Time of weGOV is approaching

I was at Personal Democracy Forum, Europe conference last month.

There are three areas of work I can disseminate: 1) open data/transparency 2) deliberation, and 3) smart public applications.

Deliberation effort is essentially our path to direct governance. Deliberation can’t happen healthily without transparency. Hence the importance of the first. What is thrilling is that in one year’s time, there is much more belief and hype (is this a bad word?) around online direct deliberation becoming a tangible alternative to representative governance.

PDF organizers seem to be at the forefront of initiatives in all three areas, and themselves talking much more highly about “WeGov”. WeGov, they say, is not the (1-2 year) old aspiration where there is the politician at the top. WeGov is one where we level off. Politicians and us, citizens. Let’s say, merely, where politicians are popular bloggers of some sort.

They emphasized the growth and demand for deliberation tools; counting IdeaScale, Spigit, GoogleModerator, YahooAnswers, Microsofts Townhall, ChallengePost. One of them also mentioned he’s buying shares at ChallengePost. Then other sites like Localocracy were mentioned – more tailored and genuinely wanting to make public policy transparent and open.

Representatives from Cisco, IBM, etc also spoke, but they made me confirm the new frontiers in public engagement will come from new dynamic players unbound by existing relations and pace of change.