[open-government] Google's Watson Strong: PB+D > C - The Three Levers of Civic Engagement - PDF Article and Interview

Thu Jun 12 19:32:00 UTC 2014

Check out the more or less written version of Anthea Watson Strong's
speech at the Personal Democracy Forum:

     http://bit.ly/3leverscivic

All the slides:

     http://bit.ly/3leverscivicslides

And note this interview with TechPresident:

    http://bit.ly/3leversinterview

>From her slide:

PB+D > C

P = Probability that the user will impact the outcome of a civic decision
B = Benefit of a changed outcome to the user
D = Sense of civic duty the user gets from an action
C = Cost of civic action

We had a bit of a Twitter exchange where I embellished the formula:

>From http://twitter.com/democracy

My add. B = b1 (Benefit of civic info) + b2 (ben .. outcome) + b3 (ben
... of civic belonging)

The way "D" with "sense of duty" it also means "civic agency" feeling
civic awesomeness

C = If you go beyond time, effort, need to add negs. of exposure to
incivility, partisan jerks

Finally, if P is narrowly civic "decisions" then u lost how 99% of ppl
act online btwn elections

City pol frame ~1% for http://e-democracy.org/if  - nhood "community
life" 30%! http://bit.ly/2xparticipation

Now some key bits from her interview:

"From a user’s perspective, what do they need? Too often I’ve seen
these tools being presented that are really designed for the way that
we wish people would behave rather then the way they are actually
behaving."

"When you’re primarily foundation based, you have an incentive to tell
good stories about what you’re doing, and not necessarily be honest
with yourself about the mistakes you’re making."

"One: when we’re funding civic prototypes we need to be funding ones
that are designed well, and we need to feel confident that they’re
reflecting the best understanding we have as an ecosystem of what the
next step is."

"Number two: in order to know which products we should be investing
in, we’re going to need better research."

Clift Comment:

I'll repeat my admonition to the civic tech/open gov world - reach
people where they are online, do "civics" where it engages a critical
mass of everyday and diverse people.

Our politically framed online town halls interest 1% of households -
the political/activist class. Now at the neighborhood level, some of
our online public spaces reach ~30% of households on a repeat daily or
weekly basis. Neighborhoods (areas with ~10,000 in population) connect
people in the "common" interest with community life exchange and
within that context all the civic engagement/open gov stuff will
actually reach people! The key factor with public online spaces (NOT
resident-only gated communities designed to attract homeowners
essentially) is that are very local - an elected official can say
"those are my voters" and civic servants serving local areas can "see"
and engage the public the serve. Agenda-setting is support which is an
absolutely necessary step before online engagement can influence
decision-making in a real way.

This kind of local connecting worked on YahooGroups, now Facebook
Groups, and is being leveraged for more far more restrictive models
like NextDoor ... and I argue it could be the engine for mass civic
tech driven participation more widely with greater public benefit.
(Whether part of our http://beneighbors.org network or not.)

So, as Anthea challenges us, engage people in the "way they are
actually behaving" and not "design for the way we wish people would
really behave." My admitted spin building on that is - civic tech/open
gov needs an open source, democratically conceived loss leader with
neighbors online upon which you can test and experiment to more
cost-effectively see what everyday people will actually use in terms
of civic tech apps. Tool after tool with no audience isn't getting it
done.

More: http://e-democracy.org/learn  http://e-democracy.org/inclusion

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
  Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072
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