Mayoral candidate Mike McGinn hosted an open discussion yesterday on how technology can improve city government. About two dozen people, including volunteers, activists and technology professionals, attended the event held at Northwest Film Forum in Capitol Hill.
McGinn used the occasion to launch IdeasForSeattle.org, what he called a Government 2.0 website. “Government 2.0 is a powerful tool to accompany a new attitude at city hall about involving communities,” McGinn said in a flyer distributed to forum guests.
The conference itself was an informal affair. McGinn sped through a brief slide show presentation, citing the three key goals of the Government 2.0 concept:
1. Do more with less.
2. Democratize the data
3. Revolutionize community engagement.
After the slide show, there was a lively but friendly discussion on possible uses and the inherent limitations of technology in government. Popular concepts included increasing access to city data, boosting inter-regional cooperation, and finding a way to create dialogue between the city and residents at the neighborhood level.
McGinn said he supported city councilmember Bruce Harrell’s Public Engagement Portal Initiative, but indicated a desire to go further by harnessing the “collective intelligence” of Seattle residents and putting it to work on policy issues. "Why can’t lively discussion occur on government websites?" the candidate wondered.
From a land use perspective, the most immediate and likely impact could be on the neighborhood planning update process, which has begun soliciting information via online questionnaires, but could perhaps do more to engage citizens online.
The tone of the discussion lent itself not to electioneering, but to ideas. The implementation of those ideas rests on November’s election results, but for the moment, those realities were ignored—either pushed aside or taken for granted. This was not an audience that needed convincing.
