Law School Project Seeks to Bridge E-Government, Grassroots Sites

Noveck said she wants to use advanced visualization technology and social-psychology concepts in the planned Green Chicago site. Those elements would make it an example of how much more effective online civic efforts can be if they break down the separation of government and activist work, she said. Noveck surveyed what she sees as progress and limitations in previous efforts.

For example, Vermont is taking note that the Internet gives people new ways to organize and exercise power, Noveck said. The state is moving toward recognizing virtual companies as legal bodies that can open bank accounts and buy insurance, she said. H-458, passed by Vermont House in February, has had its first reading the Senate Finance Committee, according to the Legislature’s Web site. The motive is to make Vermont “the Digital Delaware” and collect incorporation fees for virtual companies, Noveck said.

Meanwhile, technologies like Microsoft Live Labs’ Photosynth can help people come together document and dramatize physical conditions by combining large collections of images into three-dimensional representations, Noveck said. An audience member said Google has similar technology. Digital technologies can combine to unlock what Harvard psychologists call the “group brain” - the empowerment that comes when individuals realize that they are part of a group, Noveck said.

The Chicago project’s hallmarks will be open collaboration, bridges between institutions and activists, use of social-awareness techniques, and action and shared responsibility instead of “bitching and whining,” Noveck said. To fill in those broad outlines, she sought suggestions at the seminar. But first Noveck reviewed what she portrayed as a gulf between government efforts online and even the most advanced civic-complaint sites, such as MyBikeLane and FixMyStreet.com.

The Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership promotes visualization of community conditions by combining complaint and statistical information in cooperation with local governments, Noveck said. New York’s 311 Web site and phone number is a clearinghouse that offers city services information and collects problem reports, she said. The next step is to get government commitments of action on complaints and comments, Noveck said.

Foreign governments have moved in this direction, Noveck said. The U.K. government has an E-Petitions site with 20,000 petitions posted by users, she said. South Korea’s Open system, which seeks to make administration publicly visible, has expanded beyond the permit process, Noveck said.

The goal should be “collaborative governance” that erases distinctions between government and activism, Noveck said. One of the best examples isn’t new, she said. City Scan, run by the Connecticut Policy and Economic Council, recruits citizens to post photos online of derelict properties. The city of Bridgeport has committed to cleaning up eight monthly, Noveck said. She hopes Green Chicago will be like City Scan, “but at scale and much more effective,” she said.

The aim is to use Web 2.0 tools to “redesign” government work, Noveck said. She contrasted that approach against “route-around” volunteerism like that of OpenStreetMap.org, which seeks to map the world to get around the copyright protections of existing maps, Noveck said. It’s crucial to find agencies that welcome outside help, as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office did with her Peer to Patent Project to enable expert comments on patent applications, she said. Since a pilot began in June, more than 41,000 people in 133 countries and territories have viewed it, according to a March post on the project blog. Nearly 2,000 people signed up as reviewers have cited 173 instances of prior art on 37 applications, Noveck said.

Noveck’s work is based on principles of open-source software, she said: Groups are smarter than individuals, open processes work better than closed ones -- so collaboration is preferable to people voting and commenting individually as in conventional civic action. That means diversity among participants matters more than their being representative. And - in what Noveck and audience members called one of the trickiest and most important twists - effectiveness, “the ability to get things done,” takes precedence over equality of participation, she said.

In Peer to Patent, “self-selection is yielding tremendous diversity” in the participation of engineers, lawyers, students and others offering useful comments on patent applications, Noveck said. “It’s working effectively,” she said, the key being a “very structured process for asking people for specific information.”

Noveck and others using wikis to involve citizens in public policy. The Sunlight Foundation pulled back its proposed federal Transparency in Government Act for comment by wiki, she said. Noveck said she visited Libya four times last year to set up a PolicyWiki to use Internet technology to pull together a system that uses a vast number of local community meetings to draft legislation. The challenge is achieving a true collaboration, not the usual discussion in which whoever has the last word wins, she said. Pressed on helping Libya, Noveck called the project a great “opportunity to experiment… with bringing about meaningful change for people who want it,” through “democratic processes within dictatorial regimes.” - Louis Trager