See: http://civichall.org/civicist/small-but-successful-participatory-democracy-experiment-to-continue-in-utah/
SMALL BUT SUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY EXPERIMENT TO CONTINUE IN UTAH The People's Lobby is run entirely online using the digital tools NationBuilder and Loomio. ________________________________ BY: JESSICA MCKENZIE AUG 4, 2015 Last month, the City Council in Provo, Utah, voted unanimously to continue the Provo People’s Lobby, an experimental process in participatory democracy in which city residents collaborate online on a policy recommendation that is then submitted to the City Council for consideration and possible implementation. The process, which I first wrote about in March for techPresident, is run entirely online using NationBuilder and Loomio. Participants in Provo’s first People’s Lobby were selected at random from a pool of approximately 75 peoplewho submitted or voted on the “pressing issues” they want addressed in their city. Invitations were sent to one person from each of the 25 neighborhoods represented in that pool; ultimately 14 residents participated in the deliberations on the decision-making platform Loomio. Their efforts were guided with minimal moderation from People’s Lobby creator Jeff Swift, Loomio consultant MJ Kaplan, and two political science students at Brigham Young University. Recruitment, Swift and his fellow moderators write in a report on the Provo People’s Lobby, required a lot of “handholding” via email and phone calls to get people on board: Future efforts will benefit from seeing the results of the first, and we have learned what information is important to transmit at this stage to ensure that participants will understand what they are signing up for and be ready to participate. We also anticipate that there will be a certain level of drop off no matter what we do, and this is acceptable. We are recruiting a small jury of residents and do not need a fully representative body in order for the Lobby to work as designed. More: http://civichall.org/civicist/small-but-successful-participatory-democracy-experiment-to-continue-in-utah/ Steven Clift - Executive Director, E-Democracy.org [email protected] - +1 612 234 7072 @democracy - http://linkedin.com/in/netclift Also with Knowledge Hub - [email protected] World leading online public services exchange: http://khub.net Call # above or +44 203 808 1118 (After 13:00 UK time) ―― View topic http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/23zYkkbYvFLPfk0yHxAOYX Leave group mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Unsubscribe
