Content about Politics

Somalia’s history has been long dominated by raging conflicts and aggressive, authoritarian governments. Today Somalia has yet to fully heal, but the nation’s capital of Mogadishu is quickly becoming the world’s greatest success story. 

Following tonight’s 2013 State of the Union address, the White House is soliciting comments on the speech:
Your Response to the State of our Union
President Obama’s State of the Union address is just the beginning; now we want to hear from you. Highlight a passage of the speech that was meaningful to you and tell the President how you’re connected to that issue. Then share that part of the speech with your friends.
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No word on how these comments will be processed and considered or whether participants can expect a response. Four years into the Open Government movement, you’ think basic expectation setting wouldn’t be an issue anymore.
On the plus side, it’s another appealing interface from the Whitehouse.gov team that allows for commenting at the sentence level. While individual comments aren’t being exposed publicly, there are lots of interesting things one could do with the data, e.g. visualization of most commented and most shared sections of the speech (heat map).

In an arena historically dominated by city hall meetings, how can planners engage the imagination of the public and capture unique perspectives? Metroplan, central Arkansas's Council of Local Governments and Metropolitan Planning Organization, has recognized the necessity of including as many voices as possible in crafting a new transportation plan.  The Imagine Central Arkansas project (ICA) gathers input from residents of a four-county region about a range of transportation-related issues that the region will face over the next thirty years.  Imagine Central Arkansas showcases a variety of interactive participation methods that can be adopted in comprehensive plan-making.

Is there a link between civic involvement and the understanding of American history, laws, and government? According to a study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, a third of Americans today cannot name any of the three branches of government.  Fewer than half understand what separation of powers is, and twice as many can name a judge on “American Idol” than the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

With all the options for social media today, it is a common concern we’re faced with: what is the best way to engage citizens and stakeholders cost effectively? We all want to get information out quickly to relevant audiences whose expectations for information access have grown so fast. So which outreach channel should we be focused on? According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 92 percent of adults use email which can be thought of as “the central hub of all online communication.”

We wanted to be sure that all our readers are aware of this awesome opportunity to get a free interactive community outreach web site from Urban Interactive Studios (UIS). In conjunction with the upcoming APA annual conference, UIS is once again giving away a free Engaging Plans website to one planning project whose community is looking for a cost-effective way to use the Web to facilitate communication with the public throughout their projects. Engaging Plans enables planners to actively engage with community members by combining a variety of online and mobile tools, as well as social media techniques.

Don't miss this Special Interest Track at the 25th Bled Conference - eDemocracy: from eRevolution to eParticipation. The purpose of this Special Interest Track is to shed light on recent developments in this highly topical areas and to discuss exciting new projects, experiences and future (research) directions -especially from a infor-mation systems perspective.

Starting today through January 28, you can visit the White House YouTube channel to submit your video and text questions regarding tomorrow’s scheduled State of the Union Address. on Monday, January 30, President Obama will answer a selection of top-voted questions submitted by the American public in a live-streamed interview.

We’ve been keeping our eye on "Community Engagement", a LinkedIn group that encompasses discussion on community building, education, public participation, participative democracy and working in partnership. One of the most popular ongoing discussions has revealed some of the group members’ go-to websites for community engagement in terms of urban planning, support for citizen dialogue, and innovation. Here’s a list of the highlights:

Local government is about the most diverse and complex business around. I take my hat off to any local government CEO – their Board is the elected council members and their shareholders are the community. They are answerable to the most diverse range of stakeholders including state government. At the forefront of their daily tasks are incredible pressures around the provision of housing, dealing with the impacts of climate change and population change, not to mention their important role in economic development, while the whole time keeping an eye on the issues of social cohesion. Oh, and local government plays a huge advocacy role in our communities.

Yesterday, the White House unveiled its new e-petitions platform. The online petition system, designed to generate response from the federal government, allows users to trade their name and email address for the chance to create an online petition.

See a step-by-step guided tour of the platform >>

In recent years, government sponsored hack-a-thons have become a highly utilized form of software development for a diverse number of industries - the field of urban planning is no exception to this ‘peer production’ type of approach. These contests and challenges are popping up everywhere. One such example of this is Oregon’s City Council Agenda App, designed to to encourage dialog between local City government and residents. While applications produced by government challenges such as these are some of the most innovative and creative online engagement tools available to city planners, unfortunately many are quickly abandoned.