COUNTDOWN…Making Engagement Work ‘The Experiment’ at New York University Begins Tomorrow

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The Experiment
Ready set go…tomorrow the Governance Lab is holding its Making Engagement Work ‘Experiment’, a two day event where participants work together to identify and overcome the impediments that limit citizen engagement and prevent more open and agile institutions. GovLab Experiment is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and housed at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
GovLab Experiment is designed to convene researchers and practitioners in the nascent field of institutional innovation. Two hundred thinkers and doers are coming from all over the globe (including from Kansas – see picture) to work with government change agents, including the Minister of Youth and ICT of Rwanda, the Director of the Office of Analytics of New York City, and the head of Innovation for Britain’s National Health Service, to rapidly prototype solutions to challenging issues, including how government data can be made more valuable for the public and how problems and questions can be defined and put forth in a way that meaningfully engages citizens.

If Only We Knew…..Design Charrettes
The Making Engagement Work ‘Experiment’ begins on Thursday April 18^th with six Design Charrettes. We will collaborate in workshops with leaders who are willing and able to implement innovations that engage citizens in the process of governance. There will be designers and coders in every session rapidly prototyping new ideas:
The goal is to come away with concrete designs for new projects, platforms and processes that can:

1. model the future of engaged governance and participatory democracy to which we aspire;  and
2. lead to real world initiatives that allow us to test and evolve what works in practice.

Ultimately, we want to deepen our understanding of how we can make engagement work by focussing on providing concrete solutions to six challenges:
1)      Identifying Experts – If only we knew…how to find the people who know the most about a topic. Change Agent: Hon. Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister of Youth and ICT, Rwanda  Goal: To design a platform for identifying and sourcing experts to aid government institutions in solving public problems.
2)      Visualizing Data – If only we knew…how to produce data visualizations that motivate citizens to solve problems. Change Agent: Tim Kelsey, National Director for Patients and Information in the National Health Service, UK National Health Service. Goal: To brainstorm tools and strategies for visually presenting data that will increase the levels, and improve the quality, of public participation in problem-solving.
3)      Asking the Right Question – If only we knew… how to define problems and ask questions to engage meaningfully with citizens. Change Agent: David Hume, Executive Director of Citizen Engagement, Province of British Columbia, Canada. Goal: To design ways for defining problems that will encourage citizens to share their knowledge and expertise towards defining and solving public problems.
4)      Making Voices Heard – If only we knew…how to elicit what people in communities care about the most. Change Agent: Mark Headd, Chief Data Officer, Philadelphia. Goal: To design tools and methods by which citizens can quickly identify problems that they care about and elicit meaningful responses from policy-makers to address these issues.
5)      Building We, The City – If only we knew…how to create smarter cities from the bottom up. Change Agent: Michael P. Flowers, Analytics Director, Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, New York City. Goal: To create a platform and action plan to engage citizens as active participants in making their own cities “smarter.”
6)      Opening Data and Accelerating Growth – If only we knew . . . how to make government data more accessible and valuable for businesses and the public. Change Agent: Kris Kobach, Secretary of State, Kansas. Goal: To develop specific ideas for making government data more useful and accessible.
Research and Training Labs
The Design Charrettes inform five ‘labs’ on Friday the 19th, where we focus on:

• Developing an interdisciplinary research agenda
• Creating a  training agenda to build the mindset and skillset for the next generation of problem solvers across universities and disciplines.

Two premises drive the design of the “Labs.”
A lack of understanding of what works and the absence of people that can apply new participatory techniques holds back the promise and potential of collaborative governance; and
Governance is being transformed by advances in technology and science, and these innovations can improve how we conduct research and train future leaders.
Among the Lab topics we explore are:

• The Map Is Not the Territory. This Lab focuses on defining the field to be covered by a possible MacArthur Research Network.  How can we map and categorize innovations in how we govern leveraging advances in sciences and technology? As to develop a research agenda, how can we define the universe of inquiry? For example,  what are the dimensions that define open government? What are the hypotheses and assumptions that need to be tested? What are its intrinsic categories and why does it matter to have a map? What are the various types of peer networks and how do they differ?

• Are We There Yet? And How Will We Know?  This Lab focuses on articulating the metrics and methods by which we can measure the impact of innovations in governance on real people’s lives. We also want to explore how new technology and more open and collaborative practices are changing how we do evaluation. For example, what is success? What is the state of evidence and how should we think about metrics? What’s the role of experimentation and big data in seeking what works?

• Wanted: A New Generation of Problem Solvers. This Lab focuses on identifying the mindset and skillset, across a variety of disciplines, that can help to inspire and catalyze effective leaders of tomorrow. For example, how important is design-thinking or behavioral economics for improving the actions and decisions of policy makers? what are the ideal skills and intellectual capacities needed for a new generation of problem solvers?

• If Only We Knew… This Lab focuses on articulating crucial, interdisciplinary research questions for a possible Research Network. We are looking for priority questions that both advance our fundamental understanding and, at the same time, are beneficial to society (“Pasteur’s Quadrant.”)  Answers will be co-posted to http://thegovlab.org/ifonlyweknew  For example, what are the most important research questions that, if answered, would radically transform our understanding?

• Walk the Talk. This Lab focuses on how we can not only work towards the adoption of collaborative and data-driven tools for governance, but also apply these new methods to our own research and training agendas. In this session we will, for instance, discuss how we can leverage advances in technology to streamline collaboration and engagement within a research network.

We will also consider how best to take advantage of the Knight Foundation’s grant to establish the GovLab Maker Academy, which trains graduate students to become innovative problem solvers by developing, iterating and implementing collaboration projects and platforms for real-world institutions. GovLab is based at NYU in partnership with MIT and other major universities.
Follow The Experiment online at #govlab.
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