Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing

by Beth Simone Noveck

Government "of the people, by the people, for the people" expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left "the people" out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today's complex challenges.

Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter--if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens' expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools--what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise--are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government.

Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people's knowledge and know-how.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Cities, Politics

368 pages, Hardcover

First published November 2, 2015

Reviews

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Легкая реклама открытого правительства. Ненапряжно, но и без ошеломляющих откровений.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noveck can be accused of some teleological optimism in her assessment of the future of open government and potential resolutions to the issues confronting efforts to more directly engage members of the public and their specific expertise with the government, but her foundation and overall analysis are solid. She examines some important barriers to more public engagement (especially the increasingly problematic Paperwork Reductions Act (PRA) of 1980 and Federal Advisory Committee Act (FARA) of 1972) and possible frameworks for building a more open, transparent government by harnessing a mixture of social media, new digital infrastructure, and refined government programs based on earlier initiatives that either faltered or brought down by poorly conceived systems.

[Daniel Lambauer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this book is about the specific American context of involving experts in policymakimg and the difficulties within American law - so quite specific to that context. In addition, the book is at times quite devoid of facts but is more stipulations and future ideasz However, it does contain a wide range of examples of new expertise platforms that can be a very useful for getting inspirations in this area.

[Michal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit disappointing although cant expect that somebody will write an manual on how establish open government and smart policy. I would rather hear stories about setting and leading open government than mix of intelectual ideas of expert government policies which are hardly transferable to different cultural environment.

[Isabel Sandoval · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que cuenta cómo surgió el Gobierno Abierto en Estados Unidos y los proyectos que se hicieron durante los primeros años.

[Oxana Udodova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Не думаю, что люди готовы к открытости. А уж тем более властьимущие.

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many are wondering when the computer-related changes that affect so many of us around the world--constant connectivity, facile information sharing over social networks, “big data” analysis, informal cross-disciplinary cooperation--will come to governments. Professor Noveck trusts that this can happens and lays out an incremental process in this book for bringing it about. She has been at the center of many experiments in government information crowd-sourcing over the past decade and has good reason to believe that we can get there by combining resources available on the Web--ways of soliciting, recording, indexing, searching, and rating individuals’ contributions--with some new initiatives. I have worked with Noveck and benefitted by helping some of her projects over the years, but approached this book with an open mind and was personally impressed with its reach. Her most salient insight, I believe, is that governments currently ask citizens to share their values (and prejudices) but not their expertise. We can do much better than say that we like or dislike a particular policy; we can use the mechanisms proposed in this book to craft policies--this refocus (with a shout-out to ancient Athens) is a real contribution to current academic and political discourse. Her proposal avoids both the technocratic dead-end of faceless algorithms determining our future and utopian suggestions for perpetual referenda where everybody and her sister jump in. Many questions remain, of course: how to resolve conflicts of values, how to ensure that governments act on advice, and more. Noveck handles legal barriers to participation through specific recommendations in Chapter 7, and also addresses cultural barriers--there is no doubt that this is an agenda involving decades of effort.

[Joel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good overall thesis, but not always well-argued or supported by practical examples. Takes a lot of pages to make a very simple point.