Showing posts with label BOWEGOV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BOWEGOV. Show all posts

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Community Involvement

So I'm preparing for my interview with ZenBiz radio. I was approached by Bruce Stewart because of my activity in using social media in community based initiatives. I believe society is just getting going with using the internet as the platform for citizen led electronic government initiatives. There is a lot going on in this space right now, and the "coronation" of President Obama has really legitimized citizens being able to ask for openness and transparency (municipal, regional and national) and for this information to be available as an API via the internet. Bruce asked that I have a quiet space and a landline for the interview. He also let me know I should expect questions in four themes. This post is my preparation for this interview.

1) Who am I, my relevant background

I would say the biggest impact upon why I am becoming increasingly involved with citizen based initiatives is a value given to me by my parents. Its the value of leaving somewhere in a better state than when you arrived. In general, I just don't see the "collective" we doing that. I believe if we increase citizen participation in caring for our neighborhoods and localizing our needs then we will be much more sustainable. I also believe government transparency will assist in this considerably.
I also believe my technology and educator background combined with my work with Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) have also influenced me. I think my work with ICT4D has influenced me in how I think the "collective" we (in the developed world) expect to much. To be blunt I think in the west we have become lazy and are overly entitled. Its time we collectively stopped consuming so much and started being more grateful for what we have and put back.
Lastly, I believe this YouTube presentation by Hans Rosling really taught me the importance of access to data and the social change it can assist.





I am involved with citizen based electronic government because I believe;


  1. Citizen based initiatives are more sustainable

  2. The developed world needs to give more back (or take much, much less)

  3. Government transparency will be created from the grassroots
2) What I am doing regarding e-Gov't on Bowen Island (BOWEGOV)

With these beliefs what am I doing about it? When I reflect, I'm doing a fair amount. I continue as a contributor and council member for WikiEducator, and this experience has taught me a lot about self-organization. I am continually assisting organizations to be successful with social media, organizational learning and technology architecture. I have brought my understanding of all these things together by initiating the use of BOWEGOV as a tag / hashtag to tie everyone's work together. As with any community there are a lot of differences among the different people, groups, neighborhoods, etc. What else would you expect!?! I felt if we chose a social media (web2.0) approach that was technology agnostic and was platform independent it would have greater appeal. So with tagging people can use the client side tools (Mac, PC, Nokia, iPhone, Browser, Linux, Etc, Etc.) they want without the whole thing getting tied to a single technology platform (Wiki, Blog, Drupal, WordPress, MediaWiki, Google, Etc, Etc.). After some discussion with others we came up with the idea that the internet is the platform. So we're not tied to any single platform and as the internet evolves, innovates and improves so do we.

3) Reaction from the powers that be

The short answer, there has been no reaction. So far this initiative is only starting. We have contacted a couple of council members and had social conversations with the mayor about BOWEGOV tagging. Its a small town of 4000 so these conversations happen. I think it is way too early to expect any traction. The idea of using social media for government really got started around the same time as Obama became a democratic candidate Though their is earlier evidence of this, it really didn't get traction/acceptance till Obama. And the conceptual learning curve is steep for people indoctrinated into traditional forms of governing. I have sent an email to our municipal council (see related post). I think this email will be most useful to refer back to in a Kolb kind of a way. I believe the learning has started... when it gets traction is the unknown.

Recently I have been seeking ways to coordinate citizen based approaches in preparation to meeting with the powers that be. I think this needs to be a good experience in a more coordinated way. In my seeking I have found the visible government website. I really like how they describe themselves;
VisibleGovernment.ca is a non-partisan non-profit dedicated to promoting the planning, funding, and implementation of online tools for government transparency in Canada.
The visible government group has also recently hosted change camps to get local groups to start working toward this initiative. There will be a change camp in Vancouver on 28 March 2009. I believe all this work in creating transparency to government will have an impact. Even upon our local municipal government(s).


4) Citizenship involvement

On bowen Island we are fortunate in that we have a number of citizens active and involved in the community. And a lot of the efforts are toward influencing local politics (though this could be for better or worse). I believe it is a part of living in a smaller community. I do see it increasingly important that citizens start doing more for their neighborhoods. I believe that our current expectations for what our governments will provide is unsustainable. I believe citizens need to let go of government even sustaining the current levels of service. Services are going to become increasingly expensive and the tax dollars aren't there to increase service. What this means is that citizens have to become more active at a neighborhood level to offset the need for services.
On Bowen Island we have had a number of people starting using Web 2.0 technologies to gather and communicate information. Here are a few;
I do believe all these technologies are useful, but I think the face to face activities of getting neighbors together are more productive. I think the electronic tools will compliment the physical neighborhood activities. As these Web 2.0 tools mature they will provide increasing abilities to gather data and provide transparancy. This transparency will go both ways it will allow citizens to see into the depths of how government decisions are being implemented (tax dollars spent), and it will provide community information sources to politicians as well as citizens. It is hoped that this increase in information sharing (or transparency) will enable citizens to make better decisions at a personal and neighborhood level as well as assist politicians make better decisions for their constituents.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Dear Bowen Island Council

A number of Bowen Island citizens with interest in social media are beginning to put together online citizen led approaches toward increasing citizen participation in our neighborhoods and community. The belief behind this activity is that if citizen participation increases from a grassroots level more will get done and people will feel increased responsibility and connection to their neighborhoods and community. It is also believed that citizen based neighborhood activities are a step toward lessening our environmental impact (the 100 mile diet could be considered and example, http://100milediet.org). On bowen island there have already been activities where neighbors have taken the time and energy to complete projects for the good of their neighborhood. I can see these neighborhood activities increasing and current technology trends provide online tools to assist.

All the changes occurring with politics, social media and transparency creates unprecedented opportunities for communication and openness. I believe their is an opportunity for the Bowen Island Municipality to be an exemplar in using technology to bring openness to municipal government. A project is forming to support this kind of initiative, see visible government; http://visiblegovernment.ca/index.php

A simple example of how this could work, could be for Bob (and or other council members) give brief online conferences of the provincial and federal rules and policies for running a municipal gov't. I am sure their are many simple and important municipal administrative topics that could occupy a 15 - 30 learning experience for the citizenship of Bowen Island. Increasing citizens knowledge in such matters could help in understanding how tax dollars are spent, how BIM adminsitrative processes work, public works function, etc... DimDim (http://www.dimdim.com) is a free social media service that could be used for such an activity.

There is already a building knowledge base using social media. This is being facilitated with the use of tagging, in particular the BOWEGOV tag. If you were to click the following links you would see how this tagging approach is connecting knowledge and allowing people to engage in ways they feel comfortable.

1) A search on Google (a shared reference to information related to bowen e-government); http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=bowegov
2) Delicious tagging (the beginning of a taxonomy for electronic government); http://delicious.com/tag/bowegov
3) Twitter (a number of brief conversations about bowen e-government and related issues); http://search.twitter.com/search?q=BOWEGOV

Where all this social media and transparency will go in relation to small municipalities is still to be seen, as it is still being "invented". I look forward to your support in building greater transparency and increasing citizen participation in local gov't. If you would like to discuss any of these topics further. Please do not hesitate to contact me,
peter@rawsthorne.org
or any of the others connected to these activities.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Current events and BOWEGOV

I have recently been involved in a number of discussions about citizen led and electronic government. In one of these engagements I wrote the following reply to an email. I feel it was worthy of a blog post.

It is hard for me to disagree with most of what you say here. So I wont. I will tell you my story and what I am doing about community issues. Over the last few years my beliefs regarding centralized government have changed. I see Gov't as more concerned with getting re-elected and servicing special interests. They no longer serve the basic needs of citizenship. And with the environmental and economic realities we are all faced with we need to start living with less and think about becoming small, self sufficient communities (Neighborhoods). I also see most people more concerned about what they can get out of a system instead instead of what they can put into it. I believe history will look at the human species at the end of the 20th century at its most selfish and overly entitled. I believe the level of comfort we in the west have become used to is no longer sustainable. This dissonance of what we expect with what we can afford will cause infrastructures to increasingly fail. Our society can no longer afford garbage collection and street clearing like we have been used to... I believe this is just the reality of our time. I also believe there is a huge upside for people at all levels (mental, emotional, financial, spiritual...) to be more involved at a grassroots level with their neighborhood. In a way its all about love.

So what am I doing about it?
I try to put into the system more than I take out. This is difficult for it seems to go against the status quo. If something needs to be done i try to do it myself and if people show up to help, that is good. I try to be transparent with what i do by publishing it to the internet as public record and to attract interest. This is what I did with snow clearing in our cul-de-sac. I just started doing it, slowly I was making progress. Others joined in... eventually the municipality also helped. I am learning as much as I can about e-Gov't and self-sustaining communities. I have engaged the internet and others from Bowen who also use the internet to encourage self-sustaining activities and to look for ways the support each other in getting things done. I tag everything related to this with the BOWEGOV tag. This provides a way to begin building a body of knowledge. I choose tagging because it does not force people to use any single platform (the bowen forum is a platform) it gives people the freedom to choose how they engage and if they want their activities to become a part of the collective online Bowen Island intelligence, all they have to do is tag it with BOWEGOV. What comes of this tagging approach, i don't know... I do know it is an ongoing longterm project and i have faith positive results will build. I believe it is a positive step in the right direction. Only time will tell.

Thanks for engaging me.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Tagging for Bowen Island e-Government

So my friend John and I have been discussing the idea of using the social media to engage our community about local government issues or even being subversive and getting community projects done without engaging the local government (now that would be progress, grassroots community building, hands on, fully accountable, by the community, oops I'm digressing). So we talked about platform, what platform should we use to facilitate e-Government? Should we use a wiki? some blogs? set up a space using ning or something? None, of these seemed appealing to me cause they are all a barrier to entry. How do we get people to engage in e-Government and leave them alone to use whatever tool(s) they wanted... If we did this how would we bring the community together... Ahhh, then it struck me lets get started with simple tagging. And not prescribe a platform, or in other words the internet is the platform.

So to get started I'm going to propose two tags and use them as you will, the two tags are; BOWEGOV and #BOWEGOV. So how do you use these tags?
  1. When ever you write something in a wiki, blog, social space like flickr, facebook, etc. embed the BOWEGOV tag into the text, at the bottom of the content or in the associated tagging field.
  2. Whenever you find something on the web related, or of interest, to Bowen Island Community Government use delicious to tag it. remember to use the BOWEGOV tag.
  3. And if you use twitter whenever you tweet something about Bowen Island Community Government use the #BOWEGOV hashtag.
This is all you need to remember for now. I will be created some learning resources (OER) for how all this fits together and how it is ONE of our first steps toward our online Bowen Island Community Government