The GovLab "Editorial Board"

Newspapers and other publications typically start the day with an Editorial Board meeting at which staff review the day’s news and make decisions about what to cover. At the GovLab, we’ve adopted the practice of holding a daily morning meeting, too. Most of us participate in person while some join via Hangout. We collaboratively take notes on a Hackpad to reflect on what we’ve learned. Occasionally, we even serve bagels! One member of the group leads the conversation and selects up to three news items to discuss. These generally relate to governance innovations, policy developments of technology news.
Our goal is, first and foremost, to learn. We want to advance our understanding of developments that shape opportunities to use technology to improve how we govern to the end of improving real people’s lives. For many of us, this means keeping up better with advances in technology while, for others with more technical background who already follow that news, it is a chance to learn more about developments in the legal realm. Second, we use this occasion very concretely to talk about how GovLab can play a role and bring to bear our insights about open government in response to challenges in the news. For example, we’ve had lively discussions about ethical uses of randomized control trials in policymaking or how to organize conversations about how governments use citizen data that are translating into new project work.
You can now follow along to see what we’re discussing in the What’s New sidebar. We’ll post the articles each day (here is today’s) and the hack pad. Share your thoughts!