Tag: participatory democracy
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Better Late Than Never: Time for the Public Advocate to Convene COPIC
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on July 18, 2022 Now that New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ long-shot campaign for New York Governor is over, he presumably has more time to focus on performing the functions that the New York City Charter assigns to his elected office. One function he has yet to…
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An Early Test of The Adams Administration’s Values and Tech Prowess
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on April 11, 2022 In 2019, New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly in favor of establishing a Civic Engagement Commission that would modernize how the city and its residents worked together to identify and solve problems at the most local levels. That commission hasn’t been earning itself many headlines, but the…
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“What is WeGovNYC?”, presented online for NYC Open Data Week 2021
A presentation on the progress of WeGovNYC’s Databook, an open government solution that combines a data normalization pipeline with a custom interface to deliver the public a data-driven understanding of NYC’s government.
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Madrid Demonstrates Successful Civic Engagement. Let’s Pay Attention as We Launch New York City Commission
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on March 24, 2019 Madrid turns its residents’ collective passions and intelligence into tangible improvements to city life. New York should do the same. New Yorkers had until February 22 to apply to join the Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), a new entity that city voters approved last election to manage civic…
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Expanding Consul presented at MediaLab Prado, Madrid, Spain on November 15th, 2018
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR DEMOCRACY 2018 was a program of the MediaLab Prado in Madrid, Spain, funded by the Madrid City Government. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the two week program where I worked with a team to improve the Consul Participatory Democracy software platform. It was an extremely significant experience…
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Mixing Tool Sets from Madrid and Taiwan to Improve Participatory Budgeting in New York presented at the g0v Summit 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan
“Mixing Tool Sets from Madrid and Taiwan to Improve Participatory Budgeting in New York: Leveraging Participatory Budgeting to Create a More Open and Participatory Government” was presented at the g0v (pronounced “gov zero”) Summit 2018 on October 6th, 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan. It was an ambitious presentation attempting to align the participatory democracy movements in…
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Making the Libertarian Party Viable in New York City
This article originally appeared on Gotham Gazette on June 29th, 2018. New Yorkers are constantly complaining about the two-party political system. Democratic domination of New York City politics means Democratic primary elections are more impactful than general elections. Republican domination of the national political system means New Yorkers’ progressive cultural values are rarely reflected in…
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Taiwan’s Radical Participatory Democracy Training is Coming to New York
This article originally appeared in Gotham Gazette on June 5th, 2018 Many people are wondering whether rapid advances in communication technology will improve or degrade American democracy. Last decade, the answer seemed to be: improved! Wikipedia’s growth showed us the unimaginable “wisdom of the crowd,” WordPress made it possible for the world’s smartest people to…
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It’s Time for a “Participatory” Democracy Instead of our “Consumer” One
Democracy in the United States was established nearly 250 years ago when news traveled at the speed of a horse and real-time collaboration required sharing a physical location. Today, ubiquitous internet access, smartphones, social media, and online collaboration tools have transformed how we work, play and consume, but the basic structure of our politics remains…