Of course, as I have pointed out before, polling has its limitations and disclaimers are always necessary. Here’s the necessary disclaimer in Gallup’s own words:

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In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

But I noted that to enable a true mass collaboration some required technologies still needed to be developed:

“Some additional capabilities may be required which are
missing from the arsenal of Internet and software
applications available today. These missing capabilities
relate to cost-effective, reliable and accurate methods of
consolidating text and thought, with the ability to remove,
abstract or layer redundant memes (ideas, concepts) so
that they can be comprehended and decided upon quickly.
We can do things that come close to this, but the
constraint is currently a significant one. Advances in
communication networks and software might be able to
remove this constraint within a few years…”

Progress toward development of these missing capabilities is moving on several fronts, which seem to often fall under the heading of “sensemaking“.

Mark Stefik of PARC perhaps was the first to use the term in his 2004 post The New Sensemakers: The next thing beyond search is sensemaking.

Ramana Rao’s exposition on REAP is also worth reading.

This pair of matrices by Robert Steele shows data aggregation and sensemaking as a quadrant among other types of data management, offering useful comparisons.

Sensemaking appears to differ from data mining in that data mining methods expect to extract from large masses of data critical insights that will prove to be pivotal.

To my thinking, the de-duplication of political memes is the fundamental critical capability needed to make mass collaboration really feasible. Sensemaking, if it becomes a formal information technology discipline, would have to address this on some level.

I am collaborating with several groups on developing one or more technology solutions that address the requirement for de-duplication of memes and sensemaking in general. If you know of other efforts, please leave a comment.

A major theme of the book (and this blog) is that citizens need additional assistance in order to better participate in the activities of modern American politics. So a considerable amount of space is dedicated to the benefits of a collaborative “Democracy Network” for citizens.

But the “Democracy Network” and the collaborative planning it could foster - would also provide tremendous empowerment to the legitimate endeavors of those in government.

Those who govern desperately need insight and wisdom to determine the best way to proceed and more fundamentally, how best to orchestrate the attention and resources of the nation in order to protect and provide for our future security. It would seem reasonable that a government faced with this challenge would seek a
mechanism that taps the collective intelligence and insight of its population.

A Democracy Network concept and its attendant mechanisms provide the best solution so far for doing this.

The following paragraphs examine some of the specific that a “Democracy Network” would provide to the legitimate activities of the government.

Benefit #1: More coherent, usable feedback for elected officials

The input that elected representatives would receive from a collaborative framework that aggregates and de-duplicates citizen input would far exceed the quality of the input they receive from current methods. It would be more direct, and less open to
interpretation. It would be the difference between a last will and testament versus a series of photographs. It would be what the people actually said they wanted. State
representatives could review the National Agenda document as well, since the National Agenda would also include items that should be taken up by the states.
Instead of peering through the dark glass of market research, and extrapolating the impact of political ads, elected representatives could see for themselves the guidance the citizens have communicated to their government. The collaborative tools of the Democracy Network and the documents it prepares would also provide an attractive alternative to the floods of form letters and emails from overzealous grassroots organizations.

The idea of direct input from citizens has already been implemented in a number of federal web sites which seek input on various government decision-making and
activities.(1) It has not yet been put together on a national scale and scope. If it were, it would provide a single coherent place (or online document) where people can view all of the items their government is working on, and provide input to any of them.

Benefit #2: The collective intelligence of the nation

Governing is a complicated endeavor – one that requires the maximum available intelligence.(2) For this reason, wise governments find ways to solicit the collective intelligence of their fellow citizens. By collective intelligence, I mean a knowledge that is based on the aggregation of as many viewpoints as possible, so as to provide a 360 degree view of the factors that relate to an issue, or to the ramifications of a given decision. Those who govern, and those who participate in governing need to possess the best available knowledge and need to be as intelligent as possible in order for things to go well.

Because the full knowledge required to govern well does not reside in a single individual, or even a single group, a means of collecting the intelligence held by all
individuals is required. Democratic governments solicit the intelligence of the people through a number of methods, the most well known of which is voting. In this
sense, voting is more than just an opportunity to express one’s opinion. It is an appeal to the collective intelligence of the national population, for help in determining who should manage a certain aspect of the local or federal government.

But voting alone is not sufficient to extract the full collective intelligence needed to run the government. Many modern governments also solicit the collective intelligence of the people by other methods such as polling, and the encouragement of direct correspondence with representatives.

Representative government (the process of soliciting the collective will of the people), is not correct simply because it is fair. It is also correct because it is currently the best known way to aggregate citizen intelligence for the purpose of making very complicated and risky decisions that directly impact the individuals within the
citizen population.

Those who govern seem to intuitively hold a near universal desire to foster communication between citizen and government through polling, web sites and email
addresses for senators, and so forth. With few exceptions most appear to subscribe to the notion that citizens must be able to communicate with their government - in a
coherent way - their top concerns and the multiple facets of these concerns.

But what is lacking is a single coherent repository of the national collective thinking about the issues the country faces. There is no top-of-mind place to go, in order to register one’s concerns. One may write each of their state and federal representatives, but this is a one way conversation (usually) outlining the thoughts of a single person. These thoughts have more than likely not been blended with the thoughts and concerns of others. Or one may join forces with one of the myriad political action groups, each of which will usually have their own version of an agenda for only a few of the many issues the nation faces. And too often, these political groups focus on utilizing finely tuned awareness campaigns to flood the offices of elected representatives that may amount to – or come dangerously close to - false impressions of the will of the people. None of these options allow for an effective single repository of the nation’s thinking and collaborative planning.

Benefit #3: Efficiency

The Democracy Network and its collaborative tools could help optimize the efforts of the Congressional staff, by improving efficiency and transparency, while allowing more direct citizen participation.

It would be reasonable to inquire whether or not a full accounting of the cost resources and effort expended by the total Congressional staff, might not provide the justification for the cost of building the Democracy Network. The Congressional Budget Office isn’t exactly forthcoming on its current payroll figures for Congressional Staff. Their web site (http://www.cbo.gov), while otherwise generous in detail, provides no definitive information on current staffing costs.

In December of 2004 Thomas Rains published an article “High Salaries for Congressional Staff” which detailed fiscal year 2004 salary figures for Senate and House staffs for New Hampshire and Maine. The article referred to research conducted by Foster’s Daily Democrat, and alleged among other things that the
Senators from the two states of New Hampshire and Maine spent around two million dollars each on their staffs.(3)

At times Congress itself has admitted awareness of issues connected to the size, expense and relative effectiveness of its staff. In 1993 the House of Representatives published a Summary of Hearings on Congressional Staff and Management. In these hearings, various members of Congressional testified that the Congressional Staff needed to be reduced, that its current size was unnecessary, and that the overstaffing actually hindered the legislative process.(4) One representative noted in the hearings that the Congressional Staff had tripled since 1960.(5)

At the time of writing, some indication of the staffing costs of Congress is available in the text of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2006 (H.R. 2985) which allocates funds for Senate and House expenses for 2006.(6) Listed below are the three budget items in this bill which appear to relate to the staffing and salary costs of Congress:

• $147,120,000 for Senate “Salaries, Officers an Employees”
• $350,000,000 for “Senators’ Official Personnel and Office Expense Account”
• $1,092,407,000 for “salaries and expenses of the House of Representatives”

The three figures together approach 1.6 billion dollars. According to the text of the bill, this figure does not constitute the entire operating budget of the House and Senate. The bill lists quite a few other expense items. One cannot help thinking that 1.6 billion dollars ought to buy a better democratic experience for citizens. And that perhaps some portion of that 1.6 billion dollars might be well spent on something along the lines of the Democracy Network.

Better tools facilitate better government

Elected officials in general do not wish to ignore the will of the people. In fact they often go to great lengths to find out what their constituents want. Most non-elected
officials, those public servants sometimes derisively labeled “bureaucrats”, also usually have a sincere desire to serve their nation and its people. They are often working at lower wages than they might earn in the private sector. They are where they are because they believe they can make a difference.

So this book should not be construed as an attempt to discredit elected officials, or to rein in an out-of-control government. The flaws and problems in our national discourse today are not the result of malicious intentions or even neglect. They are primarily the result of having to rely on a very limited set of tools to coordinate a massive communication and collaboration process between a government and its 296 million citizens.(7)

As better tools become available, and as we learn how to use them, many of these problems will probably be alleviated. This book is an attempt to raise awareness of
better tools which are becoming available and of the ways in which we might be able to use them.

These better tools benefit not only the people but also the government. If these tools are implemented in some form similar to the Collaborative Framework, they change the game so it is no longer a matter of competing to see who can outwit or out manipulate who. It is now a game where we work together to see if we can beat time. Can we achieve what we need to achieve as a nation this year?
Can we do what we need to do now, in order to be prepared for what is coming next year, and the year after?
It is a full scale transformation from mindless competition between partisan clubs to the competition of ideas that a truly inclusive, truly collaborative planning process can provide. It is also a change in focus: from obsessing over temporary political triumphs to focusing with a sense of urgency on crafting the best possible plans for our nation’s future.

If we find a way to do this – to allow more meaningful participation of the people in a national collaborative planning process - the people are not the only benefactors.
The mission of our government benefits as well.

Notes

1. The Environmental Protection Agency’s EDOCKET provides
online access to proposed regulations that are currently open to
public review and comment. The EDOCKET web site allows
citizens to search for, select and read proposed regulations, then
provide comments via online forms. Since its founding, other
government agencies have begun participating in EDOCKET,
making their regulations available for citizen review and input.
EDOCKET can be accessed at http://www.epa.gov/edocket.
In addition, The U.S. Government provides a web site similar to
EDOCKET’s function but wider in scope at
http://www.regulations.gov. This portal site allows citizens to
search an extremely wide range of regulatory topics - from
transportation to wildlife management – for proposed
regulations they want to review. The site provides access to the
full text of the regulation document, along with instructions and
addresses for submitting comments. Depending on the agency
overseeing the regulation, comments are submitted via postal
mail, email, or in some cases via online forms.

2. The term “intelligence” has been given a negative
connotation implying a surreptitious or illegal approach to
gathering confidential information. I use the term “intelligence”
here to denote simply the knowledge and understanding needed
in order to do something well.

3. See “High Salaries For Congressional Staff” by Thomas
Rains, Newswire, December 17, 2004 (Boston University,
Washington Journalism Center). Available online at
http://www.bu.edu/washjocenter/newswire_pg/fall2004/newha
mpshire/salaries1217.htm

4. For full text of these hearings, see “Summary of Hearings on
Congressional Staff and Management” (1993) available online at the United States House of Representatives web site:
http://www.house.gov/rules/jcoc2t.htm

For a complete history of the growth of the Congressional
staffing, see “Congressional Staff and Management” available
online at the United States House of Representatives web site:
http://www.house.gov/rules/jcoc2r.htm

Another report claims that “Congress remains the most heavily
staffed legislature in the world.” See “Slashing Congressional
Spending, Part I: Congressional Pay, Pensions, Perks, and Staff”
by Dan Greenberg, May 16, 1995. Available online at
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/BG1034.cfm

5. Excerpt from House of Representatives “Summary of
Hearings on Congressional Staff and Management” (1993):
“…Representative Scott Klug testified on February 4, ‘Between
1960 and 1993, the number of lawmakers here in Congress has
remained exactly the same, but the congressional staff has
grown three times in size;’2 he continued by recommending that
Congress downsize in a manner comparable to U.S. industrial
giants. Others indicated that large staffs have resulted in the
Congress becoming too staff-reliant.”

6. The full text of H.R. 2985 can be accessed online via the
THOMAS web site (http://www.congress.gov or
http://thomas.loc.gov). THOMAS is operated by the Library of
Congress and provides online access to the Congressional
Record and the full text of bills from 1973 to the present.

7. See U.S. Census Bureau’s Population clock at
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html for
latest figures. This web site provides projected population
figures based on the Census 2000 data.

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 managing and circulating pivotal insights.
1. Insights occur randomly in a given population.
I use the term “insights” to refer to all of the following:

• Crystallized perspectives on situations,
• Foresight on emerging trends or changes that must be prepared for
• Useful ideas,
• Critical knowledge about tasks which must be done, or
• Memes which if refined and spread would have a desirable effect

2. Not every person will have the same insight at the same time, and it takes time to educate and convince the entire population about the validity of a given insight

3. Insights must be acted upon within a specific window of time - otherwise
they fail to bring their intended benefit or prevent the undesirable outcome.

4. For the population to enjoy any degree of unity, insights must be commonly understood by the population at large, before action is taken.

5. But this is typically never achieved because insights are not circulated efficiently:

5.1 Instead insights remain isolated near their point of origin, either within entities who have power, or entities who are not in any position of authority. They do not get matched up with additional insights that could correct or strengthen them, and they do not get sufficiently scrutinized by all of the population. This means that later on, the insight will have unforeseen consequences for the whole or part of the population.

5.2 Often the window for necessary action will come and go before the entire population has been convinced of the validity of the insight. Those with authority are faced with the dilemma, either act without consensus within the necessary timeframe, or wait to build consensus but risk missing the timeframe when effective action is required.

6. This inefficient circulation of insights frustrates both those in power and those not in power:

6.1 Frustration for those not in power: they feel that they have no voice, that their input is never acknowledged for followed and they can become increasingly alienated (as many US voters have).

6.2 Frustration for those in power: Continous untimely discoveries. Those who are in positions of responsibility experience this issue a different way: for them it appears that in every project there are critical pivotal insights that will remain undiscovered until the most inopportune moment - when a course correction will cost the most money or disappoint the most people.

7. Throughout history this issue has been managed through an evolving series of increasingly complex organizational structures and communication methods. The objective more or less was to implement a management structure which matched the business model and culture of the organization then populate it with individuals trained to prioritize issues and communicate up and down through a heirarchy. As any casual survey of voters or employees at the typical large corporation will tell you, this approach leaves much to be desired. The prioritization of issues was an economical necessity. No group or firm has the collective attention or finances necessary to pay attention to all issues - or even to the ones necessary to their success! Why? because resources for managing insights are consumed inefficiently because of the lack of proper tools.

8. Today’s social computing applications allow us to manage insights on a whole new level of effectiveness. We can quickly and cheaply deploy social collaboration tools: - things like wikis, collaborative documents, and networked apps like Skype, Facebook and Twitter. Unlike traditional management structures these networks do not require you to guess ahead of time about the organizational purpose, size, or the subject of its collaboration. They simply have different characteristics:

• They are organization-neutral: Facebook, Skype, Twitter, and Wikia can provide benefits for your organization no matter what size it is or what industry you’re in.
• They are scalable, and can grow as your organization grows - with virtually no thought or planning on your part.
• They have blurry borders which facilitate cross pollination as well as viral marketing. For example if you create a Facebook group, its members will likely have overlapping memberships in regional and other Facebook communities.

9. Your objective then, is to have a mesh made up of one or more of these collaboration tools and to tune this mesh until it allows the fastest most efficient circulation of insights possible. This mesh needs to have 3 types of participants:

• The members who are in positions of authority/responsibility have and use the tools
• Those members of the population who are not in positions of authority.
• The Other Sources of Pivotal Insights: be sure to find a way to engage and include business partners, service providers, stakeholders in the greater community around you, government entities responsible for the regulation of certain aspects of your operation.

So, what does this look like in real practice? Things like:

• Figuring out how/where it makes sense to deploy and manage a set of collaborative documents (docs.google.com) for the development of specific agendas or community statements/ guidance etc.
• Setting up one or more appropriately managed wikis (wetpaint.com or wikia.com) to facilitate an ongoing community information source, or even community consultation (where we constantly are consulting with them on specific questions and trying to learn more about their needs and preferences.
• Setting up a Facebook.com group and having it relate appropriately to the your closest regional network in Facebook (already exists…Facebook as one for each major city).
• Using Twitter.com to foster constant awareness among the team or community of each other and how we’re doing what we’re doing.
• Setting up an enterprise wiki (like Atlassian.com) if its appropriate for your needs and strategic goals …this would require justification of a budget etc. The rest of the items above are free.

Multiple Bottom Line Solutions are not only economic economically successful, but socially and environmentally successful as well. I recommend a study of the Joots chart as an excellent layout of 21st century ideals.

Miniature provided here, click it to see the original from their site.

The Joots notion of Multiple Bottom Line Solutions recognizes that there is more than one bottom line, more than one ultimate measurement of success. This concept was also explored at length by Paul Hawkins and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins in their seminal book Natural Capitalism. The book points out that there have been many financially successful companies who created ecological costs to society large enough to essentially cancel out their value. There is nothing inherently wrong with Capitalism, Lovins argues, the problem lies with the traditional conception of Capitalism which ignored a critical part of the equation: namely the long term economic cost of unsustainable resource utilization. Natural Capitalism leaves the motivations and transactional character of capitalism intact; it simply takes into account the full set of factors impacting the long term creation and conversion of value.

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 should be an outright embarrassment to Congress. Elected lawmakers — not high-paid lobbyists — are supposed to be best attuned to meeting the needs of their localities. And localities are biting, having seen the sorry evidence that lawmakers tend to deliver earmarks more readily for Beltway lobbyists than for hometown nobodies.

The NYT article is here.

It appears the lobbying industry is consolidating its position as the sole arbiter of input from the nation to Congress. I’ve borrowed a couple of slides from Debugging Democracy, and marked them up to illustrate:

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 response to favorable economic conditions—developments that have been part of my own forecast for some time—it has not had a big effect on my overall assessment of the economic outlook.”

“…this rise in longer-term rates does not quell my concerns about a reversal in risk perceptions, a possibility which itself could pose a downside threat to the global economy.”

“Growth in the first quarter of 2007 was notably weaker, but a good part of that was due to the temporary effects of business inventories and net exports. Based on partial monthly data, it seems likely that there was a bounce-back in the second quarter, with growth averaging a modest rate for the first half of the year as a whole. My expectation is for moderate growth during the remainder of this year and in 2008.”

“Personal consumption expenditures have been the main engine of growth in recent years…”

“Going forward, at least some of the growth in consumption can be expected to diminish for a couple of reasons. First, increases in housing wealth have slowed dramatically. Second, energy prices have moved back up this year.”

“…over the past four quarters, the level of residential investment spending declined more than 16 percent in real terms. And during that period, this sector—which represents only a little more than 5 percent of U.S. GDP—has taken a large toll on overall activity, subtracting a full percentage point from real GDP growth.”

“The bottom line for housing from a national perspective is that it has had a significant depressing effect on real GDP growth over the past year. While I wouldn’t want to bet on a sizable upswing, I also wouldn’t be surprised to see it begin to stabilize late this year or next.”

In that spirit, The Costs and Value of New Medical Technologies: Symposium Summary is a particularly informative and concise outlook on the future of American healthcare from a recent symposium sponsored by the Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity and held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on May 25, 2007.

Salient excerpts:

Health care is among the most technologically advanced sectors, and it also constitutes a large and growing share of the U.S. economy. Between 1960 and 2005, the share of health-care spending in U.S. gross domestic product more than tripled, growing from 5.2% to 16%; this growth is likely to continue, with health care conceivably expanding to encompass up to one-third of national output by the year 2050 (Jones 2005).

The exclusion of cost considerations likely has contributed to rapid increases in U.S. health-care costs. Garber therefore recommends the use of “cost-conscious coverage” policies, whereby health interventions are evaluated in terms of their relative cost effectiveness in addition to their impact on medical outcomes.

Several key points surfaced in a summary discussion:

Among the common themes identified by the presenters, it seems clear that advances in medical technology have generated large benefits relative to their costs in the United States in recent decades. However, incentive structures within the U.S. private and public systems for health-care delivery are not always ideal: market power among providers sometimes offsets consumer gains from new procedures, and cost control generally is not rewarded. Achieving greater cost control will be technically and politically challenging because it is likely to entail some degree of rationing in the supply of health-care services, but explicitly making such trade-offs may be necessary to ensure the spread of beneficial medical technologies to the widest possible population.

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, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States).

I’ll start with the US and then highlight notable developments in other countries (emphasis mine in all quotes):

United States

“While the United States came in third
overall in our rankings, it lost some ground
to both Canada and Singapore, which
both ranked several places higher than
the United States in the citizen voice
component of our rankings.”

“Last year, we commented that although
the US eGovernment program had been
very successful, the government needed
to evaluate whether its current service
agenda would be adequate for building
the trust with citizens in the future.
We believe that advice still stands today.
The United States has a very implementation focused
agenda, and this is undeniably
one of its strengths. The government makes
things happen. The piece that still needs
further development, however, is incorporating
the citizens’ voice.“

On a different note, further in the review of US e-Gov performance:

“An interesting example of the type
of collaboration the United States hopes
to foster comes from the increasing
interest and use of “wikis.””

The report goes on to mention NIH’s experimentation with a closed wiki (only registered members may participate), and NASA’s use of a public wiki to manage the source code and ongoing development of World Wind, a satellite viewing software.

Here are some of the innovative things that are happening in other countries:

Canada

“Canada has developed standing panels of citizens that
the government can tap at any point to get
direct and detailed feedback about service
plans and performance. The government
uses this capability as a near-instant focus
group. More important, policy-advisors
distribute transcripts of the actual dialogue
with citizens to decision makers along with
summaries and conclusions. In this way,
government leaders “hear” the true voice
of the citizen for themselves and factor it
into their decisions.”

Denmark

“Government officials
conducted what they called “Future
Seminars,” in which members of the public
sector and others brainstormed big ideas
about the citizens of 2012 and about how
to translate their likely expectations into an
implementable plan. They then took their
forward look at what the citizen outcomes
needed to be in 2012 and determined
what service development steps could be
undertaken with the capabilities of 2008.”

Norway

“We have eDemocracy issues on the agenda
and there are systems already in place
for citizens to be able to contribute to this
kind of debate. But I think such debates
will mostly be conducted at a local level,
because the citizens, as far as I can observe—
and in Norway maybe particularly—are
mostly concerned about local issues in the
municipalities, and the issues concerning
their nearest environment,” explains
Katarina de Brisis, Senior Advisor for the
Department of IT Policy in the Norwegian
Ministry of Government Administration
and Reform.”

Singapore

“While Singapore exhibits strength in
multichannel integration, its clear intent
is to continue to push its tech-savvy
citizens toward efficient online channels,
particularly mobile channels. Singapore
has one of the world’s highest mobile
penetration rates; currently citizens and
businesses have mobile access to
approximately 150 government services,
with mGovernment becoming an
increasingly important delivery channel.
The government aims to have at least
300 mGovernment services available
by 2008. In addition, in July of 2006, the
government also introduced a common
SMS number 74688 (SGOVT) and format
for new SMS-based government mobile
services, to simplify use for customers.
Future service channel options may include
voice recognition and interactive TV—
both of which the government has recently
piloted.”

The report summary lays out a path that is partly descriptive and (from my read of the text, partly prescriptive):

“Taken together, our four key findings
paint a dramatic new picture and lay out
a new direction for customer service in
government. National governments will
be using sophisticated tools and analysis
to develop a deep and nuanced understanding
of the wants and needs of their
citizens—as individuals, in families and
in communities. They will be putting solid
infrastructures in place to implement
excellent service delivery and transforming
their workforces into smaller organizations
of highly skilled service entrepreneurs.
Then they will contribute their resources
and their effort, along with those of other
members of the social ecosystem, to drive
the outcomes their citizens demand.”

e-Government efforts thus far focus overwhelmingly on using technology and leading business practices to improve the delivery of government services. The other side of e-Government, the empowerment and engagement of citizens has not recieved the same focus or energy, in part due to lack of clarity as to how to do that. This is changing, as the emerging phenomenon of social media/web 2.0 begins to hint at the kind of citizen engagement and direct participation that is possible.