Upfront: I know much has been blogged (and tweeted) about this recently but I am writing this on the train so no links - sorry! I am on my way to another meeting about the economic future of the city. These meetings have resulted in a series of initiatives announced by Mayor Bloomberg last week. There has been a fair bit of commentary on the substance already, but I would like to address the process. I believe it could be hugely improved by opening it up. For starters, the folks running this should have a web site, which could of course simply be a blog, that talks about the goals for the project, who is participating, how the city is going about this and so on. That site should be open and allow comments. Sure, there will be some useless chatter and possibly some flames or worse, but that seems like a small price to pay for allowing anyone to contribute. Individual meetings like the one I am headed to should be open too. By that I don’t mean anyone can show up - there is definitely room for invitation only discussions in which a smaller group can talk about a subject, but I see no reason why those meetings should not be bloggable and in fact be blogged both on the site I suggested above and on the sites of participants. I believe everyone is genuinely trying to help and would continue to express their opinions whether or not someone else can write about them. In any case, I am fairly suspect of any view on an important public matter that someone is willing to express only in a private non-bloggable setting. Any work products should also be public. That includes presentations created by consulting firms, but also draft action plans, legislation, etc. Those documents should be under revision control so that one can track their evolution over time. I firmly believe that the benefits of such an approach vastly outweigh some of the extra noise that it will generate. The old saying was that ‘politics is like sausage - you don’t want to know how it’s made’ - but we know where that view has gotten us. Now it’s time transparency and engagement.
