Ideas for a betterbetterbetterbetter place:

e-participation toolsSUPPORTING

decision making process

at

Alessandro Plaisant

Mario M

arcello

Verona

at

the local level

Alessandro Plaisant

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture - University of Cagliari

10-12 May 2012

Increasing number of administrations tries to promote

interaction processes at all levels of government

Work in progress on a series of methods and tools to

encourage participation and pursuing consensus – identify

consistent policy choices for PA

Task:

- test the usefulness and opportunities coming from a mix

of e-participation and “proactive” decision support tools and

- propose an interactive and participatory policy-making

process.

New paradigm of participation: from Crowdsourcing to Open Gov

From mass media of passive use, internet has become a place of

production of content: people focuses on interaction and active production

of content, including co-production (Shirky, 2008)

The so-called crowd-sourcing: participation of crowds to the

achievement of common goals through internet.

Within this paradigm:

The model of Open Gov introduced by Obama (2009) in US.

Dual pupose to use internet:

1. To allow transparency (access – analyse – monitor data relating to the

work of PA);

2. To foster participation in public life

The model of Open Gov introduced by Obama (2009) in US.

Activate the “collective intelligence” capable of identifying problems and

solutions in complex choices

� a number of e-participation tools (for our purpose 2 families)

1. Tools involved on the conventional aspects of a PA

- Fixmystreet (MySociety, UK);

2. Tools acting on the strategic processes, on the stage of PM2. Tools acting on the strategic processes, on the stage of PM

- Ideastorm, UserVoice, Ideascale (ideas platforms);

- Change by Us NYC – who is listening?

- Comment Neelie (consultative instrument for co-drafting and

suggesting changes)

The case study of "Ideario per Cagliari”

Starting point:

the successful experience of the “ideario per Cagliari”, a crowd-

sourcing tool that collected more than 500 ideas in few months for the

strategic development of the city of Cagliari

Premise:

In Spring 2011 Italian Majoral elections showed an unusual mass In Spring 2011 Italian Majoral elections showed an unusual mass

participation.

Citizens of Naples, Milan and Cagliari chose candidates representing

discontinuities.

“Ideario per Cagliari” was born in the aftermath of the election of Massimo

Zedda as the new Major of the city and the very strong participation of

citizens that followed.

http://oratoccaanoi.ideascale.comhttp://oratoccaanoi.ideascale.com

(“Now it’s up to us”)

June 2011 IDEAS REGISTERED

USERS

FB

“likes”

COMMENTS

/ VOTES

36 hours

later

50 150 320

1° month 400 1.000

(8% pop)

today 575 1.200 > 1.500 > 3.000

13.000

Enormous amount of ill-defined info, ideas, suggestions

How do we represent knowledge?

DS tool for representing and analyse knowledge and highlighting key issues:

cognitive mapping and Decision Explorer - Sustainable mobility and public

transport

Cluster Analysis

Central Analysis Domain Analysis

“Urban farming” (main topic: “environment”; 23 comments; rel. ranking: 183)

Conclusions

E-participation is extremely useful since it provides an

administration with a simple, immediate and free use of a pool free use of a pool free use of a pool free use of a pool of ideas and proposalsof ideas and proposalsof ideas and proposalsof ideas and proposals previously unimaginable

On the other hand, a tool for the structuration of the strategic

process in basic elements, goals and actions, is potentially useful

for better organizational planning: representation of ideas, clustering in strategic options, and generation of sets of clustering in strategic options, and generation of sets of

requirements on specific themes

They may act as input for further discussion (focus group) and successful implementation of community development projects

The outcome of the process can be translated into acts acts acts acts and and and and formal agreementsformal agreementsformal agreementsformal agreements, involving institutions and citizens.