A few weeks ago the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office opened an online forum where citizens can contribute their thoughts on the government’s foreign policy priorities. Several hundred comments have been posted to date.
Such forums have become more numerous as governments have slowly awakened to the opportunities that the Internet provides to exercise the democratic […]

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Since posting my thoughts on YouTube’s activities around the presidential candidates race, I’ve been in conversation with Stacy Becker who runs the Minnesota Anniversary Project (MAP150), a forum for reinventing policy-making by reconnecting the vision, values and voices of Minnesotans with policy-making on the issues that matter most to their future.
Like me, Becker worries that […]

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Twentieth-century political communication has been described as a ‘oneway conversation.’ Instead of inclusive deliberation — the substantive element of democracy — professionally produced and polished declarations of policy were released for public consumption via mass media. For most people political debate was perceived as something to watch - or switch off.
YouTube is trying to change […]

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Although Wikinomics was mostly about business, Don and I have always felt that the wikinomics era holds the promise and the inevitability of new models for delivering the functions of government. Our conversations with public sector leaders over the past few months have really reinforced this view. Just as new waves of innovation are washing […]

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Another Wikinomics reader Stacy Becker wrote in to alert us to a Minnesota-based citizen’s project called Map150 that is working to reinvigorate local democracy. Becker rightly argues that “citizens have tons of really important information that never finds its way into expert-driven policy-making processes.” “This information is critical,” she says, “if we are to solve […]

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In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt lambasted government leaders around the world for being slow to understand and embrace the potential of new communications technologies. While companies in the private sector, many non-profit organizations, and an increasingly large proportion of the global citizenry steam ahead, government institutions are being […]

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