Facilitating Change

Final part of this report: developing a digital plan for Quebec — Un Plan Numerique pour le Québec. We decided to

1. Collaboratively create a first draft using a wiki. The city of Melbourne, one participant pointed out, uses a wiki for Future Melboure, the community of Melbourne’s long-term plan for the future direction of all aspects of city life. (Broader endeavor, but nice example.)
2. Use the tag “planqc” when writing or researching so we can aggregate. (I imagine we’ll have to figure out a way to aggregate and synthesize all of this tagged content. Stay tuned.)

My job was to go ask folks at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) for resources on this. I also asked Jennifer Bell, from VisibleGovernment. Jennifer suggested we look at

• The Obama campaign technology platform, especially the section on that deals with opening up government to citizens (section 2).
• The OpenGovData manifesto
• The Obama CTO priorities site — it uses a tool called UserVoice to collect opinions, build consensus, and track implementation (maybe a good model for our project)
• OMB Watch’s Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-elect Obama and Congress

Jennifer also said the digital plan should include something about re-writing government software procurement laws to favour open-source solutions.

As for IDRC, so far I’ve received a list of websites and initiatives: Pan Asia Networking project websites, LIRNEAsia, LIRNE, DIRSI, ICANN, ORBICOM, ITU, LACNIC, ARIN, CANARIE. Too many! Where to start? If anyone knows the top five please let me know.