where registered editors (anyone can become one) are encouraged to build on their library of companies and edit the company wikis.  The five key issues are worker’s rights, human rights, environmental concerns, political influence and business ethics.

The more innovative feature, however, is the Firefox add-on that brings all of this information to your browser when you visit a company’s website or search for them on Google.

Once a user adds the Knowmore application, they’ll get information resembling the image I’ve posted above (the top bar urging the boycott shows up on the Nike website, and the text below it is the hit that comes back on Google).

When I searched “Nike” on google, all 5 of the key issues came up as ‘red’, indicating that the wiki editors at Knowmore have major concerns on each metric.  For comparison, when I search Pfizer, I see that they (according to Knowmore) have issues with human rights and business ethics, although the other 3 areas get a “yellow”.

Similar to LittleSis (which is admittedly only a Beta), Knowmore has shortcomings based on usage.  For this site to reach its potential, it would really need a Wikipedia-sized following to broaden its library of companies, and to watch over the editing to ensure fairness and accuracy.  Knowmore also has consistency problems – some of the companies get flagged on Google search, some do not (even when they’re in the wiki library).  Moreover, some companies get a notification pop-up on their website (see Nike above), but others do not.  I think this shortcoming relates to Knowmore’s reach – as with other Gov 2.0 applications, it needs a very broad user base in order to fulfill its potential.

Still, I love this potential.  As more consumers are researching products and making purchases online, the Knowmore feature serves as a push-based alert (one you opt-in to by downloading it), notifying the user about corporate ethics issues that they otherwise wouldn’t have taken the time to research.  Not every consumer is a social activist, and very few conduct corporate research for their purchases.  But I suspect that many, if alerted to, say, human rights abuses, might think twice before buying a product from a questionable source (especially when other options are available).

Knowmore has the potential to bring a truly open participatory process into corporate regulation.  Using an interface and editing process similar to Wikipedia, critical mass could create a very accurate, transparent database to monitor corporate behaviour.  Tying this to consumers’ browsers might actually cause companies to rethink some of their policies.

So how do you get consumers to download this application?  Would they be interested?  How can we help Knowmore, or a similar application, reach critical mass?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

As I watched the film Us Now last week, I was reminded of the British football club Ebbsfleet United and the MyFootballClub story, (see a clip here) where fans ultimately had enough of being armchair critics and put their money where their heart (and often discontent) was, and actually purchased a Club.

Bringing the story to a more personal level, I have been to quite a few of my favourite athletic club, the Toronto Raptors’, games this year and I have left the Air Canada Centre more often than I would like wishing there were some recourse that I, as a fan, had to have my displeasure heard.  I am completely aware that loss is an important part of sport, but to leave a match feeling as if the players did not leave it all on the court, or that the coach drew up a bad play, is not a great feeling as a supporter.

Now I know what you’re saying – does everyone give 100% all the time? Obviously not, but in the world of elite professional athletics, my threshold for forgiveness is admittedly lowered.

If there were a more immediate, constructive, and tangible way to give timely feedback, rather than voting with my feet, I would be all for it.

Now there are great online tools, such as Protrade The Sports Stock Market, that harness the power of prediction markets by allowing for the “purchase and sale” of  athletes, in order to earn some pretty great rewards and dominate fantasy pools, but the ultimate effect of these actions on the actual team remains unclear (presumably minimal).

One potential participatory experiment could be to gauge fans’ expectations vs. actual outcomes to mine the wisdom of the fans for added insight (kudos to Alex). For example, if the Raptors were playing the Kings, I would expect a solid victory, with CB4 putting up some big numbers, along with Jose Calderon dominating the assists column.  Now if the Raps were playing the Celtics, I would hope for a victory, but rather expect a big game from Chris Bosh, Jose Calderon, Andrea Bargnani and co., but would be well-prepared to chalk one up in the L category.

If, using sliding scale, I could input my predictions, along with the 000,000s of other NBA fans, then technically, the wisdom of the crowd should be pretty good at predicting ultimate outcomes (and managing expectations), and could hopefully improve the quality of game play (and fan engagement) if predictions were able to influence (pre)game-time decisions.  I respect many coaches’ expertise, but I am also a firm believer that none of us is as smart as all of us.

I suppose some of my frustrations this year have been driven by a few of the decidedly bizarre moves undertaken by a number of teams in the NBA, in light of salary cap considerations and decreased expected future earnings owing to economic pressure on ticket sales. Some of these decisions have resulted in what analysts have called a blatant disrespect of fans.  Always entertaining Bill Simmons goes so far as saying ”I’d say the Grizzlies hurled a flaming bag of dog feces at their fans, but they don’t have any fans” in reference to a three-way trade involving Houston, Orlando and Memphis, in February. In another complementary statement, Simmons also laments that “we [team leadership] finally crossed the imaginary line between “building a good team while being fiscally responsible” and “being fiscally responsible and not giving a crap about anything else.”

If fans begin to feel bored, or worse disrespected by questionable ownership/leadership  moves, then a fear of empty seats will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In an economy where entertainment dollars are growing harder and harder to capture, particularly the big ticket item sales – season tickets and luxury boxes – perhaps mechanisms that create deeper fan engagement must be among the tools used to help keep teams afloat - give the fans a greater say.

Now most of this post has been focused on the NBA, the league I would argue is best set up to weather the storm, due to its high-level of fan interaction and loyalty, but I dread to think of the situation that is imminent for many MLB and NHL teams (a league that is having trouble securing player buy-in and excitement for the fan favourite All-Star game).

Challenges aside, let’s be idealistic for a moment – wouldn’t it be great if a pro team were willing to give fans the extent of control that the Ebbsfleet United fans have, without surrendering formal ownership rights?

Any disenchanted sports fans out there looking to join in a myfootballclub-like adventure? We’ll call it mybasketballclub just to be original.

For anyone not familiar with the idea, it is, simply put, “pay-what-you-want” dining. (Radiohead recently applied the concept [not for food, of course], allowing fans to decide what to pay for their new album). At the end of the meal the customer decides how much it was worth, and pays accordingly.

Menus at Zesty’s Deli in Guelph, Ontario list a question mark beside items instead of a dollar figure. Tony Salamone, owner of Zesty’s says, “I have great faith in the people of Guelph.” The participatory pricing approach could clearly go a long way in keeping businesses honest, but the benefits aren’t one-way. For sure, customers win when they are empowered by the policy. At the same time, honest, and good quality businesses will win too - having customers reflect appreciation in the prices they choose to pay.

The owners of Barrie, Ontario restaurant Oscar’s echo Salamone’s message, “We are so confident in our kitchen and the food that we put out. And we are confident in our front of the house staff, our service is some of the best in the city.” Their message emphasizes the fact that business owners who apply participatory pricing aren’t operating charities – they believe that they will be more successful when they turn the price-setting power over to the consumer.

The first pay-what-you-want restaurant was the international, UK-based chain, Little Bay. According to reports, Little Bay is actually enjoying increased revenue since giving customers the power to decide what meals are worth.

More power to the consumer and an imperative to operate honestly for businesses, with increased revenue for those offering the best food and experience - participatory pricing is win-win.

I’d be interested to learn of experiences others have had with participatory pricing and in which industries you think it’ll have the greatest impact.

What else could “civic robots” do? I’m sure there’s a potentially endless list of civic chores: Mointoring and reporting local air quality, collecting and compacting street trash, issuing electronic fines for idling your car on hot summer day, cleaning up toxic sites, and who knows what else.

There’s an interview with Marc Bohlen here and if you’re in the San Jose region next week you can see him live at O’Reilly’s Emerging Tech Conference.

LittleSis mixes Facebook-ish user interface with Wikipedia-like user editing to create profiles of the “powers that be” in both the private and public sectors.  Users who register as analysts can log in and add information to profiles of major figures like Barack Obama, Robert Rubin or Bill Gates.  The site focuses on 3 main factors about an individual:  Relationships (which includes Business/Government positions, other memberships, education and donation/grant recipients), Interlocks (people in common organizations), Giving (who they’ve donated to, as well as other individuals that have given to the same recipients) and the basic personal information.

Like Facebook, LittleSis also includes groups.  When I look up Citi Group, I can see their leadership and staff, but I also get a look at people and organizations that Citi has done businesses with. My favorite group feature is the “targets of lobbying”, where I learn that from ’99-’08, they lobbied the Senate and House 19 times.  They also lobbied the Department of Education 7 times between ’04 and ’07 (why would that be?)  If I go to the Department of Education group, I can follow up and see who they’ve done business with, who’s lobbied them, and which organizations have leadership and staff in common with the Department.  I can also check out which organizations have received donations from people who work in the Department.

The key to LittleSis is that it’s not Barack Obama, Citi Group or the Department of Education controlling their own profile and network.  Analysts like myself (I signed up for an account) are the ones doing the writing and editing, much like Wikipedia.  LittleSis also has a metric for determining which Analysts score the most points for making edits – a good system to (hopefully) maintain the integrity of the site.

At this point, there are a few shortcomings to LittleSis.  As I mentioned, the site is still in a Beta version, so it’s not a completed project yet.  Also, you can certainly question the accuracy of the information, and more importantly, the completeness of it.  I can read that a major CEO donated to groups x, y and z, but he may also have donated to a, b and c, with that information not yet uploaded.  As with Wikipedia, I think that a major prerequisite to a complete and successful version of LittleSis will be achieving a critical mass of users to police information and ensure the completeness of it.

Regardless of this shortcoming, I see a lot of potential in LittleSis.  Having this kind of facebook-like platform to follow donations and relationships among America’s elite is a fantastic development for public and private transparency.  Previously, we had to rely on journalists to follow the string and inform us about these relationships.  This website, if successful, allows individual citizens to see this themselves in a platform that’s very similar to the facebook sites they’re so adept at navigating.

The Sunlight Foundation is on the right track – let’s hope that LittleSis gets a strong enough user base to reach its potential.

Stimuluswatch.org, evidently a work in progress, provides an interesting (albeit imperfect) example of how this might work. Launched by team led by Jerry Brito at George Mason University, the site encourages citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed “shovel-ready” projects in their city to find, discuss and rate those projects. The list of shovel-ready projects was developed by a coalition of US Mayors as a response to the stimulus package. The mayor’s have had their say, now stimulus-watch allows citizens to register their opinions on which projects they believe are critical and which are not.

Despite being sympathetic with the site’s aims, I can’t get past the problem that there is absolutely no way to determine whether the input on forums like stimuluswatch.org is in any way representative of the majority views in a given jurisdiction. This is a general problem with citizen engagement online and one reason why online consultations will remain marginal until at least two big issues are solved:

1. The ability to authenticate the citizens who participate (i.e., are they who they say they are and are they in fact resident of a given jurisdiction) and,
2. The ability to determine whether the opinions expressed by the online population are representative of the general population (particularly the population of people who are unlikely to participate in online engagement exercises).

Unfortunately, without these elements I struggle to see how projects like stimuluswatch.org can claim any democratic legitimacy. That doesn’t mean that they are not a useful source of input. But it does mean that local elected officials would be hard-pressed to justify using this input to determine how they allocate public funds.

Obama has promised that the spending authorized by the stimulus bill will be subject to unprecedented transparency and accountability. Although there is little substance yet, recovery.gov — the centerpiece of the transparency strategy — promises to be a rich source of detailed charts, maps and graphics that display where the money is being spent (including which districts and which federal contractors), how it is being spent (the specific projects being funded and their performance targets), and to what effect (including the ability to track individual project developments and assess any measurable improvements in economic performance using broad economic indicators). For a partial example of what this might look like see OMBWatch’s fedspending.org and the government’s own USAspending.gov.

The first two aspects of the proposed transparency strategy (detailing where and how money is being spent) are already routine practice. Whether they can provide that info in a timely and useful manner is another matter. As Ellen Miller at the Sunlight Foundation rightly points out:

Recovery.gov must make the raw data available and it must be housed in system so that data can flow in and out easily. There should be open programming interfaces that allow developers to share and analyze data.

We also need details such as:

What data is getting collected and how often? Who has to report? How often will the data be updated and how often will it made available to the public? What’s the database going to look like what’s the relationship to USASpending.gov? What kinds of content will Recovery.gov produce around the data? (Will there be regular emails when new information is available, blogging with analysis, etc.)?

In my view, the third element (the ability to track projects in real-time and to evaluate their impacts) holds both the greatest promise and also the greatest challenge. Releasing official project-level data and providing metrics and tools for analysis (e.g, jobs created per dollar spent) would be a good first step. Open-sourcing this process as much as possible would be even better.

One opportunity is to gather more local intelligence about which projects are positively impacting citizens and the economy and which ones are wasting money. Naturally, these assessments would be more subjective, but not necessarily less reliable than the official data, which we know can be manipulated to hide any signs of poor performance.

I would expect see considerable resistance to this idea all the way down the spending chain, from the federal agencies that distribute the funds to the state and local agencies that spend it to the contractors that ultimately perform the work. Which is likely why we won’t see this kind of capability hosted on recovery.gov, but rather on a third party site like stimuluswatch.org (see my next post).

(Editor’s Note: Ali joins us from the Carnegie Endowment and has prepared a three-post series on his suggestion for a Global Challenges Wikipedia, check out posts one and two.)

If it’s designed and implemented carefully, the GCW that I’m proposing would offer us insight into at least four high-level questions:

1. How can the global community allocate its resources more effectively?  It’s all too often the case that fundamental questions such as this one are either ignored or don’t receive their due attention in the rush to make “progress.”  We need to understand how people, technology, and money are being allocated.  This examination would allow us to take stock of where we are in the fight against global challenges and determine where we need to go.  
2. Which players are best suited to accomplishing a given task?  For example, is an NGO more equipped to engage in nation-building than a government?  On what variables, if any, does the answer depend?  Identifying players’ comparative advantages would lessen the extent to which they tread on each others’ turf and create deadweight loss.
3. What geopolitical patterns emerge?  Do certain problem-solving paradigms work better in certain countries or regions or in application to certain global challenges?  Intuition suggests that bilateral negotiations between developed and developing powers will be instrumental to slowing climate change, whereas grassroots, experiment-based initiatives will be instrumental to reversing global poverty.  The more extensive the GCW becomes, the more likely it is that it’ll be able to flesh out that intuition and, again, eliminate deadweight loss.
4. Can we predict where global challenges will go in the future?  Forecasting has long gotten a bad rap on the grounds that those who attempt it advance specious claims to sell books, get on TV, and, more broadly, gain attention.  I agree that one who forecasts to be fashionable doesn’t contribute much to our understanding.  I’d argue, however, that as time passes, engaging in long-term strategic thinking on the basis of objective evidence will only grow  more imperative.   

 
Alright.  Three blog posts about one idea might seem like overkill, but (if you can’t already tell) I’m excited.  If only by virtue of the fact that others are starting to embark on similar projects, I’m convinced that the GCW has extraordinary potential if we get the details right at the outset, work hard, and dream big. 

What do you think?  Please feel free to contact me at awyne@alum.mit.edu.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Today, at least three forces are opening up the regulatory process to a much broader global audience.

1. Satellite imagery coupled with a plethora of intelligent micro-sensors allows us to cull staggering quantities from our natural and built environments (see the California Institute for Technology and Carnegie Mellon experiments where low-power intelligent wireless sensors measure everything from temperature to movement to chemical composition and report that information back in real-time). And thanks to tools like Google Earth, much of this information is now freely available on the Internet, which gives considerable ammunition to conservationists (see here and here, for example).

2. There is growing recognition that at least some resource stocks should be considered global public goods, due to the ecological services they provide to the broader global biosphere (the Amazon being one example). Citizens around the globe have taken an increasing interest in the protection of those public goods and in doing so they call into question traditional notions of national sovereignty when it comes to planetary stewardship.

3. As a result, there are well organized and increasingly agile networks of conservations and environmental groups that reach across national borders and wield considerable influence in key policy debates. They have also become increasingly adept at exposing instances of abuse and pressuring either the culprits directly or the regulatory authorities, or both.

My favourite example in this space, Global Forest Watch improves transparency and accountability in forest management decisions by increasing the public’s access to information on forestry developments around the world. They have a cool Data Warehouse where users can download a vast array of geographical data and manipulate it for their own analyses using their interactive map server

Other examples include the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, both of which were set up as joint efforts of industry and conservation groups to impose new eco-labelling regimes that help consumers recognize and reward sustainable practices in forestry and fishing.

For other posts in this series see:
Time for participatory regulation
Participatory regulation for workplace health and safety
Participatory regulation and anti-corruption efforts

(Editor’s Note: Ali joins us from the Carnegie Endowment and has prepared a three-post series on his suggestion for a Global Challenges Wikipedia, stay tuned for part three in the coming days.)

I briefly introduced the GCW in my first post.  For more details, please check out a short primer that I drafted, which discusses its high-level mechanisms, functions, and goals.  My thinking evolves by the second, and I’m talking with lots of people to figure out the nitty-gritty of how this framework would actually work.  As I do so, I’m happy to see that projects in the spirit of mine are starting to emerge.  Here are three recent examples:

1. The November / December 2008 issue of Foreign Policy spotlights Raj Kumar’s Development 2.0 project, devex.com, which allows site members to, “depending on their level of access, post projects, form networks based on common interests, browse and monitor upcoming bids, find job opportunities, and get in touch with experts on the ground…At the heart of the site, though, is its massive projects database, which currently lists more than 47,000 projects on everything from rural sanitation in Bangladesh to policing in the Palestinian territories – searchable by region, country, donor, project type, or status.  By aggregating this information in one place, Kumar says, Devex gives everyone a chance to find out about opportunities, not just the well-connected…”
2.  MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence just announced an initiative to harness “collective brainpower and computing power” in the service of addressing global challenges.  The “center is developing an online deliberation tool that allows experts in a wide range of fields to get together to share ideas.  Unlike existing online discussion forums, the Climate Collaboratorium requires users to catalog their contributions and connect them to points that have already been made.  Such ‘argument maps’ help eliminate the repetitive, unhelpful comments and tangents that render most online discussion forums unhelpful.  The researchers are also connecting their deliberation tool with computer-based climate models, so users’ suggestions about different parts of the problem can be more easily combined and tested.”
3. The World in 2009, a publication of The Economist, profiles a digital mapping project that  aims to improve how money is spent in Africa: “The kind of maps which in the past had been  held to ransom by secretive African governments will pop up in African internet café in 2009.  Many will be annotated ‘wiki’ style, with layers of information added and verified by  an online community: street names for all, distribution of infant deaths for development workers, livestock density for agricultural officials, Catholic primary schools for a local bishop, and YouTube videos on the best snorkeling spots for tourists…[by using digital maps] teams of epidemiologists working together with medical workers texting in information from their mobile phones will do a better job of tracking exotic pathogens before they become mass killers.  Similarly, aid workers in 2009 will use digital maps for real-time information on famines and conflict, starting with an acute famine in Ethiopia.”

What these undertakings, among others, demonstrate is that a GCW could be an immensely powerful tool for addressing global challenges.  For the most part, they’ve tended to focus on specific global challenges or specific countries.  We need to go a step beyond and focus on the big picture – all global problems in all countries.  

Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. The annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), first released in 1995, is the best known of Transparency International’s corruption-fighting tools. It has been widely credited with putting TI and the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda. The CPI ranks 180 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys. TI also has the global corruption barometer, the bribe payer’s index (assesses the supply side of corruption and ranks corruption by source country and industry sector) and the revenue transparency project (working to disclose company payments to resource-rich countries ). Given their clout and reputation I would like to see TI adopt a more participatory approach. At the moment, donating funds to their organization seems to be the main channel for public participation. Although credit to them, they do appear to make their data available for resuse.

The Kimberley Process (KP) is a joint government- industry-civil society initiative to stem the flow of conflict diamonds – rough diamonds used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments to devastating effect in countries such as Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone. The Kimberley Process established a supply chain monitoring and diamond certification process that is supposed to ensure that conflict diamonds do not reach retail shelves. Although the initiative appears to have made considerable progress, Global Witness, which (along with Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) and other NGOs) had an unusually high level of involvement in developing and building support for the scheme, claims that there is still a flourishing illicit trade in diamonds globally. Global Witness reports that poor controls in some diamond producing countries (e.g., Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone) allow significant volumes of blood diamonds enter the legitimate trade through Ghana and Mali, where they are being certified as conflict free.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is similar in intent to TI’s bribe payer’s index — it also aims to strengthen governance by improving transparency and accountability in the extractives sector. The EITI initiative works directly with participants in the extractive industry (e.g., mining, oil & gas companies and governments) to set a global standard for companies to publish what they pay and for governments to disclose what they receive. The goal is to ensure that the revenues from oil, gas, and mining companies in the form of taxes, royalties, signature bonuses and other payments become an important engine for economic growth and social development rather than simply enriching the ruling elite.

Wikileaks is arguably the most open and participatory anti-corruption efforts in the mix. Its core objective is to provide a platform for people who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations and it does this by hosting a wiki for mass document leaking and analysis. To date, it has received over 1.2 million documents from dissident communities and anonymous sources, focused largely on exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Worker’s Rights Consortium — an independent labor rights monitoring organization, conducting investigations of working conditions in factories around the globe. Its purpose is to combat sweatshops and protect the rights of workers who sew apparel and make other products sold in the United States. Like the FLA below, the WRC emerged after allegations surfaced that Nike and other major brands were sourcing their high-priced items from sweatshops where workers were working in horrendous conditions for as little as 5 cents an hour.

Fair Labor Association. Similar to the WRC, the FLA brings together colleges and universities, civil society organizations, and “socially responsible companies”. Companies that join the FLA commit to establishing internal systems for monitoring workplace conditions and maintaining Code standards, being part of a rigorous system of Independent External Monitoring (IEM), and public reporting on the conditions in their supplier factories.

The Cocoa Initiative emerged after investigations by human rights organizations revealed that child slaves were being forced to farm the cocoa that eventually finds its way into chocolate treats manufactured by companies such as Hershey’s, Nestle and Cadbury. Public scrutiny forced the companies to respond — even though they initially claimed that they bore no responsibility since they purchased their cocoa on the commodity markets and had no direct relationships with the cocoa suppliers. The public didn’t buy this excuse and the result was a unique partnership between NGOs, labour unions, cocoa processors and the major chocolate brands to change the way cocoa is grown.

Other good examples? Leave a comment.

Some of the issues that challenge today’s regulators include the sclerotic pace of rulemaking, increasing international interdependency, the lack of transparency in industry and government, the corrosive influence of “junk science” and money and an insufficient capacity for oversight.

After dismantling or circumscribing centralized regulatory agencies in the 1980s and 1990s, I think many governments will find they are ill equipped to deal with these challenges. In most sectors, deregulation was a cue for regulated industries to start designing and enforcing their own regulations. Decentralized rulemaking was intended to help make regulation more responsive to the needs of industries that were evolving quickly and becoming increasingly global in scope. Governments were to be the “regulators of last resort”—stepping in only after self-regulation was deemed to have failed. But in practice most instances of pure self-regulation have deficiencies and governments (for the most part) have proven unable or unwilling to take swift action when market failures became evident.

The upshot: without transparency, oversight and accountability, self-regulation is clearly inadequate. At the same time, the speed, interdependency and complexity of today’s world makes a return to centralized rulemaking and enforcement increasingly implausible. All this makes me think that the kinds of organizational innovations that make the Linux community, twitter and wikipedia remarkable could help regulators address some their challenges.

The big opportunity initially may be to foster greater citizen or stakeholder participation in monitoring and enforcing regulations that already exist. Naturalists and recreational users could be enlisted to help document abuses on public lands, just as individuals and organizations around the world are able to bring human rights abuses to global attention using new channels like YouTube or Winess’s Hub.

But citizens and other stakeholders could also help design and promulgate new rules, particularly where there are gaps in existing legislation. The consumer advocacy movements that currently police the social and environmental performance of industry are a good example. More governments could eventually sanction initiatives like these, while insisting on mandatory corporate sustainability reporting and other forms of transparency would bolster the efforts of citizen monitors.

The technological foundation – including RFID, satellite imagery, cheap personal video recorders and other Internet-connected devices – already exists to distribute the power and authority for designing and enforcing regulations to a broader network of participants. And I think that in the right niches and within certain communities of interest there is ample desire on the part of citizens to play a role in enforcing the rules they care about. I’m not sure that same enthusiasm exists within government and industry, which is why my preliminary research suggests that most new forms of participatory regulation are emerging completely outside traditional regulatory bodies.

I’ll be following up this post with a series of nascent examples. If participatory regulation is of interest to you or if you know of other examples, I would love to hear about it.