Open innovation ISDT 2011

Derek Lackaff, Ph. D.
Elon University
Gary Chapman International School on Digital Transformation
Porto, Portugal, July 18, 2011
Open Innovation as Digital Democracy
Emerging approaches to collaborative governance
@lackaff #isdt2011

In most contemporary democracies ... the representative relationship is in chronic disrepair. There is a pervasive sense that politicians and the people they represent inhabit different worlds, speak mutually incomprehensible languages and fail to respect one another (Coleman & Blumler, 2009)

Key Issues
Need to pursue emerging opportunities
Multiple modes of online civic engagement
Experiments and case studies
Challenges are socio-political and socio-technical

Agenda
Critique of online deliberative democracy
Overview of open online political innovation
Challenges and opportunities
Preliminary recommendations

The gold standard?
Deliberative Democracy

Democratic Deliberation
“process of directed communication whereby people discuss concerns in a reasonable, conscientious, and open manner, with intent of arriving at a decision” (Schuler, 2010)
Structured and (more or less) formal
Ideal outcomes?

“The Timidity of Deliberative Democracy”
“..practices designed to present finished work of institutional professionals, spark public opinion, and keep peace among neighbors” – not to improve decision making
“… the reality of deliberation is that it is toothless.”
(Novek, 2009)

Mediated deliberation
Most citizens are political “lurkers” who monitor government but are not actively involved
Mediated deliberative democracy potentially crosses boundaries of time, distance, and social scale – diversity of viewpoints is key
Online deliberation platforms increase engagement. i.e. turn lurkers into participants?

Online Deliberation Challenges
Time-consuming
Formal / confusing
“Payoffs” less than effort expended
Limited support from governments
(Schuler, 2010)
Deliberation systems demand diversity, but often unable to engage across digital divides

Noveck’s Proposal: Open and Collaborative Democracy
Collaboration is crucial, but not yet well-understood
Medium / platform matters
Egalitarian
(Noveck, 2009)

Collaboration
Participation is more than voting or attending town hall meetings
New tools enable collaboration, in the sense of open source
Deliberation and collaboration are different forms of participatory practice
Collaboration is ad hoc, emergent, and user-driven

Medium Matters
Online social interaction has technical and design components
Platforms need to reflect groups work back to itself
Identify appropriate practice and embed in the code
Ratings, reputations, etc.
Open experimentation and sharing

Egalitarian
Mass participation: voting
Need to provide multiple types of participation opportunities
Recognize different types of interest and expertise
Egalitarian mass participation: Wikipedia

Web User Practice
With a few exceptions, social web participation is open, user-directed, and granular
Click
Consume
Produce
Formal deliberative rhetoric vs. multimodal, citizen directed participation
What are the ways in which online civic participation can meet citizens where they are?
How do we make online civic participation banal?

Crowds aren’t wise, but networked individuals are effective.
Open Innovation

Open innovation
Emerging approach to online civic engagement
Focus is on idea generation, rather than consensus building
Worth examination as an engagement and participation approach in itself
In practice, many benefits of deliberation (more informed opinions, etc) can be realized through open innovation processes

Definitional issues
Wisdom of crowds
Crowdsourcing
Open innovation

Open Innovation Platforms

Open Innovation in Practice
Integrates well with everyday citizen behavior
Allows for emergent agendas

Critiques, challenges, opportunities

Critiques and challenges overview
Socio-political
Policy interfaces / interconnects
Socio-technical
Identity
Cascade effects

“Participation Theater”
To what extent is the online process connected to action?
Not just an “online” problem, but citizen participation is often a sham
“Earn badges” or influence policy?

Technical Challenges
User identity management
Cascade effects in voting
Duplication of ideas
Others?

Open Government Directive Dialogue
Summer 2009, public invited to engage with Obama’s transparency memo, http://opengov.ideascale.com/

#FAIL?
4,000 users, 1,100 ideas
Trolled by WorldNetDaily
Top ideas about America’s drug prohibitions (rather than open government)
Savvy early participants left site after first week
Brought new participants into policy discussions

America Speaking Out
May 2010

#EPICFAIL
“Last week, the top five entries in the "Liberty and Freedom" category were: ban handguns, "drop the idea that we're a 'Christian' country," declare abortion "none of the government's business," allow gays to serve openly in the military and legalize marijuana.
Republican leaders mentioned none of these when they began highlighting proposals from the project. Instead, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called for numerous spending cuts, including canceling unspent stimulus dollars and freezing government pay raises.”
"It's not a 'top vote gets in’ deal.”
HuffPo, 6/20/10

Open Innovation as Digital Governance: Manor, TX

Manor Labs
October 2009
Partnership with Spigit, PeaceDot
42 ideas and 2 implementations 1st month
3,700 participants, 91 ideas, 780 posts
10 ideas to final stage, 6 implemented
Auto-billing, more online city resources, etc.
More complex ideas aborted or unfinished

Open Innovation as Collaborative Democracy: Icelandic Skugga-sites
nothing

Best Party campaign
January 2010

Skuggaborg
Invited policy proposals via an open innovation website
Each party given a “branded” section of the site
~1,200 users registered, mostly to participate In the Best Party section

Better Reykjavik
After winning the election, Best Party asked for new section of site to inform coalition negotiations
5,000 participants, 800 priorities debated
Best Party took top priorities and added them to their platform, e.g.
Send siblings to the same schools
Make swimming pools more accessible for families
Improvements to parks and green spaces
Create website for citizens to submit neighborhood repair notices
Reykjavik now has commissioned new site (tentatively “New and Better Reykjavik”)

Recommendations

Citizen Self Interest
Open political innovation platforms work best when participation is self-interested
Collaboration based on multiple strengths
Ex: SeeClickFix

Appropriate Scale
Consider the size and type of population you want to reach
What scales of participation are reasonable and necessary to achieve goals?
Design to engage broader publics

Consider policy interfaces
Top-down approach vs. bottom up
Legitimacy via attention

Success Metrics
Participation numbers?
Policy implementations?
Ultimate goal: normalize online civic participation?

Coming up: hands-on experimenting
Questions?

Workshop Discussion

http://isdt.yrpri.org
What are the priorities of ISDT 2011?
Short term?
Longer term?
What questionsdigital transformationneed further attention?
How can the social and technical challenges of open innovation processes be addressed?
How can interfaces between grassroots open innovation activism and official policy-making be developed?

Open innovation ISDT 2011

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