Tom Austin

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Tom Austin
VP & Gartner Fellow
17 years at Gartner
41 years IT industry

Tom Austin, vice president, has been a Gartner fellow for a decade. He is chief of research for social software, collaboration, communications, information management, business intelligence and high-performance workplace (HPW) research. Read Full Bio

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How far can citizen participation in government go? How can we make it go far?

by Tom Austin  |  January 30, 2009  |  Comments Off

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the Obama administration is appointing Katie Jacobs Stanton as “director of citizen participation.

I *personally* love the idea of making government (and business) more transparent and giving citizens and other stakeholders (like shareholders and bondholders) a lot more say in what government (and business) does and how they do it.

It also scares me to death because we don’t know how to “just do it”.

What “golden rules” would you recommend the government consider regarding citizen participation?

How would you maximize its likelihood of success?

What worst practices would you avoid?

Can any of this work without real, tight, user authentication? Or will that kill it?

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