Building an Open Government Movement
Last year at the Canadian Open Data Summit, I co-hosted a session on building an open government movement with Jury Konga and Connie McCutcheon. We wanted to figure out how to better connect and build energy among those of use working for a more open society. Out of this discussion came a series of ideas that I wrote about in the blog “Taking Action Together.”. Some of these ideas were unable to get off the ground but others have continued to have life.
The Open Government Community Call
One of those ideas was to create an open government strategy call. The goal was to have a common meeting point for anyone working in the open government space to connect with others, share what we were working on, ask questions and more align our work. The original idea was to run a pilot starting in January and continuing up to the OGP Summit hosted in Ottawa in May. We ended up extending it to June to build off the momentum of the summit before taking a break for the summer to relax and reflect on lessons learned before rebooting in the fall.
Lessons Learned:
- There is an interest in a multi-jurisdictional, multi-sector space for people to connect and share across sectors. There were already many places where people were connecting but only within their own sector. We quickly discovered a deep interest among those working on open government to learning about what each sector and jurisdiction was doing.
- There is a lot happening in the space. We were not sure what we would fill these calls with but it turns out a lot is happening in the space already. These calls helped people learn about the Open Clearinghouse, the development of the Canadian Open Data Society (coming soon), and the OGP Summit among others. It also served as an accountability loop for these projects and as a way for them to gather support or troubleshoot ideas. We were never short on content.
- These calls help us extract more meaning from our in person gatherings. The communities used these calls to plan and coordinate efforts at the in person sessions, thus increasing the impact of the experience. It also helped to link these different events together, building momentum, making them feel like they were part of a bigger movement for change.
- We still need to do some work to spread this beyond the usual suspects. We got a great group of people who are forming a community but it is still very Ontario centric. We want to expand this to include amazing people working to open government all across the country.
The Reboot
The one thing we heard loud and clear from our feedback survey is that people want these community call to continue. So we are excited to announce that we are relaunching the Open Government Community Call. Our next call will be held Wednesday, November 13th at 12noon EST. We are excited to have Christine Hagyard sharing what the Ontario Open Government Team has been up to as well as Richard Pierto sharing his work to launch Re:OpenGov and much more. Please share this information with others who you think might be interested. You can reach out to me on twitter to get more information or in the comments section below.
Here is the information to join the call:
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https://zoom.us/j/912323161?pwd=am9tSzRqUFgzdUtadlk4Kys5Q3lwdz09
Meeting ID: 912 323 161
Password: 005064
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