http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog my blog Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:34:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Gallup believes it has detected a significant increase in the number of people who label themselves "Independents". Typically the number of people claiming no party affiliation rises during non-election years, then falls as elections approach. According to Gallup, their non-election year polling indicates the number of people claiming Independent status ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=43 In Chapter 4 of the book America 2076 I reviewed a number of existing and emerging technology innovations that were making feasible a new kind of political collaboration. But I noted that to enable a true mass collaboration some required technologies still needed to be developed: "Some additional capabilities may be required ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=39 In the feedback from my Youtube slideshow Debugging Democracy some worried that the Democracy Network proposed in the slideshow might somehow marginalize or perhaps destabilize our government. So in this post, I'll examine the impact of a Democracy Network or Collaborative Framework on our government, using content adopted from chapter ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=40 To my thinking, the most pivotal success factor in politics and large distributed organizations in general is this: The random occurrence of insights, and how well the political system manages them. The following points explain how the next version of Democracy will be much more efficient than the current version at ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=37 The folks at Joots have one of the best visual depictions of the interrelationship between economy, equity and ecology I've ever seen. This color keyed chart articulates their philosophy of providing "Multiple Bottom Line Solutions", that is solutions that meet more than one type of success critieria. Multiple Bottom Line Solutions ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=36 Joe Costello notes that "the DC lobbying industry is reaching out to state and local governments, bypassing elected officials" in Our Corrupted Politics. He quotes a recent NY Times article: The news that the Washington lobbying industry is rapidly extending its tentacles into cities, towns and school districts across the country ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=35 Again, toward an informed citizenry, here is a summary of current economic outlook and monetary policy from Janet Yellen of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Excerpts: "A particularly noteworthy development is the recent jump in intermediate and long-term interest rates." "Insofar as the rise in longer-term rates seems to be a ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=34 One of the core prerequisites of Post-Partisan democracy is an informed citizenry. In the Post-Partisan way of thinking, citizens are responsible not just to vote, but to partner with their government in thinking about the issues and decisions the nation faces (and utilize collaborative technologies to aggregate, ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=33 The next version of democracy will work better, and here's how you can help build it. This video takes a system view of American Democracy, and suggests how to debug and improve it... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=32 This post shares highlights from a summary of Accenture's 2007 report on egovernment Leadership in Customer Service: Delivering on the Promise This annual report, the eighth issued by Accenture, is a global scorecard ranking the progress of e-Government initiatives and best practices from 22 countries (Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, ... http://www.ralphperrine.com/blog/?p=31