Those of you who know me know that I have dedicated much of my political blogging to the examination of how current technology (i.e. the web) continues to affect our politics. I have blogged about political divisiveness as a symptom of the technical landscape that we use for communications today. That landscape has, in the past generation or so, grown to include opinionated and biased mass-media pundits, supported by an immature and fractious political internet. Unfortunately the web has only become TV that yells back at you.
The natural uses for the web with politics have only just started to emerge, and they are starting to stir the political world very slightly: online fundraising, political blogs and videos are the leading edge of this change. The higher-order uses of the web for political discussion that I can envision, though, support productive and responsible political discussion on a personal level as well as for larger groups. A political web such as that more closely matches the media mix in place during the 18th century, when philosophers and pamphleteers published ideas and debates happened person to person.
Luckily for us, that immature and fractious web is constantly evolving, mellowing, refining itself, and blending into mainstream media At some point in our lifetimes, it will grow roots - real political institutions that will supplant television as the medium of choice for political communication. That will be a joyous day but although I can get a glimpse of that future of politics I haven't been able to see any way for us to get there until now.
Today - Shawn Micallef writes in Eye magazine about the start of the TTC Riders Union: http://www.eyeweekly.com/blog/post/82013
The TTC Riders Union is a brilliant idea because it contains all the touchstones of old media organization and could have existed as a protest group at any point in the last generation. But it is also a Facebook group that reaches across the technological divide to the larger citizenry. This model could mobilize groups that respond to old world and new world (or no world) technologies.
Better yet, the new-media aspects of this group will be able to provide a designated intellectual forum where principles, priorities and ideas can be executed efficiently. As such, it has the potential to solve problems not just for the TTC, but to serve as a model for other such action/discussion groups. As Mr. Micallef points out, the group itself needs to be
designed to be non-partisan and non-ideological, purposed towards promoting the general interests of TTC riders only.
So this is not Democracy 2.0, but perhaps Democracy 1.9. A little less technology based, and a little more people based. As such, we hope that this initiative gains hold of the public imagination.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Likes and Dislikes about the 2000s
Things I liked about the 2000s: 1. Internet 2. New Foods & Drinks 3. TV Got Good 4. Music Great 5. Globalization - the better things about it 6. Environmental thinking went mainstream 7. Social Change continued - congrats to all engaged and married queers out there 8. Video Games - don't get them but something strange and wonderful is happeing there 9. Design & Art - guys, guys, you keep popping my eyes
Things not Liked about: 2000s 1. Movies sucked 2. Hard drug use pervaded society 3. Health and healthcare went downhill 4. Politics didn't get better 5. Spirituality has apparently left the public consciousness 6. Environmental damage continues
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
I recently found a response to a Walrus magazine article I wrote a few years back.
This article motivated me to begin blogging, so I thought I would report my response here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the September 2006 issue of Walrus magazine, Allan Gregg, wrote an article entitled 'How To Save Democracy'. As a renowned pollster (founder of Decima research, co-founder of The Strategic Counsel), I would expect Mr. Gregg to have a rich understanding of the Canadian mindset, and he doesn't disappoint there.
But unfortunately, the salvation he proposes negates the essence of the people he wishes it on.
Diagnosis and Cure
Allan Gregg begins with an assessment of the current political situation in Canada. Identifying and tagging our most obvious problems should be an easy task for a pollster, and he hits the biggest targets spot-on. “The core problem is that our cynicism cultivates further soil for more cynicism.” he writes. He describes the pitfalls in blaming politicians for cynicism, that doing so “distances the electorate even further from the system that was designed to protect and advance the citizen's needs."
The author points out public relations campaigns have had no real positive effect. He is also skeptical that electoral reforms such as proportional representation will achieve anything. But after showing a distaste for imposed, centrally-programmed solutions, Mr. Gregg goes on to propose solutions that run along the same lines.
His concept seems sound: politicians and the people are too far apart and the gap needs to be bridged. Perhaps if the people can see what our government, and our local MPs do for us, it will make government and civic participation more meaningful to us.
How can we make it happen ? Mr. Gregg suggests bringing politicians into closer contact with the voters, granting more access to the system, and making local representatives more influential. The suggested means of achieving these goals include compulsory voting, and “public sponsorship of festivals, reading series, debates and town-hall meetings” to encourage community.
But this is pure central programming and it would not receive any better response than the PR exercises he himself discounts. Let’s look at a recent example in Canadian politics to see why.
An Anti-Antidote
For a good anti-antidote to Mr. Gregg’s antidote, let’s consider the history of the Reform Party of Canada. Started by real communities of disaffected voters who worked within the system, believing it would make a difference in people’s lives, it was a model of a grassroots political movement. These people didn’t need to be taught the value of political action, or have the idea of community preached to them: they already had it.
So what happened to their movement ?
Fast forward twenty years or so and that party has become the Conservative Party of Canada. While still shiny and new, it is now very much a part of the Canadian political machine. Eastern Canadian voters certainly come to the new party as an alternative to the Liberals, but it is another political party now. It is no longer a movement for political reform.
And the chasm between the people and their leaders still exists after the arrival of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party. In fact, it’s worse. This history illustrates the path that even a successful implementation of Mr. Gregg’s ideas would take.
The system as it is inevitably moves us to a division of the government and the governed, whether that government is big or small. In the end, the cynicism does not abate.
A Solution for Another Time
So why does Mr. Gregg fail to save democracy in the end ? It is because his solution attempts to solve the cynicism, which is a symptom of the problem, rather than working on the problem itself: an outdated political system that fits its people like a bad suit.
He gives himself away this fact himself with the sentence “we must make … changes aimed at elites as well as cultural changes aimed at the masses.” If Mr. Gregg truly thinks of the people of Canada as the masses, then can he really expect the ‘masses’ to behave as civically responsible individuals ?
This is his elemental error. Even as he realizes that we’re dealing with the masses, Allan Gregg reverts to a past ideal – a political system designed for a place, time and people that no longer exist.
The American founding fathers designed a system of government for a community, to be run by leaders (not by the masses) for the public good. The modern great-grandchild of that system gives every citizen can vote, where campaigns are run by remote control through pervasive electronic media. The mass public includes a majority who feel no obligation to civic duty beyond scanning the day’s headlines. They don’t even vote.
One can hope for change, but we shouldn’t waste our energies hoping for the impossible. No festival or reading program will cause ‘The Greatest Generation’ to reappear. That generation of civic minded, newspaper-reading individuals are gone, along with their dignified and revered political leaders. Who we are, how we do things, and how we see events have changed.
Mr. Gregg, in recognizing that we-the-people, are now we-the-masses should have followed through with that idea to a more appropriate solution. Although the mass public can’t expected to participate in the political process in the same way as the ‘public’ of the past, they can be useful in working towards positive change.
A more effective approach might be to leverage the distance between politicians and the mass public, rather than to try to bridge it. The mass public is disgusted with politicians that vie for their support but don’t solve our problems. One thing the Canadian mass public definitely wants in its government is good management.
If we could somehow crystallize roughly what the masses are looking for, and quantify a reasonably objective set of measures that help to define that ideal, we – the people – could set the political agenda. One could argue that the Reform push for deficit reduction in the 1990s was an example of the people demanding concrete and clear results. The Liberal government responded to pressure, making Reform and its grassroots supporters a significant agent of change in Canada.
Are there other ways in which we, the people, can get what we want from our politicians ?
Here’s a suggestion for a first step along those lines.
If there was a clear set of objective measures against which government performance can be measured that was generally agreed upon, there would be no place that a government or opposition could hide. The key would be for these metrics to be cross-partisan, clear and publicly accessible, like a score card.
For example, we have heard about hospital waiting lists to be growing, and hears every politician vow to lower them ? So how have they done against that goal ? Do you know ? Would you know where to look to find out ? Currently, when trying to form an opinion on such things, you have a choice between listening to superficial and contradictory arguments made on all sides (sometimes emotive, sometimes exhaustingly complex) or taking it upon yourself to do the research.
Is this a fit choice for the mass public ? Are either of these sources of information helpful to the masses ?
Without a clear source of information within reach, the public is shouted at by vested interests, drowning each other out with bullhorns full of contradictory facts and figures and deliberate misinformation. The majority gets confused, and checks out of the process.
Imagine how much more helpful it would be to see a box score such as the following in every daily newspaper:
This is only a rough example, and I don’t know much about designing charts, but wouldn’t adding such a table to our daily newspapers would put long-term thinking about health care squarely in the public mind ?
If I wanted to know the weather, movie times, or the ball scores, I would only have to pick up any local paper. Why aren’t long term medical statistics worthy of similar coverage ?
Faced with hard numbers above, fixed in the public mind, no politician would be able to hide behind rhetoric or exaggeration. The key indicators in the document, as discussed, would have to include measures agreed upon by a cross-partisan group: a clear, simple and report card.
The mass public needs to come up with better devices for making decisions. The key is for us to move forward is to recognize that we are a mass public, and to accept that political topography as a starting point. Simplifying the various debates, or giving all the information, or only the most sensational is no help at all.
We need start thinking about what the masses can do for us, rather than what we can do for the masses.
This article motivated me to begin blogging, so I thought I would report my response here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the September 2006 issue of Walrus magazine, Allan Gregg, wrote an article entitled 'How To Save Democracy'. As a renowned pollster (founder of Decima research, co-founder of The Strategic Counsel), I would expect Mr. Gregg to have a rich understanding of the Canadian mindset, and he doesn't disappoint there.
But unfortunately, the salvation he proposes negates the essence of the people he wishes it on.
Diagnosis and Cure
Allan Gregg begins with an assessment of the current political situation in Canada. Identifying and tagging our most obvious problems should be an easy task for a pollster, and he hits the biggest targets spot-on. “The core problem is that our cynicism cultivates further soil for more cynicism.” he writes. He describes the pitfalls in blaming politicians for cynicism, that doing so “distances the electorate even further from the system that was designed to protect and advance the citizen's needs."
The author points out public relations campaigns have had no real positive effect. He is also skeptical that electoral reforms such as proportional representation will achieve anything. But after showing a distaste for imposed, centrally-programmed solutions, Mr. Gregg goes on to propose solutions that run along the same lines.
His concept seems sound: politicians and the people are too far apart and the gap needs to be bridged. Perhaps if the people can see what our government, and our local MPs do for us, it will make government and civic participation more meaningful to us.
How can we make it happen ? Mr. Gregg suggests bringing politicians into closer contact with the voters, granting more access to the system, and making local representatives more influential. The suggested means of achieving these goals include compulsory voting, and “public sponsorship of festivals, reading series, debates and town-hall meetings” to encourage community.
But this is pure central programming and it would not receive any better response than the PR exercises he himself discounts. Let’s look at a recent example in Canadian politics to see why.
An Anti-Antidote
For a good anti-antidote to Mr. Gregg’s antidote, let’s consider the history of the Reform Party of Canada. Started by real communities of disaffected voters who worked within the system, believing it would make a difference in people’s lives, it was a model of a grassroots political movement. These people didn’t need to be taught the value of political action, or have the idea of community preached to them: they already had it.
So what happened to their movement ?
Fast forward twenty years or so and that party has become the Conservative Party of Canada. While still shiny and new, it is now very much a part of the Canadian political machine. Eastern Canadian voters certainly come to the new party as an alternative to the Liberals, but it is another political party now. It is no longer a movement for political reform.
And the chasm between the people and their leaders still exists after the arrival of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party. In fact, it’s worse. This history illustrates the path that even a successful implementation of Mr. Gregg’s ideas would take.
The system as it is inevitably moves us to a division of the government and the governed, whether that government is big or small. In the end, the cynicism does not abate.
A Solution for Another Time
So why does Mr. Gregg fail to save democracy in the end ? It is because his solution attempts to solve the cynicism, which is a symptom of the problem, rather than working on the problem itself: an outdated political system that fits its people like a bad suit.
He gives himself away this fact himself with the sentence “we must make … changes aimed at elites as well as cultural changes aimed at the masses.” If Mr. Gregg truly thinks of the people of Canada as the masses, then can he really expect the ‘masses’ to behave as civically responsible individuals ?
This is his elemental error. Even as he realizes that we’re dealing with the masses, Allan Gregg reverts to a past ideal – a political system designed for a place, time and people that no longer exist.
The American founding fathers designed a system of government for a community, to be run by leaders (not by the masses) for the public good. The modern great-grandchild of that system gives every citizen can vote, where campaigns are run by remote control through pervasive electronic media. The mass public includes a majority who feel no obligation to civic duty beyond scanning the day’s headlines. They don’t even vote.
One can hope for change, but we shouldn’t waste our energies hoping for the impossible. No festival or reading program will cause ‘The Greatest Generation’ to reappear. That generation of civic minded, newspaper-reading individuals are gone, along with their dignified and revered political leaders. Who we are, how we do things, and how we see events have changed.
Mr. Gregg, in recognizing that we-the-people, are now we-the-masses should have followed through with that idea to a more appropriate solution. Although the mass public can’t expected to participate in the political process in the same way as the ‘public’ of the past, they can be useful in working towards positive change.
A more effective approach might be to leverage the distance between politicians and the mass public, rather than to try to bridge it. The mass public is disgusted with politicians that vie for their support but don’t solve our problems. One thing the Canadian mass public definitely wants in its government is good management.
If we could somehow crystallize roughly what the masses are looking for, and quantify a reasonably objective set of measures that help to define that ideal, we – the people – could set the political agenda. One could argue that the Reform push for deficit reduction in the 1990s was an example of the people demanding concrete and clear results. The Liberal government responded to pressure, making Reform and its grassroots supporters a significant agent of change in Canada.
Are there other ways in which we, the people, can get what we want from our politicians ?
Here’s a suggestion for a first step along those lines.
If there was a clear set of objective measures against which government performance can be measured that was generally agreed upon, there would be no place that a government or opposition could hide. The key would be for these metrics to be cross-partisan, clear and publicly accessible, like a score card.
For example, we have heard about hospital waiting lists to be growing, and hears every politician vow to lower them ? So how have they done against that goal ? Do you know ? Would you know where to look to find out ? Currently, when trying to form an opinion on such things, you have a choice between listening to superficial and contradictory arguments made on all sides (sometimes emotive, sometimes exhaustingly complex) or taking it upon yourself to do the research.
Is this a fit choice for the mass public ? Are either of these sources of information helpful to the masses ?
Without a clear source of information within reach, the public is shouted at by vested interests, drowning each other out with bullhorns full of contradictory facts and figures and deliberate misinformation. The majority gets confused, and checks out of the process.
Imagine how much more helpful it would be to see a box score such as the following in every daily newspaper:
This is only a rough example, and I don’t know much about designing charts, but wouldn’t adding such a table to our daily newspapers would put long-term thinking about health care squarely in the public mind ?
If I wanted to know the weather, movie times, or the ball scores, I would only have to pick up any local paper. Why aren’t long term medical statistics worthy of similar coverage ?
Faced with hard numbers above, fixed in the public mind, no politician would be able to hide behind rhetoric or exaggeration. The key indicators in the document, as discussed, would have to include measures agreed upon by a cross-partisan group: a clear, simple and report card.
The mass public needs to come up with better devices for making decisions. The key is for us to move forward is to recognize that we are a mass public, and to accept that political topography as a starting point. Simplifying the various debates, or giving all the information, or only the most sensational is no help at all.
We need start thinking about what the masses can do for us, rather than what we can do for the masses.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Letter to Metro Morning
Re: The eHealth Scandal in Ontario
The project manager you interviewed on your show this morning said the words that have begged to be spoken on the matter of the recent eHealth scandal. To paraphrase - why did it take some minor over-billing by a consultant to alert the media to the waste of a billion dollars, and the failure of the government to deliver on eHealth ?
The fact is that media likes to go for the juicy story, and I realize that an overlong IT project doesn't qualify for that designation. However, CBC has always been good at leading its listeners to stories as well. I hope you continue to stay with this one.
The real story - the slow failure of the eHealth project - isn't the type of story that provokes immediate outrage, but still it has wasted huge amounts of money at a glacial pace. (How many Toronto pools could be kept open with $1B, how much medical equipment could be bought?) As such, it's vital to all of us that the media keep this story in the headlines by checking in periodically to make sure that this project is completed as promised.
If we're not planning to adopt the American model of for-profit healthcare (and I pray that we're not) then it's up to all of us to apply extra attention to matters of public healthcare, because no "invisible hand" will do it in our stead.
Michael Hardner
The project manager you interviewed on your show this morning said the words that have begged to be spoken on the matter of the recent eHealth scandal. To paraphrase - why did it take some minor over-billing by a consultant to alert the media to the waste of a billion dollars, and the failure of the government to deliver on eHealth ?
The fact is that media likes to go for the juicy story, and I realize that an overlong IT project doesn't qualify for that designation. However, CBC has always been good at leading its listeners to stories as well. I hope you continue to stay with this one.
The real story - the slow failure of the eHealth project - isn't the type of story that provokes immediate outrage, but still it has wasted huge amounts of money at a glacial pace. (How many Toronto pools could be kept open with $1B, how much medical equipment could be bought?) As such, it's vital to all of us that the media keep this story in the headlines by checking in periodically to make sure that this project is completed as promised.
If we're not planning to adopt the American model of for-profit healthcare (and I pray that we're not) then it's up to all of us to apply extra attention to matters of public healthcare, because no "invisible hand" will do it in our stead.
Michael Hardner
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Democracy 3.0 Please
This past Saturday June 27th the National Post glossed about the double-edged sword of 'Democracy 2.0' which apparently now means following politicians on twitters and making them your facebook buddy
So, now it seems that Democracy 2.0 has come to mean the automated tabloidization of public figures. This is as disheartening an event as the realization in the 1920s that the new medium of radio would best be suited to selling soap.
The web has the power to provide unlimited amounts of information instantaneously. It's capacity to provide useful data that can help guide our democracy is practically limitless. But this brain-busting volume of information will have to wait, as we apparently are more concerned with the minutiae of celebrity living.
This is especially ridiculous in Canada, where in all likelihood, our politicians are less interesting and glamorous than our personal friends.
Hopefully, an intelligent subculture will soon emerge and demand information with how our politicians are actually performing in their jobs. And today, more than ever, that means "how are they doing at providing the public with government services ?". Canadians still don't pay enough attention to the poor quality of services, and bad management practices by the government. The Ontario government has still not delivered on a promise to manage healthcare waiting lists made in 2003, but the mismanagement only made it to the headlines recently when a $2,700 a day consultant billed the province $1.65 for tea.
While the plebs of Democracy 2.0 delight themselves with Blackberry bus schedule updates, the rest of us will be waiting for the information that government really doesn't want to give up: statistics on their own performance.
So, now it seems that Democracy 2.0 has come to mean the automated tabloidization of public figures. This is as disheartening an event as the realization in the 1920s that the new medium of radio would best be suited to selling soap.
The web has the power to provide unlimited amounts of information instantaneously. It's capacity to provide useful data that can help guide our democracy is practically limitless. But this brain-busting volume of information will have to wait, as we apparently are more concerned with the minutiae of celebrity living.
This is especially ridiculous in Canada, where in all likelihood, our politicians are less interesting and glamorous than our personal friends.
Hopefully, an intelligent subculture will soon emerge and demand information with how our politicians are actually performing in their jobs. And today, more than ever, that means "how are they doing at providing the public with government services ?". Canadians still don't pay enough attention to the poor quality of services, and bad management practices by the government. The Ontario government has still not delivered on a promise to manage healthcare waiting lists made in 2003, but the mismanagement only made it to the headlines recently when a $2,700 a day consultant billed the province $1.65 for tea.
While the plebs of Democracy 2.0 delight themselves with Blackberry bus schedule updates, the rest of us will be waiting for the information that government really doesn't want to give up: statistics on their own performance.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Glances Backward... Steps Forward
It's been almost one year now since the publication of the excellent "It's More Than Talk" report from Don Lenihan and Canada's Public Policy forum. That report described some provactive experiments in democracy with new media and explored new ways in which Canada could use technology to strengthen the ties between government and the people. So, in the wake of that report, how much has government changed in the last year ? Not very much at all. Not surprisingly, it continues to use a top-down method of governing - with real consultation limited to polling the public`s impresions of mass media press releases.
But the net continues.
It continues to burrow into the common culture. Inernet use, and online advertising expenditures increase as the economic climate seems now to be thinning the herd of the weaker old media offerings. In Toronto, a persistent activist new media movement is centered around improving transit service and making the TTC more responsive. And yet the effect of new media on our larger democracy seems non-existent.
The Public Policy forum has just realeased a new report "News & The Netizen", a disappointingly tepid examination of the current media climate. It ambles through descriptions of the participatory democracy offered by the internet with vague assertions that new media is changing politics - even suggesting that online political donations (which have been around for several elections now) and Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign are somehow significant events. The report circles around the issues, and the authors seem too unfamiliar with the potential of new media for change. In the end it offers the conclusion that "ongoing research and dialogue are warranted".
This is analogous to a frog being carried downstream on a lily pad, calling for ongoing research of the river. What we need now is not passive (and powerless) analysis of how the river is flowing, but ideas on how government should jump in - or at least some better examples. Then again, when interesting and thought provoking reports like "It's More Than Talk" haven't had an effect, then maybe watching the river is the only option.
One starts to wonder when and how the new media will finally take its proper place in our media mix. Radio and television arrived suddenly, so perhaps in the coming years the Net will do so as well. If such is the case, then we Netizens need to just watch, wait, and blog... documenting warning against the attendant problems of sudden change, while counting the small victories.
One such victory happened today, in Robert Fulford`s National Post column. In a rare blessing from an old media maven, Fulford declares that the "Net is way better" for journalism than pre-net days. He sees the value in increased communication between individuals. Hopefully, soon we'll all start to understand that online digital relationships are real relationships that can unite people across distances, and social standing. Netizens can help the nation see that the potential to plug these relationships into our governance will be put to good use.
So, let's keep riding the lily pad down the river, and continue our research and dialogue.
As such, I offer you Hardner`s 4 Imporations for Netizens:
1) Stay Online - keep blogging, keep posting on message boards, keep emailing the government, filling out `Contact Us` forms and letting them know that you exist in Cyberspace.
2) Practice Information Hygene. When posting and discussing, be sure to check your facts, and only use sources with an established record of accuracy and objectivity.
3) Be Proactive - Review the latest information from the source - unbiased studies, government statistics, universities, or independent surveys. Don`t wait for articles to appear on online newspaper or commentary sites first.
4) Look for chances to participate in wider dialogue, and jump in. If there is a chance to take the dialogue into the non-virtual world, then do it.
But the net continues.
It continues to burrow into the common culture. Inernet use, and online advertising expenditures increase as the economic climate seems now to be thinning the herd of the weaker old media offerings. In Toronto, a persistent activist new media movement is centered around improving transit service and making the TTC more responsive. And yet the effect of new media on our larger democracy seems non-existent.
The Public Policy forum has just realeased a new report "News & The Netizen", a disappointingly tepid examination of the current media climate. It ambles through descriptions of the participatory democracy offered by the internet with vague assertions that new media is changing politics - even suggesting that online political donations (which have been around for several elections now) and Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign are somehow significant events. The report circles around the issues, and the authors seem too unfamiliar with the potential of new media for change. In the end it offers the conclusion that "ongoing research and dialogue are warranted".
This is analogous to a frog being carried downstream on a lily pad, calling for ongoing research of the river. What we need now is not passive (and powerless) analysis of how the river is flowing, but ideas on how government should jump in - or at least some better examples. Then again, when interesting and thought provoking reports like "It's More Than Talk" haven't had an effect, then maybe watching the river is the only option.
One starts to wonder when and how the new media will finally take its proper place in our media mix. Radio and television arrived suddenly, so perhaps in the coming years the Net will do so as well. If such is the case, then we Netizens need to just watch, wait, and blog... documenting warning against the attendant problems of sudden change, while counting the small victories.
One such victory happened today, in Robert Fulford`s National Post column. In a rare blessing from an old media maven, Fulford declares that the "Net is way better" for journalism than pre-net days. He sees the value in increased communication between individuals. Hopefully, soon we'll all start to understand that online digital relationships are real relationships that can unite people across distances, and social standing. Netizens can help the nation see that the potential to plug these relationships into our governance will be put to good use.
So, let's keep riding the lily pad down the river, and continue our research and dialogue.
As such, I offer you Hardner`s 4 Imporations for Netizens:
1) Stay Online - keep blogging, keep posting on message boards, keep emailing the government, filling out `Contact Us` forms and letting them know that you exist in Cyberspace.
2) Practice Information Hygene. When posting and discussing, be sure to check your facts, and only use sources with an established record of accuracy and objectivity.
3) Be Proactive - Review the latest information from the source - unbiased studies, government statistics, universities, or independent surveys. Don`t wait for articles to appear on online newspaper or commentary sites first.
4) Look for chances to participate in wider dialogue, and jump in. If there is a chance to take the dialogue into the non-virtual world, then do it.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Democracy 2.0 Not Services 2.0
eye magazine article
I was very glad to read Chris Bilton's informative, and well written article on Democracy 2.0.
But it occurred to me that "Democracy 2.0" has failed to live up to it's presumptuous title. The movement seems to be too focused on the delivery of government services, and not enough on dialogue and setting the agenda.
While we all would love to see government be more responsive, consumer-friendly etc. etc., we should remember that the movement [not] known as "Democracy 1.0" came from a group of disgruntled forefathers who wanted to provide a way for the people to govern themselves, not consume services.
Democracy 2.0 should be about finding ways to give the powers that be their marching orders. Instead of government telling us which hospitals in our area have the shortest waiting times, we should be using the web to measure our governments against their own promises of reducing these waiting times.
I have been posting and blogging about new media and government for almost 10 years now, and have come to accept that hardly anyone, including pundits, can see the importance of what is coming.
Our media institutions are showing their age, and web-based media is poised to step in and redefine how we govern ourselves. But for us to focus on better delivery of services and information is another example of the rear-view mirror phenomenon described by McLuhan.
Do yourself a favour and read "It's more than talk", headed up by Don Lenihan - Chair in Public Engagement at the Public Policy Forum. His paper offers some very exciting ideas of where new technology might take us.
Public Policy Forum
Michael Hardner
(Next - Democracy 3.0)
I was very glad to read Chris Bilton's informative, and well written article on Democracy 2.0.
But it occurred to me that "Democracy 2.0" has failed to live up to it's presumptuous title. The movement seems to be too focused on the delivery of government services, and not enough on dialogue and setting the agenda.
While we all would love to see government be more responsive, consumer-friendly etc. etc., we should remember that the movement [not] known as "Democracy 1.0" came from a group of disgruntled forefathers who wanted to provide a way for the people to govern themselves, not consume services.
Democracy 2.0 should be about finding ways to give the powers that be their marching orders. Instead of government telling us which hospitals in our area have the shortest waiting times, we should be using the web to measure our governments against their own promises of reducing these waiting times.
I have been posting and blogging about new media and government for almost 10 years now, and have come to accept that hardly anyone, including pundits, can see the importance of what is coming.
Our media institutions are showing their age, and web-based media is poised to step in and redefine how we govern ourselves. But for us to focus on better delivery of services and information is another example of the rear-view mirror phenomenon described by McLuhan.
Do yourself a favour and read "It's more than talk", headed up by Don Lenihan - Chair in Public Engagement at the Public Policy Forum. His paper offers some very exciting ideas of where new technology might take us.
Public Policy Forum
Michael Hardner
(Next - Democracy 3.0)
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