Today I am continuing on with my mining of ideas from Ms. Beth Simone Noveck’s book Wiki Government and doing some thinking around how technology could help Edmonton Public Schools in its commitment to public engagement – with the end result of making better decisions as mentioned in the last post. (By the way, a Public Engagement policy has passed first reading and will be back for more discussion on September 14. You can see the policy and introductory report as it stands now at http://www.epsb.ca/board/june15_10/item05.pdf Your thoughts on this policy are welcomed before the final vote on September 14. )
On page 139, Ms. Noveck quotes Dan Esty: “The promise of cyberdemocracy with a fully informed and engaged populace could give way to spam, misinformation and dialogue among the uninformed that diminishes thoughtful deliberation.” This is a good caution. Sometimes solutions to black and white issues are presented; more often than not I have often found the issues are “gray.” So how can we ensure that everyone is speaking about the issues from an informed perspective?
The answer may lie in Ms. Noveck’s suggested ideas around a “policy wiki.” Creating policy (or confirming existing policy) is one of the Board’s main tasks. She envisions describing the goal of the policy under development, and then breaking down all the things that have to be done to create good policy into specific tasks that small groups could elect to undertake. Based on their experience and background, people would self-select as to which tasks they want to take on. Sample specific tasks include
–Drafting and posting background research materials relevant to “the decision”
–Inviting experts and other participants to join an advisory network to vet the proposed standards
–Inviting people who want to comment on drafts of the policy
–Inviting people who want to create a visual interpretation of the policy draft
–Inviting those who want to look out for inaccuracies
–Inviting grassroots participation in reviewing and looking at the draft
She comments (p. 153): “By splitting the overall task into many smaller fact-gathering and decision-making exercises for members of a network while preserving the authority and oversight of government officials, the software platform can make it significantly hard for a small group of people to control and corrupt the process. It can also facilitate collaboration …by representing the ‘physics’ of the process on the computer screen – that is, by showing people the roles and tasks they have taken on as part of the ‘x’ drafting committee and the rules of engagement.”
Would experimenting with this sort of policy development process be a good idea for Edmonton Public Schools? Currently the public is invited to partipate by commenting on a draft of the policy that has been developed under the auspices of the Board’s Planning and Policy Committee. People can sign up to be notified of any new policy at http://www.epsb.ca/policy/policyDevReview.shtml and then provide their comments through a survey mechanism. Perhaps this is sufficient? What do you think?
