U.S. Moving to Crowd-Source Policymaking, Openness Chief Says
The head of open-government efforts in the Obama administration acknowledged that it hasn’t always succeeded in making known how it’s transforming policymaking through online technology. In little more than a year, the federal government has made strides toward catching up with private institutions in using social networking and other advanced technologies, said Beth Noveck, deputy federal chief technology officer. Viral excitement about developing and using digital tools is sweeping agencies, and a new “culture of participation” is being cultivated, she said at a San Francisco forum of the Long Now Foundation, which promotes very long-term thinking about social issues.
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Remaking government this way is pivotal to dealing with a surge in “rightwing populism,” such as the Tea Party movement and European anti-immigrant parties, Noveck said. Those developments are a product of a vicious circle of centralized decision-making and alienation of the population, she said. “Faith in government institutions is at an all-time low, and it’s understandable,” Noveck said. Using digital technology to reshape government can help ensure “peaceful evolution” and prevents “bloody revolution,” she said.
The administration is moving beyond openness in government action, and even past encouraging public participation online, into policymaking that feeds knowledge dispersed through the population directly into agencies’ lawful processes, Noveck said. The idea is to “marry up the work of the crowd with the work of government institutions,” she said. It’s based on the principle that “when we share our diverse expertise, we are stronger than when we work alone” in making policy suggestions and decisions, Noveck said.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy held an online forum to draw public suggestions for setting rules on agencies’ use of Web cookies and is holding a similar one on public access to government-funded research, Noveck said. All federal agencies have webpages soliciting suggestions for how they should run openly, she said. In the first 25 days, 1,200 ideas were posted using a citizen-engagement tool, “but we need more,” Noveck said. “We haven’t done a good enough job” making the opportunity known, she said.
The U.S. Army is writing its field manuals using Wikimedia technology, Noveck said. Hundreds of soldiers have gotten involved, she said. “The people who actually know are helping” make the decisions, Noveck said. The Defense Department is on the front lines of the government’s new-technology efforts, she said.
The model for crowd-sourced policymaking is the Peer to Patent project that Noveck started as a professor at New York Law School, she said. The project allowed experts to step forward and help overwhelmed patent examiners evaluate the validity of applications in a huge backlog, Noveck said. The patent office is officially adopting the process to change the way it works, she said.
"It’s not a purely wikified process,” which may convey the picture of “a free-for-all,” Noveck said. Crowd-sourced policymaking as it’s being embraced differs from traditional direct democracy by building in features of deliberative democracy needed to handle “complex political decision-making,” she said. The aim is “a kind of focused collaboration, an organized collaboration.”