The document discusses civic intelligence, advocating for its inclusion in e-governance to address societal challenges effectively. It explores barriers to civic intelligence, emphasizes the necessity of active citizen participation in governance, and suggests measures for assessing and developing civic intelligence. The author argues that repairing societal issues requires courage and collaboration amidst complex challenges.

1. Improving Civic intelligence
Repairing the Engine on a Moving Car?
Douglas Schuler
The Evergreen State College
The Public Sphere Project
EGOSE 2014, November 19, 2014
St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

2. [contents]
• Purpose and Disclaimer
• An outlandish supposition…
• More civic intelligence
• Barriers to civic intelligence
• Government & e-government
• Nine proxy measures
• Stages of civic intelligence development
• Changing roles
• Civic involvement
• Conclusions

3. Purpose and Disclaimer
My focus will be on the open society, citizen-oriented
perspective — which of course must interface with
government. My hope is to explore the possible.
I’m trying to be a little provocative with this talk — so I
beg your indulgence.
My goals are presenting the idea / framework of civic
intelligence (which I’d like to see as an explicit objective in
e-governance) and exploring with you now and in the
future.
Hopefully at least some of what I say will seem
reasonable!

4. An outlandish supposition…
SUPPOSE that humankind had the capability to
address its own problems effectively and equitably.
If that were true, we could make neighborhoods safer and
governments more responsible, create good jobs for
everybody, address global warming, and even stop or limit
war.
We'll call that elusive and potentially useful capability civic
intelligence. (And it’s not binary — it’s not something that a
group has or doesn’t have.)

5. Maybe civic intelligence is impossible? Or maybe it’s just nearly impossible.
Barriers to civic intelligence*
• The magnitude of the problems we face (that are extremely complex,
intransigent, durable, reliable, seemingly impervious to reform and
eternal)
• Personal and social impairments (including lack of knowledge, time,
interest, social networks aren’t interested)
• Institutional impairments (silos, opacity, arrogance, corruption,
bureaucracy, lack of purpose — or the wrong one)
• Professional disassemblers (who intentionally sow ignorance)
• Confidence in our inability to take care of ourselves — note the various
ways that this is demonstrated.
* And civic intelligence isn’t just about overcoming our barriers.

6. More thoughts on civic intelligence
[operational definition] Imagine two cities or regions with approximately the same
characteristics and challenges. If one successfully addresses its challenges — and one
does not, we can probably assert that one has more civic intelligence than the other.
Centralia, Washington Everett, Washington
Civic intelligence takes different forms in different places — but all of the places are
ultimately connected.
Civic intelligence can improve — or degrade — and some of this is under our control.
Civic intelligence can be used to inspire research and to inspire people. The goal is to
understand and to improve civic intelligence.
Unfortunately our challenges may be growing faster than our ability to address them.

7. Civic intelligence
capabilities Knowledge
Relational Capital
Organizational Capital
Attitudes and Aspirations
Attitudes and Aspirations
Financial and Material Resources
{
Knowledge
Relational Capital
Organizational Capital
Financial and Material Resources
{

8. Government & e-government
Government can be seen in two ways depending on how one views the
role of people: as customers or as citizens. “Smart cities” generally
privilege the customer role.
Government “efficiency” is only a (small?) part of governance. Currently
there is worldwide discontent with government.
Charles Lindblom stated (1990) that, “no society or subgroup within it
ever designed a state or government to make it an effective instrument of
social problem solving.”
One of the goals of government should be enabling and encouraging
public problem solving — and increasing civic intelligence.
Governance needs active citizens because government can’t address
the challenges we face without them.
• The problems are too big
• Citizens have useful skills and other resources
• In many cases government enabled (or, even caused) the problems in the first place.

9. How could we begin to assess the civic intelligence of a city?
Proposed proxy measures
• Responsive government
• Knowledge about the environment — natural and otherwise
• Social (political, educational, cultural) engagement
• Social capital
• Health and well-being
• Opportunities — economic and other
• Relative equality of inhabitants
• Transparency/lack of corruption
• Good neighbor (doesn’t take more than it needs; or export its
problems…)

10. Civic intelligence development*
1. Critique or question the status quo — even if the critique or question is flawed —
and don't stop this process after identifying some preliminary hypotheses
2. Learning — necessary at all stages of the process; without this we are
immobilized
3. Transparency — people need to understand how things work
4. Inclusiveness — we need not to just hear the unheard voices, they must be
integrated into the decision-making
5. Networking — connections outside the community being looked at
6. Cultural shift — from power politics to problem solving
7. Governance sharing — not just government "efficiency" and/or citizen "autonomy"
* Proposed elements

11. Changing roles
We need to take our roles seriously — not just the formalistic processes, rules,
and conventions, but the philosophical rationale as well: Why does this role exist
in the first place.
We must pivot from the general way of doing business to new ones.
For government, open up data and dialog — but be careful! You may uncover a
hornet's nest of citizens with longterm unmet & unrecognized grievances. Also:
• starting dialogues with citizen and community groups and exploring new collaborations. (And
not just online)
• Open up government data for the world to use.
• Offer activism classes; it may be counter-intuitive or even contrary to the usual norms, but at
least think about it.
For academia: teach civic skills and the other elements of civic intelligence,
knowledge is only part of what citizens need to learn.
For the media: cover the unheard voices, unpack issues and open up questions
— and don't just supply "easy answers", and try, if possible, to rely less on the
spectacle and conventional wisdom.

12. Citizen involvement
For the citizen: get smart, act like a citizen; be careful, be realistic, but be
bold.
The informed contribution of citizens in an indispensable element of
governance. Citizen engagement ideally provides both impetus for
social change when it’s needed and a bulwark against tyranny and
oppression when that becomes necessary.
With strong, engaged citizenry we may be able to address our problems.
Without strong, engaged citizenry we won’t be able to address our
problems.

13. Going forward...
The future can't be planned in exhaustive and accurate detail. There are
too many unknowns, too many moving unpredictable parts. On the other
hand, intelligent action always involves taking action in an uncertain world.
Changing our thoughts and actions in the "moving car" which is our
current reality, will take courage — as well as care.
We head into this struggle with uncertain goals, flawed and inadequate
resources, dissension within our ranks, disorganization and unruliness,
against incredibly strong barriers.
In some sense this struggle is a struggle for common sense and sanity. It
shouldn't be as hard as it's likely to be.
Repairing the engine on a moving car would certainly be child's play in
comparison to the real tasks before us.

14. Thanks for listening
I’m looking forward to continuing this discussion
Douglas Schuler
douglas@publicsphereproject.org
The Evergreen State College
The Public Sphere Project

15. Appendix 1
Questions for further study
What is the “car?”
Why is it “moving?”
Who’s driving?
Where is the car going?
Where are we trying to go?
Why can’t we just get out?
What “repairs” are we talking about?
Why can’t we just stop it and fix it?
Can we have our drivers license taken away?