Fed government "champions of participation"

Hey, there're a lot of line workers in government who have gotten really serious about fixing things, both internally and with serious public involvement. This is a really big deal.

Nancy Scola at techPresident.com describes a lot of this at Executive Branchers Draw White House a Road Map to Participatory Government

Of note are recommendations including:

1. Develop a high-level, inter-agency governance structure for implementing the Open Government Directive.
2. Demonstrate the value of participation through highly visible Presidential initiatives.
3. Respond to the barrier that public and stakeholder participation are not valued inside agencies.
4. Ensure that participation and collaboration activities are adequately funded.
5. Address institutional barriers that reward the status quo.

The folks at AmericaSpeaks.org have some specifics:

• Require all agencies to submit plans within 120 days that outline how civic engagement will be incorporated into achieving their missions.
• Convene a national policy discussion on health care reform in order to demonstrate the role that the public can play in national policy making on a key policy issue.
• Establish a federal institute for public engagement, togather research on best practices, conduct trainings for federalmanagers, and develop a knowledge-base on participation andcollaboration.
• Direct the nation's 28 Federal Executive Boards to implement collaborative partnership efforts at the regional level and report on plans for their participation and collaboration projects within 180 days.
• Require agencies to modify and augment existing performance measurement and scorecard systems to include community engagement criteria and metrics.
• Provide agencies with incentives to pilot public engagementthrough a prestigious government-wide award, a competition amongagencies for funding to support new participation and collaborationprojects, learning opportunities, and incentives that are integratedinto senior leadership competency requirements.

Like I say, a really big deal, genuine transformation in big ways.