Andrés: SF politics are nasty, esp involving homelessness. Suggests operating independently, rather than trying to change the info. structure of gov't directly.
Steven: sighted versions, endorsed versions of wiki articles.
Free/low cost publishing of wikis.
David: Gov't pages – people from the outside come in and mess with it. Sol'n: make a gov't employee one of the admins. Ability to protect certain pages is key. (Cited versions may be a more sophisticated approach to this.)
Nicole: Could this expand to other cities? David: Absolutely! Any community with a shared manual that evolves could benefit from this. They have blogs, too. Meeting calendar.
Andrés: complement with an invite-only wiki that is not visible to the public?
Pete: Wikis in creating consensus in the public at large. Creating legislations, rather than simple yes/no on preexisting law. Direct democracy, showing the consensus and participation by the public to legislators.
Steven: New Zealand police code wiki.
David: For effectiveness, government needs to understanding wiki and use it themselves (internally).
The level of bureaucracy, hiring and contracting is a big barrier. Developing relationships with the people to participate and document government work. Be willing to introduce the technology and tools to government workers.
Pete: using wiki community to advocate for making State works in the public domain, esp. Oregon, like the federal gov. Companies have been given cease and desist for republishing Oregon law. Andrés: even fed copyrights the way you cite the laws and the format, even if content is PD.
Pete: working on public campaign finance in PDX, dealing with public records. Andrés: Palo Alto email is all public record, CA open meetings laws. Email has issues in terms of private deliberation.
David: working with SF city gov to participate and involve gov. leaders. Changes in appointed positions can make previous agreements for gov participation to falter. Andreas: Portland is innovative in encouraging public participation. They start with public insight before departmental work begins, prelim public meetings. Rather than trying to push the city in to use, work with specific interested and willing individuals to develop interest beforehand. David: there is a blockage when it comes to deciding internet participation.
Andrés: Use the fact that it's not a
CMS in advocacy. You don't have to go to training, get approval, etc.
David: What can we publish for the benefit of other communities? A check-list of what to do before seeking gov't buy-in?
A manual is a good starting-point; distributed updating is already going on, but not synchronized.
Talk to all levels of organization: line staff, middle-management, then leadership.
Importance of leadership from the top – ?
Find a vital resource that doesn't exist yet; create the killer app.
Start from the outside as a non-profit, then offer to gov't once there are demonstratable benefits. (Bar ass'n, community board were useful for SFhomeless.net.)
Figure out stakeholders or audience is
Get feedback from them about what works and what doesn't.
Gov't concerns: litigation/liability, sunshine laws, often adding another layer without getting rid of the old index card system.
Wiki is very flexible; you don't have to build new technology to meet needs.
Don't overwhelm gov't people with all the features you could possibly implement; tie to their needs, as in, how it will reduce staff work.
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