First, the extent of this concern is dependent on the environment in which the government operates. In local governments in Europe, like in Austria and Germany, political parties play a major role. In North America, party politics play a less significant role on local level. However, the bigger the city, the more important the issue of partisan politics and the interests of lobby groups become. Well organized, lobby groups and opposition can make mountains out of molehills on a crowdsourcing platform. A government, which refuses to take care about an issue that has gained acceptance on a crowdsourcing platform, is likely to be grilled by the media. The headline: “Government does not listen to ordinary citizens”. Subhead: “Electronic participation served solely PR interests of government”. So my first answer would be: In an environment where a government or the ruling party fears that crowdsourcing could be exploited by the opposition for partisan politics there is one remedy: The activists of your own party should be active on the platform as well. Fight out the competition of ideas on the platform.

However, I think the core issue is the fundamental principle of representative democracy. We elect politicians e.g. every four years, which should represent the will of the citizens. Citizens can hold the politician accountable within the democratic system. Admittedly, this system is not perfect. I believe that democracy is more than casting a ballot once a time. Politicians should harness the wisdom of the crowd to improve government public policy and services. Although we can’t neglect that lobby groups or opposition could use these tools to push their agenda. Politicians also have to think about the interests of those people who do not participate in the crowdsourcing process. The reason for this might be digital divide, less awareness, less interest, or simply lack of time. In other words, politicians have to represent all citizens, not only those who participated on a crowdsourcing platform.

Key issue: participation rate

I had a look at the participation rate of the participatory budget models. In Freiburg, the participation rate was 0.84 % (still higher than having town hall meetings about the budget, the rate was in that case 0.09 %). The City of Solingen used crowdsourcing to get support and understanding for an austerity budget. They used the participatory budget model to collect suggestions from citizens on how to save public money. According to the homepage sohlingen-spart.de („Solingen economizes“), over 3,600 citizens – 2 % of the population -agreed on saving 31 Million Euros. In the Brazilian town Belo Horizonte the participation rate in participatory budget process was at almost 10 %. Admittedly these rates are certainly higher than in any other participatory process. But the lower the percentage of participation, the higher the chance that lobbying groups and interest groups can influence the opinion on the platform. Dustin Haisler, the CIO of Manor, told me that approximately 30 % of the population is using Manorlabs. Although Manorlabs does not include participatory budget, the high participation rate is astonishing.

Naumi and I have the hypothesis that the higher participation rate of citizens, the less the influence of lobby groups. We created following graph:

The assumption is that the influence of the population grows at a much faster rate because they are a much larger percentage of the population.  The “back-of-the-napkin” assumption is that 15 % of the population is somehow affiliated with a lobby group or opposition party and all of them participate. So, once you reach participation rate of about 30 %, the voice of the public evens out the lobbyists.  As overall participation increases, overall bias from lobbyists decreases even more.

If this hypothesis is true, what would that mean for governments? First, think about the environment you are in. Second, mobilize your own activists in case you operate in a harsh environment. Third, make every effort to create a high participation rate. To achieve this, you must develop an incentive model that attracts the engagement of citizens.

OKCupid gathers personal information based on community-submitted questions that users answer. This allows the company to better match couples based on the unique values of each person. Their slogan is: “We do math to get you dates,” which includes going so far as to create decision charts that visualize the formulas leading to love (or at least a date) for various individuals. With their data, OKCupid reveals information about the effectiveness of various romantic approaches, male and female attitudes and biases, insights on what behaviors result in conversations, behavioral changes based on age, and a variety of other findings.

From a research perspective, OKCupid is a fascinating subject. I’ve references them before in a post about labor incentives. Today’s post is about the potential for data-enabled business models and new markets for user data. Even more insightful than some of the racier findings from OKCupid (such as the sexual appetite of the average 40-year-old Floridian woman), user activity on this site generates a tremendous amount of data that extends beyond the realm of dating and could be useful to other groups and industries.

For example, OKCupid is able to generate detailed demographic and geographic data about political views, social issues, and public opinion on issues ranging from contraception to First Amendment rights to acceptable means of protest.

What OKCupid is doing not unique—often the collection of data can yield new insights and provide additional contexts beyond its intended purpose. As more and more customer and user processes become digitized, what we’re going to see over the next few years will be the growth of data-driven strategies that gather, interpret, and present data for new uses and new audiences. The abundance of data and relative scarcity of reliable sense-making information will create a flourishing market for data and analytics. In a recent nGenera survey we found that already over 40% of respondents say that data from external sources leads to competitive advantage.

Two years ago I wrote about how the idea that online social networks will make money selling eyeballs (advertising) or products is missing the entire value proposition of a social network. The real opportunity is in harnessing the rich data that is created by those participating in conversations and interacting with each other. Companies that have social platforms are increasingly seeing a business model around providing free services and aggregating anonymized customer and user data for sale.

OKCupid has a very open approach to data, but it’s easy to imagine a variety of groups—lobbyists, politicians, economists, sociologists, and so on—that might be interested enough in this type of information to pay for it, especially if presented in interactive charts that let the user filter based on factors such as age, race, gender, employment, and so on. If you think about the possibilities available when data extends beyond the realm of online dating, you see that companies in a variety of industries could use customer-generated interaction and polling data to gain a deep understanding of what drives purchasing behavior, brand loyalty, and even the desire for new products.

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.

An excellent study conducted recently by the Wikimedia Foundation and UNU-Merit identified some interesting facts including that only 13% of the respondents were female Wikipedia contributors (meaning that they actually posted content). Speculation on the implications of this fact appeared throughout the blogosphere including this article by Ryan Tate which includes this passage:

MIT instructor and alumni Philip Greenspun has floated a theory as to why women are underrepresented in high-end scientific professions: Science is generally a terrible career choice, but it contains a dysfunctional status hierarchy that tends to appeal the male egos.

“A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Child Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job? …Young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group. [Yet] men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question “is this peer group worth impressing?”…

So it is with Wikipedia. Why invest your free time wrangling with a politicized Wikipedia bureaucracy of infighting editors and bitter story subjects, all for the honor of creating a free resource for other people and paying out of your own pocket to go to high-level meetings for the Wikimedia elite? If you’re a man, for the honor of being near the “top” of something, no matter how fruitless.

To Greenspun’s point, there is a lot of work involved in contributing to Wikipedia. Not so much in actually making the edits, but in defending the changes against people with generally a lot more time to engage in an edit war. In essence, being right isn’t enough if you don’t want to put a lot of effort into convincing people that you are right.

From my personal example (the fact that the topic seems to be banal proves the point), I made an edit on the Frasier page a couple of years ago. It was in regards to a reference that John Mahoney who plays Martin Crane, like many of his colleagues previously appeared on Cheers. No surprise here, of course, the former was a spinoff of the latter and they shared not only the title character but also the same producers. Mahoney’s role on Cheers was a washed-up ad man hired by Rebecca Howe (who had a budget of $50) to write a jingle for the bar. He ended up playing the piano while he sang the jingle “Beer and Pretzels that’s our game…” Because of this someone had described him the character as a pianist. I changed the entry to describe him as an “ad man” because while pianist was correct, it wasn’t completely accurate (the post could have said he played a vertebrate which was equally true). In any case, an edit war occurred and I eventually lost interest. By the way, I checked before I wrote this post and (no thanks to me) the entry now reads the way it should…

Some cast members of Frasier appeared previously in minor roles on Cheers. John Mahoney, who played Martin Crane, appeared in an episode of Cheers, as Si Phlembeck, an over-the-hill advertising executive hired by Rebecca to write a jingle for the bar. In it, Grammer and Mahoney exchanged a few lines.

That episode ended up being incredibly valuable for Mahoney as it certainly led to his casting on Frasier and the ensuing vast riches. There is an interesting story behind how he got the role described here by the writer of the episode. I’d edit the Wikipedia entry to reflect the cool info, but once bitten, twice shy my friend.

Failed systems. Constructs designed by humans that have faltered at some point in the process. Some might say education is the next to witness this.

Tom Brown, CEO of IDEO, questions the current economic model in North America:

I have been thinking quite a bit recently about the failure of the economy and whether we want it to recover to its pre-bust state. As I listened to the arguments for various stimulus packages, the main justification for distributing hundreds of billions of dollars seemed mostly to involve getting us to spend more by consuming more. As a short term fix this may be okay, but wasn’t it just such an unsustainable approach to growth and consumption that got us into trouble in the first place? Can we really expect to spend our way out of this downturn and somehow magically create a post-crisis economy that is sustainable?

You mean throwing money at a problem won’t solve it if the model has an inherent flaw? How do we redesign society on a macro level? How does one magically create a post crisis economy?

There is the concept of a participatory government, whereby citizens play a direct role in designing/monitoring/enforcing the rules that govern economic activity. Gong Szeto, designer and creator of YOUROWNDEMOCRACY, believes that we should redesign government as a computational platform:

Today’s technology allows for innovative online collaboration, networking, transactional, and information visualization. Integrated together in a coherent set of solutions for the citizens of democracy, it is now possible to conceive of a single-platform which is an independent non-partisan party whose sole mandate is to harness the power of these technologies into an accessible framework that will allow citizens the ability to stay informed about complex issues and to register their votes in favor or in opposition to processes in government. Transparency will lead to a stronger, more active and informed citizenry and more accountable government.

A Finalist in the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, YOUROWNDEMOCRACY is a web-based application geared to empower citizens of any democracy in the world to directly engage one another and their elected leaders on important issues on local, state, and national levels. Its goals:

•    empower collective action through citizen action
•    integrate with public citizens for immediate feedback.

You can read more about Gong’s proposal here. The concept applies today’s social networking, multimedia, and financial markets technologies to create a collaborative infrastructure that records and displays a population’s real-time sentiments. This data is measured and visualized for everyone as part of a continuous feedback loop.

I can appreciate that the idea makes issues digestible and actionable. Provided citizens are engaged, YOUROWNDEMOCRACY fosters a culture of transparency, openness and innovation. Transparency can even be a regulatory solution whereby connected citizens can act as monitors within the system. In the same breath though, transparency also means privacy issues.  Network and security issues could threaten public safety.  Data mining (especially on such a remarkable scale) and identity theft are not two phrases anyone enjoys hearing in the same sentence. With an accessible central repository of citizen data, the right data in the wrong hands could potentially be very harmful.

Scalability comes into play. Can the complete scope and needs of the people be adequately addressed using such a system? Do we have the physical resources required to support such an infrastructure. Twitter, an exemplary use of social media being used to track political events such as the post-election riots in Iran, has become a victim of its own success. It has experienced massive scaling problems due to the amount of page views per second.

There is also the daunting task of defining the parameters of the system. Should the system mimic the current infrastructure or does the change in methodology alter the system itself? Szeto’s approach is that of an independent non-partisan party whose sole mandate is to harness the power of these technologies into an accessible framework. This idea alters the current multiple party system of politics to that of a direct democracy. A changing model of governance also means a change in distribution of labour within government. Who is responsible for framing the questions asked – the government or the people? Careful understanding and use of verbiage in law is paramount. Ballot initiatives, a costly method of doing politics, have been considered to be the reason for paralysis of the political process in California and have been deemed the ‘crack cocaine’ of democracy by the Economist. Ironically enough, the original intention of ballot initiatives was to empower citizens at a grassroots level.

Accessibility is yet another concern. PM Stephen Harper recently announced the government’s intention to improve broadband internet access to rural Canada. Although this is a step in the right direction, it illustrates the point that not all citizens of Canada have equal access to broadband technologies. Those unfamiliar with the technology may not be as inclined to use it as well.

Will this design have longevity? With technology constantly evolving, would the current system, and therefore the political system (depending on mutual exclusivity of the two) be able to stand the test of time due to technological obsolescence? Would interest fade? The law of diminishing utility could mean that citizens could simply get bored of using the system and participation could simply diminish over time.

Are people truly ready, willing, and able to govern themselves?

Schwarzenegger reasoned that “Textbooks are outdated… For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach the kids exactly the same way.” Having grown up in a lecture-style learning system supported by textbooks, I must agree that it is not the most efficient way to learn given the more interactive tools available today. Universities, which are known for their lecture-based style, are being criticized for failing to adopt new learning models that are student-focused instead of teacher-focused. Many high schools can be accused of the same faults. As secondary education budgets decrease, class sizes increase, and it is increasingly difficult to customize learning or engage the class. Introducing collaborative, web-enabled games that can help students grasp key concepts could be one way to get students involved and interested in learning. Such learning methods would be particularly applicable to geography or cultural studies, in which the class could learn about another culture or geography by engaging in a discussion and exchanging videos with a class from that culture or region.

In support of his plan to abolish textbooks, Schwarzenegger asked, “Why are California’s school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?” This brings to mind the issue of whether it is healthier to strain children’s backs with textbooks or their eyes with computer screens.

It will be interesting to watch how the plan rolls out and see what kind of opposition the government receives from parents that grew up on textbooks. There are some legitimate concerns about digitizing learning, the most troubling of which is how students that do not have the means to own computers at home will be affected. One way this initiative will fail, though, is if schools simply convert textbooks to a digital format and do not implement any changes to make the learning environment more interactive and collaborative.

The issue of cybersecurity is nothing new; you can read Obama and Biden’s homeland security agenda, and specifically their objectives for “protecting our information networks” right here.  On a more interesting note, the issue of a Katrina-like disaster in cyberspace has been a topic of major interest over the past few months.  In February, former Whitehouse cybersecurity official Paul Kurts addressed the lack of a ‘FEMA for the internet’.  More recently, the online discourse surrounding cybersecurity has ramped up substantially, particularly following the anxiety over last week’s Conficker Worm.  This only stengthened the push for an American cyberecurity czar, which according to US Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), is an absolute necessity.  In a statement released last week, Snowe (co-author of the new bill) argued that “if we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber Katrina.”

The bill’s most striking proposal (Section 18, paragraph 2), and the central issue of the article I cited above, is that the new legislation would give the President emergency authority to halt web traffic, effectively shutting down the internet.  Not surprisingly, this created something of an uproar among political bloggers over the weekend, many of whom took issue with this expansion of federal powers.

Much of the opposition to the bill falls among ideological lines; one blog reader commented that “he who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither,” rehashing a libertarian argument that long predates the internet. 

Debates involving a liberty-security tradeoff are nothing new, nor is a generalized a lack of trust in federal government, both long-standing issues among Americans.  On the flip side, the analogies to the disasters of 9/11 and Katrina are also largely disconnected from the issue at hand; these arguments have a tendency to bubble up every time a debate arises over the liberty-security tradeoff.

In my opinion, the ideological arguments that simply cite pre-internet cases and debates, both for and against the bill, do little to confront the issue at hand.  The issues surrounding cybersecurity and cyberterrorism are very different than anything we’ve confronted in the past (contrary to most of the parallel arguments currently being made).  I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have a full grasp over the threats at hand.  Whereas I feel well-read enough to comment over issues like journalism censorship or detainment of suspected terrorists, the issue of cybersecurity is one where I simply don’t know enough about the threats to make an informed opinion on the liberty-security tradeoff (even though I have been reading about it).  Even the blogs and articles I’ve read have done little to convince me that these authors have much more understanding of the issue than I do.

Growing up with a very open and libertarian internet, I’m no fan of the notion that a federal government could shut it down.  But then again, with the recent scares over Conficker (see Steve’s Skynet blogs), we may be entering a new age where more internet policing becomes a necessity, with governments needing more tools to limit damage in an emergency situation.  The scale and scope of said tools is currently up for debate, and rightfully so.  But that said, let’s try to focus the debate on the risks and needs that we’re now facing, and avoid referring solely to ideologies and analogies that pre-date the internet.

From its first few weeks in office, the new administration has emphasized the need for innovation in the public sector and called for dramatically more productive, equitable and transparent services. Fortunately, new social technologies and emerging models of mass collaboration provide a rich new set of possibilities for designing and delivering the functions of governments with greater creativity, efficiency and effectiveness than ever before. Drawing on lighthouse examples in the U.S. and abroad, Wikinomics co-author Anthony D. Williams will illustrate how the knowledge, ingenuity and skills of a diverse talent pool can help reshape how governments provide homeland security, health care, education and countless other public services.

Wordles can be a great way to visualize political discourse, especially when you use them in comparative form.  After Inauguration Day in January, Naumi wrote an excellent post , using IBM’s ManyEyes analysis to compare Obama’s inaugural speech to those of his predecessors.

These three tag clouds were all pulled from the Capitol Words Application, another development from the Sunlight Foundation (who we’ve written about previously – here, here and here).  Capitol Words is a program that takes every word entered into the congressional record and archives it online in a mashable and searchable form.  With different search metrics and visual aids, it allows you to see who’s saying what – broken down by individual, state or date.  One application lists the “10 most vocal” and “10 quietest” lawmakers of the last 60 days (over this most recent period, Michael Michaud has only uttered 8 words in Congress, while Richard Durbin has said almost 70 000).

Above, I’ve copied 3 tag clouds.  One of them represents all the words that John McCain has entered into Congressional Records over the past year.  Another one is from Nancy Pelosi, and the third is from all the representatives from the state of Massachusetts.  Can you guess which is which?

Too easy?

If you got the first three, here’s a more challenging one:

Representing all the words that he/she entered into record over the past 12 months, which well-known member of Congress does this cloud belong to?  (note:  I had to blur out the name of the state to avoid giving away the answer)

When I was about 5 years old, my school library kept track of its books using little cue cards stashed by the hundreds in tiny drawers (you all know what I’m talking about). All of my book searches since kindergarten have involved a computer. Am I to believe that our libraries did, almost 20 years ago, what our health care system is starting to do now?

The CBC article tells us that, “Digital networks help to bridge staffing gaps at Canadian hospitals.” It is true – hospitals in Ontario (and the rest of  Canada) have only recently started the move towards EMR. If the digitization of, say, written communication made headlines, people would be wondering how they ended-up back in 1994. Imagine reading the following headline today: “Canadian companies use electronic mail to cut-out time spent waiting for letters to get to Europe.”

It seems unjustifiable that our health care system has not made better use of technology. I see little downside in using technology that we’ve been using for years in countless domains, to get care to people (eg Northern Ontarions in need of a radiologist) who have been waiting far too long.

My criticism is tempered by knowing that there are political, social, and financial barriers to the widespread digitization of medical records that don’t exist for libraries, for example. But do they justify the almost 20-year technology lag? It seems unforgivable, given that our health care system could have been benefitting from increased efficiency through EMR years ago.

What the barriers along the path to EMR are exactly, I’m not sure. I can only imagine that they are significant, as they have imposed a 20-year technology lag on our health care system. Part Two of my look at the state of electronic medical records in Ontario will seek to unveil these barriers. Watch for it next week and do chip-in with any insight you have on the barriers to EMR.

So what did they do? They took matters into their own hands and auctioned the funds to the highest bidders -  other municipalities who had projects ready to go paid them cash for the rights to the MTA funds (in one case just $.61 on the dollar). The city selling the MTA funds would then be able to take the cash and use it for anything it liked.

Three interesting things about the situation stand out:

• First, the swaps/marketplace itself is quite innovative/creative. An interesting case in optimizing results in a grass roots way. Grade: A-
• Second, the low prices paid for the funds suggest that, in some cases, stimulus dollars are being weilded very inefficiently  (A $.61 price suggests a 39% inefficiency) Grade: C
• Third, the MTA appears to have put the brakes on these swaps. Maybe because of the publicity they generated? Who knows. But cities must now build (invent?) a case for their use, or risk losing them altogether. This seems to create the wrong message and set of incentives. Grade: D 

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.

“When we get to 2010, I want my campaigns here,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said as he held up his cell phone at the party’s Tech Summit on Friday. “I want whatever we’re doing to be within my thumb’s reach. We don’t want to just do what Obama did in ’08–that’s the floor.”

Republicans have some catching up to do, and atleast a few party members may need convincing of this.  One was quoted as saying that “Despite what the press says, we actually had an e-campaign in 2004 that did many of the things the Obama campaign did.  They just did it with many more people.”  I’m not sure I can agree with this.  As this article points out, 2004 was when facebook was still limited to universities, and YouTube didn’t even exist, making this a very difficult comparison.  A more telling anecdote is the 2008 election, John McCain had only four people working on his new media campaign.  Barack Obama had over 90.

So far, the party has started engaging on Facebook and Ning to collect input into some key areas.  For example, here’s their Grassroots facebook page, and here is their mobile suggestions page.  This may look like a good start, but it hasn’t exactly taken off yet – the mobile page only has 56 members, and a whopping total of 7 wall posts.

That’s not to say there weren’t some innovative suggestions to come out of the Tech Summit.  This article lists some of the best, notably: 

1) An iPhone app that shows you how your local congressman is voting, with his contact info.  2) A video game like Nintendo’s classic Paperboy.  Except in this version, the paperboy would be Barack Obama, and instead of tossing newspapers, he’d be biking up the street tossing wads of money away at houses.

Some suggestions, however, were less innovative.  One proposal was to use mobile ads to connect with hard to reach minority groups.  I’m not sure this would do much to create party support, as untargeted mobile ads would probably do little to boost engagement.  Rather, apps like the ones listed above might actually provide services or entertainment to users in a way that would improve their perception of the party. 

How much of this talking and brainstorming will actually translate into improved citizen relations for the GOP?  One bright spot might be their new National Committee Chairman, Michael Steele, the RNC’s first black chairman.  Having been denied this job previously by former President Bush and Karl Rove, Steele now has big plans for updating the Republican image.  He says he wants an “off the hook” PR campaign that can apply the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip hop settings”.  According to Steele, this new strategy will be based on a campaign that is “avant garde, technically”.  This is a big change for the party that, in recent years, has targeted much of their campaigning towards a conservative base.

Based on all this, do you think the Republicans can take the “old” out of the Grand Old Party?  Can this “off the hook” campaign shake off the crusty image, and use new media to reach new voters?

Contests like these are worthwhile for a variety of reasons. One, if we left it up to public officials to make government more transparent I think we can all predict the outcome. Two, contests are a reasonably good way to incent broader involvement from the public. And three, third parties are not contrained by the bureaucratic encumberances and political considerations that stiffle innovation in the public administration. Thus they can build innovative new applications using public data sets faster and more freely than government.

That being said, we need to move beyond the “google map mash-up” paradigm and build applications that enable genuine interaction and engagement with government. And for that to happen, we need government agencies to genuinely engage in this process. I’m sure the folks at Sunlight Labs would agree!

Applications are due March 31st and winners will be announced on April 7th. The winner receives $15,000.

Here’s a clip from the Globe’s PolicyWiki site:

So much of what happens in Canada when it comes to developing public policy occurs behind closed doors, inside committee rooms and legislative offices. Even the discussion about many of the issues that affect us as a country, such as the federal budget, foreign policy, our relationship with the U.S. and so on, tends to take place primarily in academic or official circles. Opportunities for public comment are rare, and often overly restrictive.

We’d like to try and open that process up a little, and this is our attempt to do that. One of the benefits to the Internet is that it lowers the barriers that can prevent people from discussing these kinds of important topics, and allow them to provide their thoughts about the direction the government should take. Some would argue that it lowers the barriers a little too far, but that’s a subject for another day, and another wiki . . .

If this experiment succeeds — as we sincerely hope it will — we’d like to expand it to become an ongoing project to tap what we like to call the “Two Million Minds” of our readers and other concerned citizens, a kind of open, crowd-powered forum that we could use to collect the thoughts and opinions of the Canadian public on the important issues that confront our country and us as a society.

There are various ways to contribute. For example, you can simply vote on the ideas that have been already been presented by various Canadian politicos or you can add your own proposals. We desperately need this kind of forum in Canada, so do take some time to contribute. 

Reading the news this morning, I came across this story.  As you’ve probably heard, the U.S. deadline to switch over to all-digital broadcast television is just over a month away, February 17^th.  The problem, however, is that an estimated 7.7 million Americans haven’t switched over from analog, and risk having their televisions go black.

The purpose of this switchover isn’t to provide better quality television for couch potatoes.  Switching over to all-digital broadcasting incurs lower energy costs than analog broadcasting.  It also frees up analog airwaves for public safety use (which became a policy goal following 9/11), as well as increased usage by telecommunications companies. 

I’ll come back to this.

Also filling up headlines today was yesterday’s speech from President Obama, wherein he called for swift congressional action to pass his still-emerging economic stimulus package, which could cost, over two years, up to a trillion dollars.  That’s $1 000 000 000 000 – lots of zeros, eh?

You’ll notice I wrote “still emerging” in the above paragraph.  That’s because as of today, there’s an incredible amount of debate as to how this money will be spent.  Obviously, the usual suspects have lined up behind the usual causes – Republicans want tax cuts, Michigan wants support for the manufacturing industry, and most private sectors, from the airconditioning industry to the catfish farmers, have sent in their lobbyists.

My concern with this is that Americans will be facing an enormous public expenditure that’s basically just patchwork.  Infrastructure projects are merited in many cases, but the idea of solving this crisis simply by creating demand-side stimulus is flawed – they’d merely be putting bandaids over the fundamental problems that got us here in the first place.

As for my opinion, you have to keep in mind that I’m a NetGener.  So I see a lot of merit in a more digitized economy (and government).  If I was an American, I’d also, as a young person, fall within the demographic that’s going to have to carry the federal debt in the decades to come, so I’d want  to see money spent in ways that will improve the economy in the long-term.

Now, this brings me back to the top of this article – digitized television, the benefits of which I’ve listed above.  I can support public funding on this because it’s a good long-term investment.  What else do I think is a good long-term investment?  A national broadband policy to extend access across the whole country.  Digitized medical records.  More computers and internet access in schools.  Most importantly, America needs more funding targeted at actually teaching people how to use these new technologies (which is the main roadblock in the digitized television initiative I touched on above). 

Improving technology, digitizing the country and teaching people how to use these tools should be a crucial centrepiece in long-term economic planning.  This would facilitate the movement of more Americans towards mass collaboration, and other Wikinomics principles, the merits of which can be found in any of the blogs you’ll see on this site.

So if America is going to spend a trillion dollars on a stimulus package, let’s hope that Obama remembers these promises that he made back in November, and embraces a few Gov 2.0 and Wikinomics principles.

But such immediate questions aside, growing youth unemployment, or underemployment, may have far deeper societal repercussions.

The recent events in Greece where mobs of angry youths rioted in the streets is perhaps a telling example. Triggered by the shooting of a 15-year-old boy, an estimated 8,000 Greek youths joined what soon became an all-out attack against their role in the Greek state. As Nikos Mouzelis, emeritus professor of sociology at London School of Economics, noted: “The death of this young boy was a catalyst that brought out all the problems of society and of youth that have been piling up all these years and left to one side with no solutions. Every day, the youth of this country experiences further marginalisation.”

Or as others noted: “The death of the young boy may just be an excuse for the overqualified, so-called ‘700-euro-generation’, to rage at society. They have a hopeless future, since their degrees do not correspond to the needs of the market…. What a pity it is to see the energy of youngsters lost just because society doesn’t take care of their culture and education, doesn’t encourage them to explore their dreams and at the same time introduce and prepare them for real life.”

So could this mix of economic, political and social marginalisation yield the same violent results in other parts of the world?

The most oft-referred to storyline focuses on the possibility of unrest in China if that country’s economic growth rate dips below 7-9%. China has already seen nearly 7 million jobs disappear thanks to the global economic slowdown. And while the current unemployment rate for new graduates is just over 12% – a further 6.1 million university graduates will enter the job market next year according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Some imagine that should growth flatline at sub-7%, the country will fail to create enough new economic opportunities to keep its pool of job-seekers happy, and subsequently could lead to mass civil unrest that would far eclipse the push for democracy in 1989.

But even closer to home, one has to wonder whether the events in Greece are a sign of things to come. Youth unemployment across Europe is far from a one-nation issue – France, Italy and Spain all share similar statistics (+20% unemployment for 15-24 year olds) – and other countries, notably those three, have much more prevalent social issues related to the integration of new immigrants and social opportunities for both new and old. Moreover, youth in these four countries (Greece, France, Italy and Spain) also happen to have much higher levels of education attainment then their older peers (+20:25%)  If ever there were tinderboxes ready to burst…

So how, in a time of economic upheaval where upwards of 7 million jobs have been lost in China, 3 million jobs in North America and perhaps a million in Europe, can governments stem the tide of immediate discontent related to a lack of economic opportunities? The most common response has been deficit spending, in particular on infrastructure, in the hopes of creating enough jobs to weather the storm. But the current economic crisis isn’t the root of the problem. In Europe for example, 20% + youth unemployment has its roots in deep structural, societal and policy-related issues. A few extra dollars on bridge building won’t change that.

So given somewhat limited job-creation capability, how might a new push for participation and engagement by youths in policy-making and strategy help mitigate their marginalisation? We’ve yet to see whether Obama’s warm hug re: hope and engagement will continue into his presidency but should it, it might just offer young people around the world a template upon which to hold their governments to account.

1. Mass collaboration could change virtually every aspect of government: From the way we deliver services like education and health care to the way we develop policy and engage citizens in democratic decision-making to the way we recruit new talent into government agencies and orchestrate capability in the public service.

2. Toronto has an enormous talent pool with more than 4 million residents in the GTA. That’s a lot of brainpower to apply to the challenges that face this city. Could we make the city the most vibrant, progressive and dynamic urban space on the planet? Yes, but we’ve got much work to do to harness this latent potential. That’s why this summit was a good start.

3. Web 2.0 has enormous promise at all levels of government, but the local applications have the greatest potential to make a real difference in how citizens interact with government. The services offered by local government and the kind of decisions taken in the council chambers impact people’s lives very directly. They shape the quality of the urban experience in Toronto and the evolution of its many neighborhoods. The irony is that engagement at the local level of government is typically low, in large part because the existing consultation mechanisms are slow and cumbersome and exclude the vast majority who may not have time to show up to a council session or a town hall meeting. Web 2.0 can make decision-making around issues such as transportation and urban planning more transparent, and that transparency can bolster our ability to scrutinize our local officials (see They Work For Us). With greater transparency comes greater input, with intuitive online tools for information gathering, brainstorming, and collaborative filtering making the process of contributing less onerous and more productive. The City’s facebook consultation on the Jarvis St. streetscape improvement project (demo’s this morning) is a good start.

4. There is an emerging consensus that one of the best ways to enable government 2.0 innovation is for government to embrace the kind of platform openness that has driven the success of entities like Wikipedia, flickr and Amazon. In other words, government should open up their data and online service applications to enable any individual or third party with the skills and inclination to develop new service innovations. The rationale is simple. Government can’t anticipate how citizens’ needs may change or all of the creative ways in which services could be delivered in the future. So by providing an open platform for innovation they can leverage the talents and insights of a much broader community of co-innovators. Indeed, it’s probably fair to assume that citizens, non-profits and businesses—being generally unconstrained by rigid internal brueaucracies and strict accountabilities—will innovate around the data far faster and more freely than government can. Apps for Democracy in DC and “Show Us a Better Way” are showing us the way forward.

5. The City of Toronto’s website needs a major overhaul. Rather than a static portal for disseminating information to residents and visitors, we need a dynamic platform for citizen engagement and service innovation, using the kind of approach described above. One thing is clear from this meeting: the web 2.0 commmunity in Toronto would gladly get this done quickly — just give them access to the underlying data and services. In other cases, the city could simply piggy back on what the community has already provided, much the way local councils in the UK leverage fixmystreet.com, an application developed by a non-profit called mysociety. As of today, 200,000 people have written to their MP for the first time using mysociety’s tools, over 8,000 potholes and other broken things have been fixed, nearly 9,000,000 signatures have been left on petitions to the Prime Minister. No need for government to reinvent the wheel.

6. More than a better website, we need a new form of participatory urbanism that gives citizens a major role in addressing some of our most pressing challenges–e.g., how do we reduce the city’s carbon footprint, improve local transport, and ensure the city remains an attractive destination for investment and job creation. We need a city-wide talent marketplace and solution exchange where problems citizens can converge around these issues. This participatory urbanism project has become one of my latest favorites.

7. None of this needs to be prohibitively expensive. Technology is the easy part – it’s relatively cheap, quick to install and easy to use. The tough challenges are about changing people, processes and culture in the way things are done in the city’s administration. It will take a combination of grassroots wiki communities growing organically (with enthusiastic participants that demonstrate the benefits) and strong leadership from the mayor and other officials to create an environment where innovation can flourish.

8. Finally there’s a wealth of pathbreaking projects to draw inspiration from. This blog is a good source. Be sure to check out The Collaboration Project, run by my friends at the National Academy of Public Administration.

Feel free to suggest other sources or add your observations about the meeting!

For a sneak peek at what a web 2.0 strategy for the City of Toronto could look like check out iLive.at, the winner of the District of Columbia’s “Apps for Democracy” contest.

Most of the proceedings will be webcast. So, if you’re not in the city — or can’t get off work — you can still see how citizens and local officials can use web 2.0 technologies to transform their city. Hope to see you there!

Mr. Murdoch is no stranger to political controversy and variety; his board seat with libertarian think tank the Cato Institute says one thing, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton certainly says another. His political ideas aside, he’s got some cogent ideas about the role newspapers need to take in competing with their solely-online brethren (The Huffington Post, Slate). In the third lecture of the series, titled The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees, Murdoch suggests we’re “moving from news papers to news brands“, and I agree.

Murdoch advocates for a “repositioning” of what created newspaper loyalty in the first place:

“I like the look and feel of newsprint as much as anyone. But our real business isn’t printing on dead trees. It’s giving our readers great journalism and great judgment.”

At their best, news articles are well-explained stories—filled with a coherent narrative, good intuition, and insight. But the Internet is again turning raw information into a commodity. I was having a conversation with another Wikinomics contributor, Denis, and he said that he often only skims the news sections of the Globe and Mail now, as he’s read most of that content on other sites online. Instead, he says he finds himself lingering on the Op/Ed sections, where these journalists earn their keep by offering thought-provoking opinions and occasionally inflammatory polemic. I too find myself focusing on the opinion pieces, as I enjoy exploring what makes people come to entirely different opinions when exposed to the same set of facts.

Now while I agree that newspapers are becoming more brand-aware, what’s the other side of the coin in this argument? What are the concerns? The first one that jumps into mind is kind readers will forget “let the reader beware”, and take things as gospel—conveniently unaware of the editorial colouring. My sister, a journalist with the Winnipeg Free Press mentioned that good writing, even if it is heavy on the opinion, has that expository section where the author sets up the facts, then explores the implications of those facts. I think we’ll need to trust the reading audience to find those sections. As a Net Gener, I fully ascribe to the “trust, but verify” school of thought, which serves me well when venturing down the Fox News rabbit hole.

Here’s a strange idea: maybe internet content could push educators to focus more on teaching critical reading and logic, giving young people even better tools with which they can explore their world. A little idealistic; it’s already going on independently, so why not ride that wave?

Newspapers are no longer confined to the front steps of your home anymore, and by using the internet as their new medium, Murdoch has certainly made me rethink their imminent demise. Online outlets like Slate and The Huffington Post have done fantastic jobs of offering their angle on issues political and otherwise, and have real cachet with their readers. The line that stands out in Rupert’s talk is a harbinger for editors reluctant to embrace a new platform:

“My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers.”

Newspapers will have to fight to carve out those editorial niches, but it’ll pay handsome dividends. But will they take license with that “bond” they have with their readers? The end of that story rests with their readers. They’re a discerning bunch, but navigating the landscape may be more subtle than merely reading the words “fair and balanced” on the nameplate.

Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is to not correspond in cyberspace. This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.

In other words, he had to give up email. It’s quite an amazing contrast – while Obama’s team seeks to use the Web 2.0 to more closely connect with Americans, the leader of the party is being forced to pull back to to what I’d call Web 0.1 for his own communications. And why it’s Web 0.1 is that the major leap forward for the office, technologically speaking, may be having (for the first time) a President with a laptop computer on his desk.

One of the great questions here, which I’m sure many business leaders have and continue to face, is how this might affect Obama’s productivity. As the second article noted, Obama seldom had memorandums and briefing books printed for him – preferring to read and respond on his blackberry or laptop whenever he could find a spare moment. It’s a major work-flow shift to have to revert to printed documents, hand written notes, etc. I wonder, in a “perfect world” where security breaches were not a concern, how much more a President might get done if instead of reverting back to the old ways, he set up a wiki instead…

Given Obama’s dominant use of Web 2.0 tools to power his campaign, it’s hard to imagine anything less but a significant shift towards openness and participation should we wake up tomorrow with him as President Elect. As for McCain, he’s admittedly less adept with the tools currently available, and is against Net Neutrality, but his taxation and trade policies might actually do more for innovation then we care to admit.

Either way, as a I wrote a few weeks ago in the Globe and Mail, whomever is elected will have a tremendous challenge and opportunity on their hands. As “Having grown up digital, they (young voters) will want to be involved in the act of governing — by contributing ideas before decisions are made. What’s more, they’ll insist on integrity from politicians; if politicians say one thing and do another, young Americans will use their digital tools to find out, and spread the news.” They want Government 2.0.

So how do the candidates match up?

Barack Obama would:

• Ensure an open Internet.
• Create a transparent and connected democracy.
• Encourage a modern communications infrastructure.
• Prepare all of our children for a 21st century economy.
• Improve America’s competitiveness.
• Employ science and technology to solve our nation’s most pressing problems.

John McCain would:

• Encourage investment in innovation
• Develop a skilled work force
• Champion open and fair trade
• Reform intellectual property protection
• Keep the Internet and entrepreneurs free of unnecessary regulation
• Ensure a fully connected citizenry

Based on both candidate’s proposed policies, it’s far from a cut and dry debate. But if at the heart of this issue, and at the heart of Government 2.0, is a commitment to transparency, participation and engagement then the fact that Obama’s campaign encourages the submission of ideas and insights regarding his campaign policies is a far clearer signal of future intentions and the future of government.

As the voting public digests the results of yesterday’s Federal election, I thought I’d bring it up once again. Viewing the disparate results between young students and those eligible to vote, I have to believe that as this next generation matures, they will elect a fairly different (and greener) Parliament than we did this time around.

EA games’ director of corporate communications, Holly Rockwood told GigaOm by e-mail: “I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout.”

This story has also appeared in The New York Times (written by Wagner Jame Au of GigaOm) and Advertising Age and has taken a life of its own and developed a viral quality – with good reason, it’s a pretty good story.

With 20 days left until the Presidential election this is a great way for politicians to reach the 18-34 demographic (although, of course, ther are many people outside of that demographic who game). According to NPD group there are 174 million gamers (in the US) who personally play games on PC/Mac or video game systems, 17 percent (or 29.58 million) of those are Console Gamers. XBox 360 alone has reached 10 million console sales in the US. When you take the time to look, those are some pretty compelling numbers.

So, is advertising in video games a good idea? Well, if companies like Coca Cola, Harveys, Nike and Burger King can advertise through these mediums, why can’t a political campaign? Clearly the placement in games is important since a political campaign may not want to be associated with, say… GTA IV. But I’d say that this ad has generated a good buzz, at least within the blogosphere and gaming community. (On a slightly separate but related note, GigaOm points to a Brandweek study conducted by Neilson Games that showed of those surved a full 11% said they’d purchased a brand advertised in a game.)

Some blogs like GamePolitics have pointed out that Obama refers to gaming in a negative light, but, to be fair (at least for kids) there’s a time to play video games (which has its set of associated benefits) and there’s a time to do homework (which, I would argue, also has its set of associated benefits).

Welcome back to another edition of the Wikinomics Roundup: Week in Review, where I capture in brief, some of the thoughts, discoveries, and discussions that graced the blog throughout the past week.

This week in the roundup:

• Jeff DeChambeau discussed privacy and digital surveillance
• Dan Herman introduced us to ‘vote swapping’ and identified how this Web 2.0 technology now has the potential to influence elections
• Don Tapscott highlighted some new research findings in order address a common misconception about video games and gamers
• Denis Hancock reviewed some of the pitfalls of the traditional crowdsourcing model and introduced us to Poptent

This is Gloucester, a UK based blog, is reporting that the Government Communications Headquarters is pitching a plan that would allow it to monitor all SMS and email messages sent and recieved in the UK. The plan, slated to cost English taxpayers a potential $12bn, would be the country’s largest surveillance program, and adds another data point to the security vs. privacy debate.

As Michael Geist wrote last week, the Internet has become a system that never forgets anything, and there are more and more tools that allow people to mine information from the darkest corners of the Internet.
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So, are email and sms messages, like public discussions, simply part of a technology that is inherently tracable, or given the targeted nature of email and sms, are they granted a special class of privacy from the rest of the bits that float bout the ‘tubes?

Weigh in on the privacy debate @
Hey England, time to learn about PGP!

A few months ago University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist wrote that 27 MP’s across Canada (9% of all MPs) had won their ridings by less than 1000 votes.  The potential impact of vote swap is thus rather significant.

The second example is www.voteforenvironment.ca . Like the former example, it takes aim at the Conservative government, this time for their environmental record. Their strategy is similar to Vote Swap as it highlights closely contested swing ridings and recommends to would-be voters which of the opposition parties in those ridings would be best positioned to win the riding in the Oct. 14 election.

What do you think of vote swapping and the technology behind it? Share your thoughts @
More on voting and technology…

In my new book, Grown up Digital (a sequel to my 1997 intro to the Net Generation: Growing up Digital) I make the argument that this exposure to gaming and technology has helped enable a truly global and inter-connected generation that sees civic action as a part of their regular routine.

Amanda Lenhart, author of a report on the survey and a Senior Research Specialist with the Pew Internet & American Life Project, notes, “The stereotype that gaming is a solitary, violent, anti-social activity just doesn’t hold up. The average teen plays all different kinds of games and generally plays them with friends and family both online and offline.”

The survey certainly supports this view:

• 52% of gamers report playing games where they think about moral and ethical issues.
• 43% report playing games where they help make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run.

Are you a videogame player, gamer alumni, or know someone who plays games?
Discuss their impact @ Kids, videogames and social activity

What I particularly like about this “modified crowdsourcing” model is that it deals with some of the inequities inherent in more traditional platforms – too much power being given to the buyers, at the expense of the sellers.
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Poptent has at least three elements that help deal with this. they are targeting the creation of a community of top-notch videographers with great skills, not the public at large. In order to participate on the site companies need to pony up $25 K in cash – which should be enough to limit “speculative requests”. Advertisers than pay something in the $5K – $7.5 K range to purchase ads they like. They are also upfront in noting (see Mark Schoneveld’s comment on October 8th at 11:19) that the contest model is not sustainable – they’ll have to evolve it over time, but you have to walk before you run.

Discuss your views, for and against, the Poptent model @
Poptent: A new community for crowdsourced advertising

Check back next week for more original Wikinomics insight. Until next week…