Civic Commons is an effort to assist public agencies in the adoption of open systems and collaborative technologies, and to coordinate the co-creation of these technologies among agencies to ensure interoperability and shareability. Civic Commons provides infrastructure, knowledge, and toolsets to government entities, and encourages the development of shared "civic technologies" and protocols as well as supplies optional technical infrastructure (such as data and project hosting) as needed. (continue)

PEP-NET is a European network of all stakeholders active in the field of eParticipation, including public bodies, solution providers and citizen organizations as well as researchers and scientists. We are open to all organizations willing and actively trying to advance eParticipation in Europe. (continue)

Experts in public engagement, participation and dialogue, Involve carries out research and delivers training to inspire citizens, communities and institutions to run and take part in high-quality public participation processes, consultations and community engagement. They believe passionately in a democracy where citizens are empowered to take and influence the decisions that affect their lives. Their January 2012 briefing paper, The Use of Public Engagement in Tackling Climate Change, draws from compelling results and evaluation findings of a range of public dialogues around climate change and argues ... (continue)

A new guide can help citizens and local leaders decide how to make their communities more engaging, inclusive, participatory, and powerful. Planning for Stronger Local Democracy is built around two lists: the questions to ask about your community in order to take stock of local democracy; and the building blocks you might consider as part of a comprehensive, sustainable strategy for vitalizing civic engagement in your town. This is a publication of the National League of Cities and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and can be ... (continue)

This article by Tyrone Reitman was posted on the YES! Magazine website on November 4, 2011. Tyrone wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions for a just and sustainable world. Tyrone is executive director of the newly formed Healthy Democracy Fund. He and his colleagues at Healthy Democracy Oregon worked from 2006-2011 to establish the Citizens Initiative Review in Oregon. (continue)

A new October 2011 report finds that California’s tough economy is causing cities, towns and counties across the state to rethink how they tackle some of their toughest challenges. The result is a new collaborative approach to governance. The report, “Golden Governance: Building Effective Public Engagement in California,” identifies seven communities across the state that have reacted to the current financial situation by rethinking and restructuring governance and their approach to citizen engagement. (continue)

This 2011 report by Tina Nabatchi and Cynthia Farrar for the Deliberative Democracy Consortium explores what elected officials know and think about public deliberation, as well as what they need to know to assess the potential value of public deliberation as a governance tool. Data from interviews with twenty-four state legislators and senior staff for federal legislators yielded some provocative results with practical implications for the field of public deliberation. Download the full report here. (continue)

This guide moves beyond the traditional discussions of transparency as a means for good government, and considers the real life logistics of implementation for a federal agency, as well as the benefits that an agency may incur from developing a transparency program that fits their mission and improves their internal capacity. (continue)

Based on more than 60 interviews, this 2007 article by Peter Levine of the University of Maryland and Rose Marie Nierras of the University of Sussex explores the tensions between deliberation and various forms of political activism and advocacy. It identifies more than 20 objections to deliberation that are proposed by political activists in various countries and contexts. It concludes with suggestions for combining deliberation and advocacy. Download the article here. (continue)

In his 2006 article titled “Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance” (Public Administration Review, Vol. 66: 66-75), Professor Archon Fung of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government introduced a broad typology called The Democracy Cube, in which the first axis displays the authority and power of the participants in the process, the second axis shows who participates in the process, and the third axis reveals how decisions are made. (continue)