When we speak about Open Government, it is easy to getting lost in the lingo of names and concepts and not being able to bring things down to Earth. In the past I draw a simplified scheme for Open Government. Now I want to highlight some practical applications of that scheme.
The table below presents, on the one hand, the three layers of Open Government:
- Transparency: let people know.
- Participation: let people speak.
- Collaboration: let people do.
On the other hand, it lists the five stages of public decision-making (there are other models with more or less stages, of course):
- Diagnosis: what is going on, what do we need, what do we want.
- Deliberation: what are the impacts, what are the options.
- Negotiation: what are our preferences.
- Vote: what is our decision.
- Assessment: which were the results.
By crossing these two axes, I suggest some lines of action, some specific projects that can be put into practice. This is of course not an exhaustive list, and many projects can be placed in more than just one cell. It is, as I said, just a showcase of where to begin with.
| Layer/Stage | Diagnosis | Deliberation | Negotiation | Vote | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transparency | Politician/officer scoreboard | Technical reports | Open agendas | Legislative footprint | Open budgetting |
| Participation | Blogs and citizen social networking sites | Officers’ and projects’ blogs | Policy technical reports | Citizen consultations | Data visualization |
| Collaboration | Green books | Facilitation of citizen deliberation | Groups of interest | PSPP | Citizen scoreboard |
Table 1. An open government showcase.
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