A friend recently sent me a link to a very interesting website, from where else, but the UK.
The UK government has embarked upon an engagement process with its citizenry to make the reams of information that is produced by government more useful and relevant to users. This means developing better performance metrics as well as some simple things such as making relevant data more accessible and not hidden on some obscure website or some inaccessible publication. On this website they have created a wiki to engage with citizens and create a mechanism for idea generation and discussion. And they have created a contest, with a prize pool of £20,000 for the best ideas. Want to see more? Go to the “Show Us a Better Way” website
I think this is a great idea. We could probably use the same type of citizen engagement mechanism here is Canada given the plethora of information from the 3 orders of government, from educational institutions (school boards, colleges, universities), from health care providers (hospitals, regional health authorities, nursing homes, etc) and from many other public sector bodies. Would it be nirvana to think that we could develop measures that are comparable across the country? Would it be nirvana to provide citizens with the information they need in a clear, concise and easily understandable form? I’m giving some thought on how we can emulate the work in the UK here in Canada. You got any ideas on this, either comment below or you can e-mail me at gsekaly@ipac.ca or you can join the discussion on new IPAC facebook site! (Yes I have created an IPAC facebook site – will be publicising it more broadly shortly).
I want to thank my friend Peter MacLeod from MASS LBP for drawing this to my attention.
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