Re: From a A Cathedral of Public Policy to a Public Policy Bazaar
Hi Ed: Good points but --- the whole idea of this information age and governance is not necesarily to compete with the experts but for the interested and - hopefully intelligent poster to give input and broaden the debate by sharing their opinions and viewpoints. I think the idea of the bazaar - and I am still trying to assimilate whether this is the correct label - is perhaps more like the Acropolis of ancient Greece - I hope my memory is right in these names or I will quite justly get flamed. A common area or arena where debate can take place in which those who have interests, ie the experts and policy wonks and lobbyists have to justify their choices by critique by the citizen. At the end of the day, they are the ones who will make the policy - no argument there - but now those decisions are made in the backroom and not even the stakeholders who will be affected by the decisions have input other than to present proposals which disappear into a black hole - hardly acknowledged - never debated. Your example of aboriginal issues is the result of your experience. What is being proposed is the creation of different experiences. This may be messy. It may step on toes that don't want to be stepped on - it may not even work, but for the first time since the invention of representative democracy, a technological methodology makes possible the idea of a blending of direct democracy with representional democracy. This is an experiment worth engaging in. And looking forward into the future and trying to envision how decisions in 2030 or 2100 might look, we have to admit that their will be changes and we - living now at the start of the Internet Age will be the pioneers who experiment. And that, to me is the key word - experimentation and when you experiment in the scientific sense, failure is an appropriate response which will eventually lead to success or other directions. Respectfully Thomas Lunde -- From: "Ed Weick" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "futurework" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: From a "A Cathedral" of Public Policy to a Public Policy "Bazaar" Date: Fri, May 28, 1999, 2:49 PM Mike, What your paper does not seem to recognize is that government does not usually respond to the public as a whole, but to particular groups and interests within the public. This is not inappropriate if one views democracy as being founded on two often contradictory principles: recognizing the public interest as a whole; and protecting the rights and interests of individuals and groups. Bringing the public as a whole into policy formulation via a medium such as the internet might, if the initiative were genuine and sincere, satisfy one of these principles but could violate the other. Much of my experience in government and outside of it as a consultant has been with aboriginal issues. The content of these issues is complex. One has to become very deeply immersed in them before one really gets to understand them to the extent of being able to make an effective contribution to policy. I would question the willingness of most of the public to put enough time into developing an appropriate level of understanding. Moreover, aboriginal people have a longstanding proprietory interest in aboriginal policy making. They would strenuously resist an encroachment on this interest by the public as a whole. I would refer to the recent angry babble out of British Columbia on the Nisga settlement to illustrate what I'm saying. Other fields of policymaking would encounter similar problems. Could a life-long Toronto urbanite really understand the problems of marginalized prairie grain grower or the social devastation currently being faced by communities based on mining? Perhaps the role of the internet here is to educate -- to put the farmer or miner into direct contact with the urbanite so that he can then go after his MP. But to expect the urbanite to be sympathetic or even objective without such education is expecting too much. The role of government as cathedral is to try to balance a great variety of often mutually exclusive and mutually incomprehensible interests. I've worked in the cathedral and like the idea of the bazaar, but I quite honestly can't see how it would work. I read parts of the paper on the development of the Linux system. I came away with the impression that widespread input to the development and debugging of that system worked because everyone who contributed had a pretty good idea of what it was about and how it worked. I honestly cannot feel the same way about the development of Indian policy or many other issues government must try to resolve. Ed Weick (This is a draft of a paper that I'm developing that might be of interest in this context. Contents, criticisms, "hacking" is welcomed. Distribution (with attribution) is encouraged.) Etc.
Re: From a A Cathedral of Public Policy to a Public Policy Bazaar
Mike, What your paper does not seem to recognize is that government does not usually respond to the public as a whole, but to particular groups and interests within the public. This is not inappropriate if one views democracy as being founded on two often contradictory principles: recognizing the public interest as a whole; and protecting the rights and interests of individuals and groups. Bringing the public as a whole into policy formulation via a medium such as the internet might, if the initiative were genuine and sincere, satisfy one of these principles but could violate the other. Much of my experience in government and outside of it as a consultant has been with aboriginal issues. The content of these issues is complex. One has to become very deeply immersed in them before one really gets to understand them to the extent of being able to make an effective contribution to policy. I would question the willingness of most of the public to put enough time into developing an appropriate level of understanding. Moreover, aboriginal people have a longstanding proprietory interest in aboriginal policy making. They would strenuously resist an encroachment on this interest by the public as a whole. I would refer to the recent angry babble out of British Columbia on the Nisga settlement to illustrate what I'm saying. Other fields of policymaking would encounter similar problems. Could a life-long Toronto urbanite really understand the problems of marginalized prairie grain grower or the social devastation currently being faced by communities based on mining? Perhaps the role of the internet here is to educate -- to put the farmer or miner into direct contact with the urbanite so that he can then go after his MP. But to expect the urbanite to be sympathetic or even objective without such education is expecting too much. The role of government as cathedral is to try to balance a great variety of often mutually exclusive and mutually incomprehensible interests. I've worked in the cathedral and like the idea of the bazaar, but I quite honestly can't see how it would work. I read parts of the paper on the development of the Linux system. I came away with the impression that widespread input to the development and debugging of that system worked because everyone who contributed had a pretty good idea of what it was about and how it worked. I honestly cannot feel the same way about the development of Indian policy or many other issues government must try to resolve. Ed Weick (This is a draft of a paper that I'm developing that might be of interest in this context. Contents, criticisms, "hacking" is welcomed. Distribution (with attribution) is encouraged.) Etc.
From a A Cathedral of Public Policy to a Public Policy Bazaar
(This is a draft of a paper that I'm developing that might be of interest in this context. Contents, criticisms, "hacking" is welcomed. Distribution (with attribution) is encouraged.) From a "A Cathedral" of Public Policy to a Public Policy "Bazaar" Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair Management of Technological Change Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN) University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2 Tel. 902-563-1369 (o) 902-562-1055 (h)902-562-0119 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca ICQ: 7388855 I've been travelling for much of the last three weeks at meetings and conferences concerning a range of issues including "innovation", "regional development", "digital knowledge", "access", "telehealth" among others. Also I only now getting back to reading the postings to UA-C over the last few weeks. I'm struck by the convergence that I see in the meetings/conferences and on-line discussions around the issue of the linkage between a concerned and informed public and those with the responsibility for the formulation and execution of public policies. What seems to be emerging is a major discontinuity between the expectations and experiences of an Internet "bazaar" i.e. an "open (information) source" enabled "concerned public", and the representatives of the public sector who are attempting to proceed within a more traditional "Cathedral" approach to policy formulation, consultation, and implementation. This discontinuity takes the form on the one hand of: Public consultation processes which consist of the public being invited to send comments on pre-circulated documents to a public Internet forum with no indication of how (or even) whether the comments will be read/responded to /used/integrated and so on. The development by the range of Government Departments of elaborate and sophisticated Internet delivered web-sites with little or no interactive component and no indications of how the degree of interactivity which is allowed will be assimilated or used. The development of elaborate internal (within government) policy Intranets, with formal mechanisms for scanning and assimilating public comment and the broad range of Internet enabled communication but with no interactive linkages (or participation) into any of the forums or on-line policy discussions from which they are drawing sustenance. E-mail addresses included in Government sponsored websites which are either completely unresponsive or which have only a form letter response often by means of a "bot". Publicly supported networks of researchers in a variety of areas of public policy interest as for example "Innovation Systems" and "Regional Development", all evidently developed and funded with a concern by policy makers to have access to the best research and thinking on these issue areas but with no formal linkage or responsibility concerning public policy discussion or evaluation in these sectoral areas and little or no public contribution to the discussion. Policy processes as for example, those concerning areas such as "Smart Communities", "The Canada Health Infoway", and "The Knowledge Based Economy" which are almost completely non-transparent to the broader concerned public and which operate by means of closed groups of "experts" consulting at the discretion of the policy apparatus and with little accountability or even non-formal communication with the broader concerned communities of interest. On the other hand: The development of on-line public forums including web-boards, e-lists, and chat facilities discussing the broad range of public policy issues The participation by many with a very broad range of expert and experience based knowledge and understanding of areas of policy concern, in many cases with considerable expenditures of time and effort in researching and formulating positions and comments often of very high quality. A deepening frustration at the lack of participation, consultation and real engagement on the part of those concerned with public policy either as politicians or as public servants in this dialogue. The development by researchers of publicly funded research networks in areas of considerable public interest concern but with no formal linkages into policy making processes. Where in the current practise of democratic governance is there the degree of: transparency flexibility interactivity immediacy multi-nodality and network interoperability which leading organizations are increasingly developing with their leading client/supplier/stakeholder groups? While these may be developing in certain parts of government internal communication and in its interactions with certain private sector "stakeholders", little if any of this is emerging as part of government's relationship with it's ultimate "stakeholder", the democratic citizenry. What is of particular interest in the above
