We need to think seriously about what digital democracy has to offer, says Bill Thompson on the BBC News website.

“One of the most important thinkers is Will Davies, who cut his teeth working with economist Will Hutton at the think tank The Work Foundation, where he was a lead on its groundbreaking iSociety project.

He is now a research fellow at the Said Business School at Oxford University.

Mr Davies brings Weber, Hayek, Weinberger, Arendt and even Habermas to bear on the question of whether decentralising information through online services like data.gov.uk can offer us good government.

He concludes that while it may provide transparency and even accountability it can never sustain the legitimacy that a democratic state provides. “

Read full story

Lawrence Lessig discusses the perils of openness in government in a long article in The New Republic.

“How could anyone be against transparency? Its virtues and its utilities seem so crushingly obvious. But I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement–if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness–will inspire not reform, but disgust. The “naked transparency movement,” as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.”

Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago.

Read full story

danah boyd, researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, serving as a Commissioner on the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities (in the USA).

She just announced the release of the report, entitled Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.

We begin our report by asking, “What are the information needs of communities in a democracy?” Following this reflective analysis, we outline findings and recommendations, centered on three objectives:

• Maximize the availability of relevant and credible information to all Americans and their communities
• Strengthen the capacity of individuals to engage with information
• Promote individual engagement with information and the public life of the community

The report concerns itself with journalism, open government, broadband access, digital/media literacy, skills, civic engagement, local communities, socioeconomic and sociotechnical inequality, education, free speech, etc.

The US General Services Administration (GSA) has just released its Intergovernmental Solutions Newsletter.

Entitled “Engaging Citizens in Government“, all of the articles in the current edition should be of interest to those working on the use of ICTs as a means to enhance citizen participation.

Table of contents
- Increasing citizen engagement in government
- By the people, for the people
- Citizen engagement
- National dialogues build communities
- Believable change: a reality check on online participation?
- Reinventing We the People
- Data is not democracy
- Could citizens run the White House online?
- E-petitions preserves an old British tradition
- My better Estonia
- Participatory lawmaking in Brazil
- Brazil and Argentina: from participatory budgeting to e-participatory budgeting
- Pew: well-off and well-educated are more likely to engage
- Public engagement on Fairfax County’s budget
- Citizen engagement in Oakland County
- Washington goes to Mr. Smith: the changing role of citizens in policy development
- Ohio redistricting competition
- Planning for citizen engagement
- Potholes and PDAs
- New media makers pioneer novel forms of news
- Putting your audience to work: EPAs radon video contest
- A millennial model of civic engagement
- Emerging themes for effective online citizen engagement
- The importance of open web standards in the move to open and transparent government

Tiego Peixoto, a researcher on participatory budget, sat down with MobileActive recently to discuss the use of mobile technology for citizens to participate in decision making about city budgets. This new and interesting field is showing some promise in several cities in Brazil.

Tiego also wrote an article recently for the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications that makes the case for using mobile tech in involving citizens in budget decisions in their communities.

Read full story