Professor John Seddon asks the question 'Why do we believe in economy of scale?' the answer is an uncomfortable reality that if confronted could transform the UK public sector. A must read for public sector and government leaders. For more see The Systems Thinking Review http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk/
Like many of you, I spend a lot of time talking about public sector transformation, but what would radical change really look like? What would count as “Government 2.0”? Technology can certainly help governments become more efficient and it can make it much easier for citizens to access public services, but, while both those types of change are very important and can involve dramatic changes, neither is truly transformational. Renewing my car tax online is wonderful, but it is sim...
Obviously it is not participatory budgeting, but this rather short list that I have compiled provides an idea of the variety of online initiatives type budget simulators / games. This might be useful to some of those interested in the use of ICTs in Participatory Budgeting experiences. If you know of other similar initiatives please let me know. (originally posted in Facebook's Participatory Budgeting group) Croatian state budget calculator http://proracunskikalkulator.com Calgary iPhon...
Here's a link to a video about the EU Profiler, a Voting Advice Application for the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections. http://www.euronews.net/en/article/27/02/2009/an-orientation-tool-for-eu-voters/ The EU Profiler has been developed here at the European University Institute with the collaboration of a unique team of international researchers. A bit more about the EU Profiler: "The EU Profiler is a Europe-wide Voting Advice Application (VAA) or a party profiling website for the Europ...
The UK public services design consultancy Participle have published a manifesto calling for an overhaul of the Welfare State. They called their vision Beveridge 4.0, a reference to the UK social reformer Sir William Beveridge, who in the 1940’s put forward a set of ideas that shaped the Welfare State. Beveridge wanted to tackle the five giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness on the basis of co-operation between the state and the individual. He suggested that public ser...
The attached 4-page document seeks to identify some of the key elements of an open policy-making process. Very interested in any reactions in particular suggested improvements!
This post is based on a paper of mine published by the Electronic Democracy Centre (Zurich University) about the experience of the e-Participatory Budgeting of the city of Belo Horizonte. In part 1 of this post I use extracts from a short article by Dan Jellinek (Headstar) and myself that aimed to present a summary of the published paper. At the end, I will add some information contained in the paper about the votes that was not included in the summary article. 1) &nb...
Following this series of posts about Participatory Budgeting (PB), I would like to describe an experiment in the coordination of which I had the pleasure to participate, which took place in the framework of the e-Agora Project (co-financed by the EC) in the city of Ipatinga, Brazil. Prior to 2001, community leaders of the city of Ipatinga collected written proposals for public works from citizens during neighbourhood meetings which were then submitted for deliberation in PB in loco m...
The London government has launched an initiative called “Vote for your Park”, where Londoners can decide where to allocate ten grants of up to £400,000 for London's parks. Voting can be made through the Internet, SMS and postal voting. Since the launch of the initiative there has been criticism about the security of the system and the participatory design of the initiative. I do not know very much about local governments in the UK and I am not at all a specialist in secur...
One of the challenges of Web 2.0 for the public sector is the fear of being overwhelmed with input, not all of which will be well meant and which in any event will be extremely resource intensive to deal with. A couple of recent examples gave me a sense that we are being to tackle this issue. 1) the Peer to Patent process is based on creating user-teams around a patent application with this self-organising group discussing the application as a group before producing an output for the public ...
The Carnegie Institute published this article re Peer to Peer Finance http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/000085 A more comprehensive piece is up on Michel Bauwens' P2P Foundation blog http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/an-open-capital-framework-as-a-solution-to-the-financial-meltdown/2009/02/27 and also here with diagram http://www.metamute.org/en/beyond_public_and_private Beyond Public and Private “21st Century problems cannot be fixed by 20th Century s...
John Seddon at his funniest, most insightful and all with evidence. Keep an eye out for Michael Barber as Mickey Mouse! :-) Watch video
Anyone with an interest in education in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) should download and read a recent report from the World Bank entitled: The Road Not Traveled - Education Reform in the Middle East and Africa. Indeed, anyone with an interest in the development of education globally will find much to think about here.Like any report from the World Bank, this paper is replete with an incredibly rich and fascinating mass of statistics as well as formidable analysis of social and eco...
President Obama has announced plans to launch Recovery.gov, a website dedicated to keeping track of all the money the government spends in the stimulus. This is a excellent example of open government: a willingness to share, be accountable and (hopefully) get feed back. Recovery strategies are too serious to fail - otherwise we will be paying the social and economic costs for many years to come. It's our right, as citizens, to be aware of the content and ...
My colleague Willi shared with me a great presentation about Koln's interesting experiment in participatory budgeting and since I know many of you are interested in this topic I thought I would share it more widely. I hope you enjoy it!