Afghanistan and Canada's Role

Afghanistan and Canada's Role:

If you haven't been following this, check out the series of stories on Canada/CIDA's work in Afghanistan. Its really interesting to see this debate and a valuable read:

In chronological order (oldest at the top)

#1: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/12/canadas-1-5b-afghanistan-aid-effort-divorced-from-reality-according-to-damning-previously-unreleased-documents/ 

#2: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/13/jonathan-kay-a-canadian-foreign-aid-insider-explains-our-1-5-billion-afghan-sinkhole/ 

#3: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/17/lucas-robinson-cida-is-hardly-a-wasted-enterprise/

 #4: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/22/robert-greenhill-our-real-humanitarian-record-in-afghanistan/

If you are even more interested. The following books are fascinating:
Descent into Chaos (a book by Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist)
The long way back (by current MP Chris Alexander and former UN deputy and Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan)
Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid.
The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar

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Three Phases of Open Government Progress: Who is acting and each stage? What are they doing?

Beth Noveck talks about there being three stages of this open government movement (check out here Ted talk in a blog post below).

We are already in and towards the end of the first stage, which is open data.

The next two phases she predicts are defined as firstly, getting great at delivering information to the centre, bringing information and expertise into government to help improve policy and activity. She uses the example of the patent office (see Wiki Government for more information on this).

E-petitions might fit into phase two as it is getting citizen demands more readily known by government – therefore getting more information in.

 The third phase is getting decision making power out. Noveck uses examples from the Russian and Lithuanian government in having their citizens participate in the creation of laws. She also references the B.C. government on govTogetherBC.

I would also suggest that examples like the government putting a prize out to the private sector to dock at the International Space Station is an early example of phase three.

 I’ve marked guesses as to where we are on each of these phases (as waves in the image below). To fully understand this we need to know who is pushing forward each of these waves/phases, what role they are playing, and progress on each phase/wave. Let’s try and make this blog a bit participatory, who do you know that is acting within each of these stages and what are they doing?

I've just recently attended the 1st International Association of Public Participation North America conference in Halifax. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could glean any understanding of the public participation (P2) sector by doing a wordle of the conference schedule session descriptions and speakers. Unfortunately, the wordle was less useful than expected in increasing my understanding (the conference was really great though), but it was interesting nonetheless so here it is:

Also. You might be interested in the four videos Beth Noveck has posted to her blog about the future of government: http://cairns.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/future-of-government-talks-at-ted-cameron-noveck-pahlka-shirky.html I've yet to watch three of the four but will post any comments I have upon watching them.