Online Public Participation

Online Public ParticipationTim BonnemannFounder and CEOIntellitics, Inc.

Key Take-Aways

• Technology and the internet provide a lot of opportunity for broadening and deepening civic engagement, specifically public participation

• You can do this!

• Please do this (and let us know how it went)

Does Online Make Sense?

Opportunities

• Bridge limitations of time and space

• Ability to scale

• Participants as resources

• Cost savings

Challenges

• Digital divide

• No replacement for face-to-face

• Uncivil behavior

• Very resource-intensive and expensive

Project Examples

• Public information and community building on Facebook

• Community asset mapping with Google Maps and Drupal

• Participatory budgeting with IdeaScale

• Civic contest (crowdsourcing) around redistricting in Ohio using ArcGIS

Public Information & Community Building

Type Social Media

Year 2009 — current

Context Urban planning in Portland, OR

Goals Inform, community building

Technology Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pdxplan

Community Asset Mapping

Type Collaborative mapping

Year 2009

Context Development of after-school program

Goals Assess, Discover, Inform

Technology Google Maps, Drupal

http://biloxiyouthassets.org

Participatory Budgeting

Type Crowdstorming

Year 2010

Context Seattle city budget 2011/2012

Goals Consult

Technology IdeaScale

http://seattlecitycouncil.ideascale.com

Civic Contests & Crowdsourcing

Type Civic contest, mapping, crowdsourcing

Year 2009

Context Redistricting in the state of Ohio

Goals Capacity building, awareness, consult

Technology ArcGIS

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/redistricting.aspx

The Tool Landscape

• There are hundreds of tools (generic, specialized, custom)

• Often multi-purpose, broadly applicable. Not always easy to clearly match tools to processes or desired outcomes

• Online participation and the tools involved often require a broad skill set (technology, social media, community management, online facilitation, editing etc.)

Some Web-Specific Considerations• Accessibility

• Data security

• Identity

• Privacy & publicness

• Intellectual property

• Moderation

• Archiving

• Legal

• Mobile

• Tool support

Design Principles & Success Factors• Know your objectives, audience, resources

• Apply good process (e.g. IAP2 framework)

• Find the right combination of people, process and tools

• Be transparent about commitments, set realistic expectations

• Consider web-specific issues (e.g. privacy, security, identity)

Resources

• Intellitics Bloghttp://www.intellitics.com/blog

• ParticipateDBhttp://participatedb.com

• NCDD 2010 Resource Guide on Public Engagementhttp://www.ncdd.org/files/NCDD2010_Resource_Guide.pdf

• Promising Practices in Online Engagementhttp://www.publicagenda.org/pages/promising-practices-in-online-engagement

• Social Media Clubhttp://socialmediaclub.org

Thank You!http://www.intellitics.comFollow @intellitics on Twitter…

Some Rights ReservedExcept where noted, the contents of this presentation are licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-

Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. The terms of this license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

v1.0 2010/11/05