--- Upon commencing on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 2:00
p.m.
MR. VICKERY:
Hello. I propose we start. There are still some people coming in but we
should start so we don’t fall too far behind.
I’m doing the job of the MC in the big room in this small room. But it’s nice to see you all here. It’s very, very good.
We lost one of our speakers over the weekend, our
Mexican colleague. He couldn’t come at
the last minute. So we decided that
because we are trying to encourage as much participation, as much interaction
as possible, rather than try and add another speaker, we decided that we would
actually remain with the three speakers and Ellen. And Ellen was going -- who was the chair and
is still going to be the chair, will also be a speaker.
So we’ve got four speakers anyway and Ellen is going
to do both task. And that should
encourage us to have much more interaction.
So, over to Ellen who is chairing this group.
Thank you.
MS. MILLER:
Thank you very much. This session
has a very hopeful title. I’ll refresh
my memory, Government 2.0. I’m not sure
the American government is in 1.0 yet.
That’s why I think it’s hopeful.
But it is a direction that we need to be talking about, engaging
citizens to deliver better policy in a proved democracy.
I was honoured to be asked to be on this panel and
even more honoured to chair it. And so I
thought I would kick it off and then ask my colleagues, whom I have had the
pleasure of meeting just before the panel, to introduce themselves, very Web
2.0.
But I have a question.
I want to know a little bit more about you. I really am into this participative web
world. So, with a show of hands, how
many people in this room blog?
--- Raise hands
MS MILLER: Oh,
a very small minority.
How many people in this room are on a social
network? You don’t have to tell me which
one.
--- Raise hands
MS MILLER: Aha
(laughter).
How many are on more than one social network?
--- Raise hands
MS MILLER: I’m
very impressed. I’m very impressed. Good.
Well then you understand at least the context of the world in which
we’re operating even if the government doesn’t quite understand that
context.
So, by way of personal introduction -- whoops, I
didn’t mean to go there yet. I’m Ellen
Miller, Co-founder and Executive Director of the
I’ve worked in the public interest field for a number
of decades that I have been in Washington and founded two other NGO’s that are
involved in examining the mix of money and power and politics and influence in
Washington.
The Sunlight Foundation was founded just about 18
months ago to use the power of the internet, new technologies and the
interactivity of the world of the Web 2.0 to create greater transparency for
the operations of the U.S. Congress and to help improve the two-way
relationship between citizens and their elected representatives.
Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, said
information is the currency of democracy.
So, freedom of information or freedom for information is clearly not a
new idea. But what is different about
information in this day and age is the time in which we operate.
The technologies of communication have changed
dramatically. In the past few years they
changed dramatically at an amazing pace every single day.
Two mottos guide the work of the Sunlight
Foundation. They marry old style
conventional wisdom and new web thinking.
The first is to paraphrase a former Supreme Court
Justice: Sunlight is said to be the best
of disinfectants, electric light the most efficient policeman.
And the second motto that guides our work is that
given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.
Now, this is a technical term.
But we like to apply it to mean that when citizens are watching and
engaged with politics in the internet, which the internet uniquely allows them
to do, elected officials have to pay attention.
Some have said, I meant that literally, given enough
eyeballs all the bugs are shallow. But
in fact we mean it figuratively about engaging citizens.
We are talking about the potential of a paradigm shift
in how disclosure happens and how information travels, how information is
collected and disseminated and what people can do with it, and particularly the
ways people can use information to engage themselves in the process of
politics, policy, the drafting of legislation, et cetera.
If you go back to the early 1800’s in
But the advances in technology create a very different
world for us.
The
Since then public information has been made available
and it has steadily increased. Not all of
this is thanks to the government. But
with the click of a mouse you can find what congress is discussing and voting
on; the full text of bills; the video of floor proceedings and committee
hearings; who is lobbying and how much they spend on it; who used to work for
what elected official and who they work for now; who gives how much political
money and whether they favour or oppose legislation; what interventions with
regulatory agencies are being made and by whom; how much taxpayer money is
being spent and granted.
But to find all that information you have to go to a
myriad of websites and you have to know precisely what you’re looking for. The advances made in this arena still lag
behind the technological developments by leaps and bounds.
This is a slide that shows THOMAS, the government’s
official online database for Congressional information. It is difficult to navigate, poorly organized
and often doesn’t contain what the researcher might be looking for. But it’s there and it was a start.
Even worse than not having access to Congressional
information, the text of bills, et cetera, is that other important information
like committee hearing transcripts, Congressional research reports and
chairman’s lists of earmarks, specially appropriated projects, are not
available or are available way after the fact in which someone would be
interested in.
Even members of Congress and their committees have
failed to use their official websites as information centres for their
constituents. This is known as the slide
of the boring website.
Believe it or not we have found that the vast majority
of members of Congress failed to list even what bills they sponsor, let alone
what votes they take or who they meet with on their websites.
While some members are beginning to reach out and to
begin to think about how to use their websites as interactive and use them to
offer transparency for their activities, most are letting this revolution pass
them by.
Aside from the shortcomings of already available
databases, Congress also fails to disclose important pieces of
information. Earmarks, personal
financial disclosure, travel reports and other documents are still not put
online in a searchable database even after the most recently passed ethics
reforms.
The U.S. Senate still refuses to disclose its campaign
finance reports electronically. In fact
that piece of legislation has been block anonymously for the past six
months. The perpetrator of the hold on
the legislation just recently came forward.
And so the funders of political campaigns remain
hidden in many cases until after the election day.
While we wait and push for Congress and the rest of
the government to catch up with online information and the environment in which
information is being made available, public information and public
participation will rely on a convergence of government institutions and NGO’s
in the U.S.
Congressional information is now being developed and
mashed up and made user friendly on a variety of non-governmental sites, many
of which the Sunlight Foundation has funded or operates all in the last 18
months. I calculated a few days ago that
in our 18 months we have created as many databases and website to display
government information.
There are also
projects underway that emphasize public participation in ways that rely on
cooperation between members of Congress and outside groups. A terrific example is this one.
In
late July and early August a top Democratic leader in the U.S. House, Senator
Richard Derbin, from
He
was on the website on a regular basis over the course of a week, he developed
videos, joint discussions and then promised to use the ideas that were
generated by citizens and lobbyists and interested parties to draft a bill,
which he will then post online for further comment before he introduces it in
congress. He called this Legislation
2.0.
And
we are quite intrigued by it because it seemed to work in a very positive and
respectful way and we think that there are other legislators who want to begin
to develop their legislation in the same way and, in a sense, garnering citizen
support and input at a time at which it had never been solicited before.
We
have also launched at the Sunlight Foundation a variety of experiments in
engaging the public to help shine a light on the darker corners of
congress. This is an example of
something we launched about 10 days ago, maybe just a week, working with
another NGO called Taxpayers for Common Sense.
This
website, where anyone can investigate the details behind thousands of earmarks
that are in two current pending legislative bills, a defence bill and a health
and human services bill, and it is a fairly complex effort in which we ask
members of the public to dig in and do some research for us. Who are these companies? What is their website? What is the purpose and what can you find out
about what they will be making for the federal government?
And
more than 500 citizens have engaged in this process, which we find, in a week’s
time, rather heartening.
At
present, however, this kind of interactive internet-powered participation is
very limited in the
Let
me close by just saying that Teddy Roosevelt, our twenty-sixth president,
claimed that the best citizen in a democracy is one who is actually in the
arena. As more and more citizens seek
not to just sit and watch the show, but to enter the game, just to step in and
step up, they will need to use the weapon of choice in the legislative and
political process and that is accessible and accurate information.
Where
legislators have had access to critical information, so should citizens. Only then will an informed citizenry be able
to act.
Now,
I would like to turn this over to our first panellist and I would like to ask
each of the panellists to do their own personal introductions, just pretend you
are blogging.
MR.
LENIHEN: Hello, everybody. My name is Don Lenihan. I am the President of something called
Crossing Boundaries. In a nutshell,
Crossing Boundaries is a national network of politicians and public servants
and others across the country who have worked together over 10 years in various
forums and ways exploring the impact of information technology on government
and governance and how governments should respond.
I
am actually here today in a related, but slightly different capacity. In the last year I have been asked to serve
as the advisor to the Government of New Brunswick -- for those of you not from
So
I want to talk about that a little bit.
And I want to say to you in advance that what I am about to say to you I
usually say in three hours, so I will give you a thumbnail sketch of I guess
where our thinking is going. I am
heading about five pilot projects there that are meant to experiment with
different aspects of the public, some are the general public, some are
stakeholders, and I will speak a little bit about the process a little bit
further on.
I
guess what I do want to say is that this, in my mind, is far more about
engagement than technology. Technology,
to me, has always been an enabler, it is a huge and powerful one, I am part of
that chorus of people that says it is that transformative force out here that
is bringing us into another era, but it is not clear to me what that future era
looks like. And I think unless we do a
lot of thinking about how we use the technology and what we use it to do we may
go to a place we don’t actually want to be in.
So
let me tell you about the thinking we have been doing about engagement before I
tell you a tiny bit about how we see the technology actually taking us forward
on that.
I
have put up here on the screen something we call The Engagement Continuum. And I want to say something about what it
means in my mind for governments to engage the public and what I think they
need to do to change how they engage the public. If we want to improve democracy and the
relationship between government and the public, there are big changes that are
necessary.
First
of all, voice, decision, action, these are fancy words for a very simple, very
deeply human process around problem solving. It works something like this. If you are with some people and you have got
a problem, first of all you sit down and everybody gets to put their stuff on
the table, let us call that voice. What
do you think, what do you think, what do you think, what do you think? And we have been doing this since we were
sitting around the campfires in the caves, right? There is nothing new about this, it is deeply
human.
Once
we sit around the table and say what do you think, what do you think, what do
you think, then we sort of say about the problem. So who is right? And we start trading ideas and comparing
evidence and exchanging things or maybe sometimes we make compromises, it
depends what the problem is we are trying to solve. But we move along and we make some
decisions. We think through, we exchange
ideas, we make some decisions about what we think.
And
sometimes it stops there but very often we need to go another step. Because once you sort of figure out the
problem, well here is what we all said at the beginning and here is what we now
sort of thing together is our diagnosis of the problem. What is the third step? And so what are we
going to do about it? Let us move to
action.
And
again, I want to underline this as a deeply deeply human process, we are all
affected by it, you go through it with your kids and your families and your
colleagues and all sorts of stuff. But
let me say this, when we talk about governments engaging in the public this is
not what governments do. Governments go
the first stage and they rarely get beyond the first stage. So the engagement
from most governments is what I would call consultation.
And
what is consultation? It looks a lot
like this, somebody stands up at the front of the room, usually behind a table,
and a bunch of the public stands on the other side of the room, usually lining
up at microphones or handing briefs or whatever it may be and you come up and
you get to say what you think,, right. So
we listen dutifully if we are from government or wherever it is. And you come up one at a time and you say I
think this and I want you to do this.
And somebody comes up and says, oh no, I think this and I want you to do
this. I think C, I think D, I think
E. And we go through the whole long list
of people and we travel around the country or the province or wherever it may
be and we take all our stuff and we go back home or sit in our room as the
committee and we review all this stuff, right.
And
after we have reviewed all this stuff, we make our decisions about what we
think and then we make our recommendations to government. We go through decision making and ultimately
government probably make some decisions and acts on them and gets a plan and it
goes through action.
So
government’s relationship to the public is largely one of voice. We ask what you think. There’s nothing wrong with that, consultation
has been with us for a very long time and it probably will be. Here is what I want to suggest is why would
we think that everything fits into one box?
Why do we think that consultation is the only answer to engagement?
And
not only that, let me tell you what it is starting to do. As I would argue to you, that engagement is
actually -- or that consultation on that model is starting to become hugely
destructive to democracy. What we don’t
seem to realize or we are beginning to realize is it divides the public against
itself. If I’m the voice of authority
who is going to make the decisions and you are out there and you want me to
make your decision, look at the person next to you who is next to get up to the
microphone and tell me their story.
Remember,
there is going to be 40 people after you and I am going to listen to them all
and I have got to make a decision. So it
is in your interest to try to get me to listen to your decision and the person
next to you is a competitor, they are not your friend. That means, you start to think how do I
actually outwit that person? How do I
make my story more compelling? How do I
manufacture a crisis, provide exaggerated facts and figures, make this person
look not very credible, etc.? And we see
more and more of this.
In
many cases there are lots of people out there who make a very good living advising people how these squeaky wheels so that
ultimately they get the grease when it comes around to influencing government
decision_making processes of this type.
I think we
see this all over the place. I'm not
saying it's the only way it happens, but that's the dynamic that we are
creating in many places.
And not only
that, not only does it divide the public against itself, it divides the public
against government. Remember, I've got
to go __ especially if I'm an elected guy; right? I've got to go away and make a decision. You guys have given me a list of 45 options,
three of which might actually fit together.
The rest of
you, when I come back, your ox is going to get gored; right? You are probably not going to be pleased with
me, and that's not going to make me very happy.
I might be looking for your vote next time around.
So
ultimately it's an increasingly uncomfortable process that creates not very
useful solutions, that divides the public against itself and that ultimately
divides the public against government.
I guess what
I want to say is if we are tired of the process, if the process is not working
very well, what is the answer? Change
the process; right? Change the process.
We need to
get beyond simple consultation, at least for many things.
So why
wouldn't we do something like this. Why
wouldn't we allow me as government to sort of say: You know what, I'm tired of being the
decision_maker here. Why don't I become
the facilitator? Why don't I get you
guys to put your chairs in a circle and start talking to each other instead of
talking to me?
Let's see
what you have to say to one another instead of lining up and giving me your
grief. Tell each other what you think
about the issue. Tell each other what
you think your solution is; compare your evidence and start arguing with each
other. And I will facilitate that
dialogue.
Let's see
where you get. Let's see if we can break
down some of the differences between you.
Let's see if we can find some common ground, some common solutions, some
common objectives, some compromises and arrive as close as we can to something
that looks like a position we can all live with.
I'm not
saying it's going to be easy. I'm not
saying it's always going to work. I just
believe we can do a whole lot better at this.
And the way
to do it is ultimately to give the public more space to work with itself. Government can actually be a player at that
table. It can be a participant.
People don't
get to make crazy decisions. Ultimately
government gets to say, like any other player at the table: You may be asking us for money, but I'm here
to tell you we don't have it. We just
don't have it. So let's go down another
road.
So you can
have that dialogue with the public.
I want to go
one step farther and say sometimes you only need to go to decision_making, but
sometimes __ and I think we are only beginning to realize this with the public
__ you need to go a lot farther. You
need to go to action.
Let me give
you one example.
We hear over
and over and over again, rightly, that obesity is the new smoking. Obesity is not only a bad thing, it's going
to put huge pressure on our health care costs, it slows down people. It's a problem, a social problem. It's the new smoking. It's the social problem of the future.
What I want
to suggest to you is that governments can't solve that problem on their
own. I mean, how could they. Right?
Or if they could, it's a world I don't want to live in. Maybe they are going to regulate what you eat
to the point where you don't get to choose.
Ultimately
if we want to solve a problem like obesity, governments may have a very
important role to play but in the end individuals are going to have to
essentially take responsibility for some very important part of that
problem_solving. We have to divide up
the responsibilities differently.
Government,
as I always say, can build you a bicycle path.
Government cannot make you get on your bicycle, at least not in any
world I want to live in.
So what we
really ought to be doing is saying in areas where the public requires some kind
of change in attitude and behaviour in order to solve the problem we are
dealing with, we are going to have to move beyond simply discussion and
deliberation. We are going to have to
get them to form and commit to an action plan and transfer some of that
responsibility to them.
That's not a
small task but it's doable. In fact, I
would argue if it's not doable, we are in a lot of trouble because it's true on
the environment, it's true on literacy, it's true on obesity, it's true on 25
issues I could name you very easily.
So how do we
do that? How do we do that?
Let me
quickly recap where I am and then just say a tiny bit about what we are trying
to do in
In a
nutshell, again I think the whole thing is about transferring responsibility or
sharing responsibility between governments and citizens __ and not just
citizens; it can be stakeholders. Let's
just say the public in various forms.
And
ultimately if you want to engage the public, you need a process by which they
will begin to actually work through the issues themselves together, with the
facilitation of government or others, and even arrive at a point where they
accept responsibility for new action and form a plan of action that they are
going to deliver on for obesity or literacy or environmental issues, or
whatever it may be.
So how do we
get there?
There is no
magic bullet here but I want to show you my second slide.
There are
not a lot of bells and whistles here. I
think the basic idea is meant to be pretty simple. It's how do we take a process and map it onto
that thing that I just gave you?
This process
can be infinitely flexible. There's all
kinds of different ways we are using it.
Sometimes we are using some to intersect others.
I just want
to make a couple of points about it.
That's all I have time for here.
Here is what
we would have done.
I've been
doing processes now for 20 years and here is what we did in many, many cases in
the past when we wanted to talk to the public.
You see
those round circles? Let's call them
roundtables. I've done more roundtables
than you can shake a stick at. Maybe
some of you were at some of them. Maybe
some of you wish you weren't. Maybe some
of you have held your own.
The bottom
line is if you bring a bunch of stakeholders or whoever it may be to a series
of three or four roundtables, especially in a country the size of
The bottom
line is in a case like that, you don't really get much of a discussion
going. It tends to be a
consultation. And that's not a bad
thing. But what we do is we hear what
others think and some of us dutifully take notes and then go away and try to do
the best we can in synthesizing this and maybe we send the report out for
comment from them.
What we
don't get is we don't get them really deeply discussing with each other,
working through the issues, and beginning to take responsibility for solving
some of those problems and then forming an action plan for the simple reason
that it takes too long.
And this is
where, frankly, I think the Internet __ and let me make this really simple; the
technology we are using in these processes right now is very simple __ is
potentially a bit of a miracle. Maybe a
big miracle.
It suddenly
makes it possible, especially in a country the size of Canada, to not only have
essentially a few roundtable processes where you bring people together
face_to_face and they can talk to each other, you can connect them together in
this period of time (off microphone)
And that's
what we are doing. It's very
simple. We are just using basically a
website where I can moderate a discussion and the 30 or 35 stakeholders in the
process will come together online whenever they want __ it's 24/7; it's
password protected __ and essentially they get to start blogging, dialoguing,
use the word you like, with each other.
But they are
not just doing it freely. They are doing
it in a structured process and there are questions they have to answer and they
have to work with each other to work through a process.
Just to give
you one example, we have a process right now which is on skills
development. We brought together 35
stakeholders from across the
What that
means is they have to sit down and at the first roundtable they have to name six
issues that they think that group of 35 people is well positioned to
solve. And government is one stakeholder
at the table.
Then what
they have to do is take those issues one at a time and work through them
together online as a group and decide what's the issue here. Do we have it framed right? What's the solution or the strategy we all
think is the right strategy to solve this problem? Who is best positioned to do that? And ultimately is that person or persons
ready to do it? Until we get an accumulated
list of 10 or 12, whatever it may be, actions at the end.
And the real
point that I want to make to you is when people go through that process, it is
back to that decision_making process, they think through the issues. They become committed to them. They take responsibility for them and they
sign off on an action plan that is their own.
And that's a
very different way for governments to do business. It's not the government's action plan; it's
theirs.
I guess in
the end what we are aiming at in this process really is a much more effective
way of collaborating, that transfers responsibility to a group of people and
lets them seriously work together and solve problems together.
Let me just
say in conclusion three simple things about the way I look at this process as
evolving. I think this is an enrichment
of democracy. We are doing things with
the general public as well.
The first
thing is I think this is a way of genuinely enhancing our ability to
collaborate across organizational boundaries, not just governments; governments
and stakeholders, governments and the general public.
Second,
there is no guarantee. I've heard so
many times that people say the technology, the technology is inherently
democratizing. It's going to democratize
us all. I'm a deep sceptic about
that. I think it could do lots of
things, good or bad. It's neutral. It's an enabler.
I think we
have to think as much about how we use those processes, that technology, to
transform and strengthen the democratic processes we have as just assuming that
the technology will do it of itself.
There is no guarantee in my mind that that is true at all.
The last thing I want to say in
closing is we are using very simple technology here, with small numbers of
people. We want to learn a lot about the
processes, about the engagement process, about transfer of responsibility. But the expectation is if we get good at
this, five or ten years down the road we could use much
more powerful technology that would engage hundreds or thousands of people
potentially online in dialogues that are much more sophisticated than these and
that would really move the yardsticks on democracy.
So let me stop there and thank you very much for the
time to make those comments.
--- Applause
MS MILLER: Thank
you. A remarkable condensation if that
is down from three hours. Thank you,
Don. I have lots of questions but let’s
go through the rest of the presentations.
Quitterie.
MME DELMAS : Bonjour à
tous.
Je suis Quitterie Delmas. Je suis Parisienne, Française. Je suis très heureuse d’être parmi vous, avec
vous.
Nous sortons, en France, d’une campagne
présidentielle, et ça fait du bien de pouvoir voyager et de se ressentir,
enfin, une citoyenne du monde et pas que dans ses problèmes franco-français.
Je suis ici pour vous
apporter un témoignage sur ce qu’on a pu vivre, notamment, dans la partie
blogger.
Alors, je me présente rapidement. Donc, je suis une bloggeuse politique. Il n’y a pas encore beaucoup de femmes qui
sont des bloggeuses politiques, mais pour moi, c’est une bonne manière de
s’investir en politique quand on a, notamment, une famille et un travail, de
pouvoir partager et porter ses convictions.
Je suis également rédactrice sur un nouveau média qui
s’appelle AGORAVOX, qui a été lancé il y a deux ans, qui a un million de
visiteurs par mois, et qui, en fait, est né face à la défiance que les Français
avaient vis-à-vis des grands médias classiques, les journaux télévisés, et qui,
en fait, quotidiennement, il y a des articles de rédacteurs qui soient simples
citoyens, donc, un peu de journalisme d’opinion, mais aussi des experts, des
avocats, des médecins, des chercheurs, et toute une partie d’enquêtes qui se
font à partir de données qui sont offertes par des internautes et qui sont ensuite
traduites, et où il y a des comptes rendus faits par des journalistes.
Également, je me suis occupée de la campagne d’un
candidat à l’élection présidentielle en France qui s’appelait François Bayrou,
qui a commencé la campagne à 6 pour cent, qui l’a finie à 18 et demi pour cent,
et lui aussi a réussi à émerger grâce à internet.
On ne peut pas ne pas parler de la campagne aussi
réalisée par Ségolène Royal, qui a aussi perdu, comme François Bayrou, mais qui
a été très innovante dans la pratique de la démocratie participative,
notamment, dans la première partie de la campagne, sur justement Désirs
d’avenir, qui était son site internet et qui a posé des questions aux citoyens,
qui ont pu participer à l’élaboration de son programme.
Pour re‑situer le contexte, donc, en France, il
y a une grande défiance face aux politiques en général, qui ne sont pas
aujourd’hui très représentatives de la population puisqu’on a des politiques
qui sont vieillissantes, qui sont essentiellement masculins et essentiellement
dans la fonction publique, et qui, donc, ne sont pas représentatives.
On a aussi un problème avec nos grands médias
classiques, comme je l’ai déjà dit, et effectivement, internet est une bouffée
d’air frais pour tous ceux qui ont envie d’avoir de l’information juste.
On a vu l’influence de l’internet dans deux
événements. Le premier, c’était le
référendum sur le Traité constitutionnel européen, qui a été rejeté par les
Français, alors que tous disaient au début de la campagne qu’il allait avoir 90
pour cent des Français qui allaient voter oui, 90 pour cent des parlementaires
votaient oui, les grands médias disaient qu’ils allaient voter oui, et c’est
sur internet via des blogs de particuliers qui ont démonté point par point la
constitution, que, finalement, le non a gagné.
C’était quelque chose qui n’était pas organisé mais qui s’est, en tout
cas, révélé dans les urnes.
Le deuxième grand moment d’internet, c’est normal,
c’est des grands moments de questions nationales, c’était la campagne
présidentielle, et je retiens quelques souvenirs.
Le premier, c’est l’impact sur les citoyens. On a vu que les citoyens, ce sont eux qui ont
été les grands vainqueurs de cette campagne présidentielle puisqu’ils ont
réussi à s’informer et ils sont devenus acteurs de leur information. Ils ont pu comparer leurs sources et
vérifier, finalement, qu’il faut avoir plusieurs prises sur une même
information pour se forger sa propre opinion.
Donc, on a vu un nombre de personnes incalculable se
rendre sur internet, que ce soit des très jeunes ou que ce soit aussi des très
vieux retraités, qui ont pris l’habitude, comme ils ont du temps, pour aller se
renseigner sur internet. Ils sont, donc,
devenus eux-mêmes acteurs de leur propre information. Ils ont aussi pu se former et aussi comparer
les différents programmes.
Un nombre de sites incalculable sont sortis sur la
comparaison des programmes, et finalement, qui ont permis aux citoyens d’au
lieu de se référer par rapport à l’étiquette dans laquelle vous êtes né... vous
naissez parfois à gauche, parfois à droite.
Eh bien, finalement, c’est en regardant les programmes qu’on sait vers
quel candidat se tourner, et ça aussi beaucoup joué pour le candidat François
Bayrou qui était au centre, donc, ni à gauche, ni à droite, et qui, finalement,
a pu faire entendre son projet via internet.
Il y a eu aussi une capacité de fédérer les gens sur
internet, les citoyens, qui se sont rencontrés sur des thématiques communes,
notamment, sur la thématique du développement durable, qui était vraiment au
premier plan de cette élection présidentielle, et on voit que cette
problématique du développement durable a une capacité à fédérer de façon
beaucoup plus large que les appareils politiques dont on a l’habitude.
C’est aussi ce qui explique la diminution du parti des
Verts et le fait qu’ils aient fait un score très, très petit.
On a vu aussi qu’il y avait, évidemment, un
contre-pouvoir, internet étant un contre-pouvoir pour les citoyens qui
n’arrivent pas à s’exprimer, notamment, dans leur ville. On voit parfois qu’on a quelques petits
problèmes démocratiques pour l’opposition dans certaines villes des
Hauts-de-Seine, et c’est intéressant de suivre des expériences locales.
Alors, si vous avez l’occasion d’aller voir des sites
comme MonPuteaux, qui est une ville un peu fermée, ou MaLuempe (ph), où on voit
qu’il y a aussi une voix qui peut être entendue grâce à internet et à des
internautes.
On voit très clairement aussi l’influence de
l’internet sur l’exercice législatif, mais pour l’instant, ce n’est pas du tout
organisé, et c’est un peu triste. C’est
ce qui me fait dire que les candidats à l’élection présidentielle se sont
servis de l’internet comme un média classique pour faire du marketing comme si
on vendait une lessive. Donc, on a vu
leurs programmes déversés du haut vers le bas.
Donc, ça, ils ont bien compris l’intérêt, notamment, Nicolas Sarkozy.
En revanche, pour faire remonter, on peut dire que
François Bayrou a essayé de le faire, Ségolène Royal aussi, mais il n’y a
encore pas du tout de concrétisation dans la vie publique et politique
quotidienne. Notamment, sur le site de
l’Assemblée nationale ou du Sénat, aucun effort n’a été fait.
Alors, il me semble qu’au parlement européen, ça
commence, et c’est bien. Il y a deux
appels d’offre qui sont là pour faire interagir les citoyens et les élus.
Je pense qu’on commence à progresser, mais les
politiques, et je vous ai décrit un peu notre classe politique, qui est un peu
vieillissante, a un peu peur. Il y a une
réaction de peur vis-à-vis des nouveaux médias et aussi un bouleversement de
hiérarchie interne dans les partis politiques, puisque le simple militant, le
simple bloggeur qui a des milliers de visites par jour sur son blog devient
beaucoup plus influant que l’élu, le sénateur, le parlementaire, qui passe une
fois tous les six mois à la télévision.
Et donc, c’est tout un bouleversement, une vraie
révolution que nous sommes en train de vivre, et je pense que les politiques
auraient tout intérêt à faire confiance et à essayer d’accompagner ce mouvement
plutôt que d’avoir une réaction de peur.
On a vu, pendant la campagne présidentielle, des
textes passées sur la création d’un comité de déontologie sur internet, où le
rapport Marc Tessier, qui a envie de contrôler cette espace de liberté et toute
la communauté internet reste très vigilante vis-à-vis ça puisque nous sommes
tous attachés à notre liberté.
Il y a une petite carte que j’avais envie de vous
montrer pour illustrer mon propos, et surtout vous montrer que l’internet est
en train de bouleverser durablement le paysage politique.
--- Pause
MME DELMAS : Ici, vous avez un outil qui a été
très utile pendant la campagne, qui permettait de voir les différents
logosphères de chaque candidat et de chaque couleur politique.
Donc, en rouge, par exemple, vous voyez la gauche, en
orange le centre, en bleu la droite, et puis d’autres partis politiques plus
petits.
Vous voyez que c’est un échantillon de sites
internet... si j’arrive à faire marcher ça.
On va y arriver.
Vous pouvez voir dans les liens rouge et jaune de
différents partis politiques qu’il y a énormément d’interaction, de liens
entrant et de liens sortant, ce qui montre que, finalement, les citoyens
commencent à se rendre compte qu’ils ont été rangés dans des cases, dans des castes,
et qu’il y avait un peu des murs de ballants entre des militants de différents
partis ou des citoyens qui se croyaient de gauche ou de droite, et que,
finalement, ils se sont rendus compte sur internet qu’ils pouvaient discuter
ensemble, et que, plus qu’on ne pouvait le croire avant, ils étaient d’accord,
ils avaient envie de porter des mêmes problématiques ensemble.
C’est vraiment, pour nous, un bouleversement complet
de voir qu’il y a une nouvelle composition de ces partis politiques et qu’on va
aujourd’hui vivre un grand bouleversement qui arrive.
Dernière chose que je voulais vous dire, c’est, en
fait, en plus de cette carte, ce qui serait intéressant de développer comme
outil, et ce que nous n’avons pas
encore, c’est sur quels mots, sur quelles valeurs se rassemblent ces personnes.
Aujourd’hui, je peux voir les liens hypertextes. On est capable de voir qu’à l’UDF, on
communique avec tous les partis politiques, mais qu’est-ce qui nous rassemble
et qu’est-ce qui nous divise, et je pense que c’est à partir de là, et si, par
miracle, l’un d’entre vous avait un logiciel adapté à ça, on pourrait vraiment
comprendre ce bouleversement du paysage politique en France.
Voilà! Donc, en
gros, c’est un vrai espace de liberté.
On attend beaucoup de choses, notamment, pour les nouvelles générations
politiques qui réussissent à émerger grâce à internet, des nouveaux visages,
des nouvelles pratiques politiques, et il nous manque encore des outils.
Voilà!
--- Applaudissements /
Applause
MS MILLER: Thank you.
And our last speaker on the panel is Wolfgang Blau.
MR. BLAU: Hard
act to follow.
Hi, my name is Wolfgang Blau. I am a journalist working in
In 2004 I was covering the last presidential election
with a special emphasis on the use of the internet. Early 2005 I covered the internet based
rescue efforts after the tsunami catastrophe in
I want to speak to you today about the media industry
and lessons that e-democracy government projects could take from the failures,
the multi-billion dollar failures of the media industry in their attempts to
transition onto the internet.
Because I think there are some very important lessons
to learn specifically from the media industry because what’s special about that
sector is that not only they were very well funded, overall that sector did
very will in the 90s’, but they also different from any other industry segment,
pretty much had free advertisement for their own online projects. You could advertise in their broadcast and
print outlets to make these new online ventures known and most of the times
that didn’t really help them very much.
When you cover an industry in the beginning of course
you, as a journalist, are obsessed with all the details. But after a while at least I became more
interested in the patterns that I saw emerging.
Sometimes in some industry segments it looked like lemmings going off
the cliff, repeating the same mistake over and over again.
And I started wondering, why that is. And I saw several mistakes emerge that were being
made repeatedly. First is that across
the board, newspaper, radio, television, they overlaid their offline business
model onto the internet. And second,
they didn’t anticipate that innovation is more likely to come from the outside
of their industry and not from the inside.
And I think these are two important lessons that
governments also should take in looking at their own internet strategies.
Let me give you a few quick examples: radio stations. When radio stations started looking at the
internet in the mid-90’s, they couldn’t come up with anything more inventive
than offering a 24-7 live stream.
Now, the internet really is not a very good live
medium at this point and that kind of a thing actually emphasizes the weakness
of the internet at a time when we don’t have affordable, ubiquitous mobile
internet access, which means if you want to listen to a radio station now
you’re tied to your PC versus being able to listen to a radio in your car.
Similar with newspapers. Newspapers and print media have a deep
understanding of graphic advertisement.
So, the best form of advertisement they could up with for the internet
was the banner ad. And then it took
again an outsider, Google, to educate print media about the power of text-based
contextual advertisement.
And across all these industries, in radio it was
podcasters and highly customized stations like Pandora and Last.fm that
educated radio stations about the true power of the internet.
In television similarly it was podcasters who educated
television stations about the power of the web as an on demand medium.
In newspapers it was the bloggers who really educated
newspapers about RSS as a powerful distribution mechanism and about
commentaries as a way to involve your readers.
And I already mentioned Google as an outsider who taught and Yahoo also
to a lesser degree, who taught newspapers about the power of new forms of
web-based advertisement.
And I could go on with these examples but that are the
two primary mistakes I saw, that they repeated.
And then after they had realized these two mistakes they made another
mistake. Then they started observing
what these new non-commercial start-ups were doing and then they thought they
could just re-engineer it.
And they looked at the Web 2.0 phenomenon as a
technological phenomenon. And there were
actually serious projects within the media industry where people said, let’s
just rebuild Wikipedia and we’ll put ads on it.
And if you look at Wikipedia of course from a
technological standpoint it’s not rocket science. It’s fairly simple to rebuild the technical
aspect of it. But then populating it
with the right users and with quality content and a culture is a totally
different ballpark.
And that is also something I think governments should
look at. There are very interesting,
let’s say, user generated government projects.
For instance, one project I really like in Spain is
called Canal Accessible(ph) where people in wheelchairs use Google maps to map
all the impasses in town where they don’t get through with their wheelchairs
and upload pictures and use all the available technologies to really create a
rich database and also give handicapped people a sense of involvement and a
sense that they can contribute to their communities.
Now, the typical response of local governments would
be to say, well that’s really great, we should build that on a larger scale
instead of cooperating with what already exists. Because again that happens if you look at
these projects as a technological invention instead of also realizing there’s a
culture that governments necessarily cannot recreate on their own.
A fourth mistake I often saw is that media companies
did not anticipate that the web would change their own offline business model
and modus operandi. Something you can
see in journalism a lot where we journalists are fighting against the changes
that we are now seeing in our print and conventional broadcast world.
For instance if as a television station you know that
a certain program is being seen a lot by podcast subscribers, of course you
have to offer shorter elements.
Another thing is that the current compression
algorithms, the different streaming technologies don’t like panning and
zooming, it creates jittery images. And
so many television stations now tell their cameramen, don’t zoom and don’t pan
as much anymore because we also want to broadcast this piece of yours on the
web.
And again, I think you better anticipate as a
government that the first step is offering transparency, offering an API so
that people can use your data. But in
the long run, user citizens will also change their view on what your role as a
government actually is.
And that will change your own practices as new media
technologies have always done. I mean
radio changed journalism; television changed journalism and so does the
internet.
Now, after having mapped out these four typical
mistakes over the years, I realized that many people in the media business new
about these mistakes just as well and still kept repeating the same errors over
and over again.
And I don’t mean to point fingers at the media
business. I consider myself part of the
media business and many of these mistakes I made myself. We are all just trying to understand this web
thing and what it’s actually doing.
What I came to think is that there are some very
powerful narratives in the working which is the narrative of how we even
understand the internet. What is the
internet? It’s really worth asking
yourself that question.
It seems like a philosophical question without
consequence, pretty much like asking, what is art. You know you get a thousand answers and still
you don’t know what is art. But it is
worth asking the question, what is the internet? Let’s describe what it is.
The first powerful narrative that emerged in the 90’s
of course was that the internet is the super information highway. And that was a very misleading narrative
because it’s everything but a highway. I
think it had a lot to do with Al Gore who was instrumental in the legislation
and whose father was instrumental in setting up the American interstate highway
system. And so young Al thought, look
dad, I also built a highway or something like that.
--- Laughter/Rires
MR. BLAU: But
it really stuck and it I think caused a lot of damage.
The second narrative already was a bit more education
because then people started looking at what is the internet actually
doing. And then came the narrative of
that the internet is cutting out the middleman or the middle-woman.
That is a narrative that I think is still very
prevalent also in the political scene in
But that’s not all the internet is doing. And in 2004, two new powerful narratives
emerged. One is of course, long tail and
again in politics that for instance shows itself in that even highly specialized
interest topics now find their support groups.
And there’s also the long tail of campaign
finance. I’m sure you have heard about
Barack Obama’s recent donation statistics.
And what’s remarkable is that the average donation of his supporters now
is around $230 which is really a trend that began in 2004 is that the small
donations, the long tail of donations is really showing.
Web 2.0 I thought was a more difficult narrative
because people try to define it technologically but all the technological
elements of Web 2.0, RSS, Style sheets, HX and all the other things, this
whole, you know, alphabet soup of acronyms, are all things that have been
around, some of them for many, many years.
And I think if anything Web 2.0 really marks a time where we, the bigger
we, humanity, began realizing what this internet thing really is.
And these kinds of delays are very typical. You see it many times in the history of
technologies.
James Watt didn’t anticipate locomotives and that
anybody would want to install steam engines on vehicles. Gutenberg didn’t see that you could do more
than just print more Bibles within one day but that this printing press would
also trigger a revolution of science.
And Bill Gates didn’t foresee the internet, really, something he never
really recovered from.
What I like about Web 2.0 is though that it showed us
that there is a cultural shift happening.
Because that’s really the only thing Web 2.0 can describe is a different
cultural collective set of behaviours.
I, from my own work, not to sell one more theory or to
sell one more book, was just not satisfied with these narratives and needed for
my own work as a journalist, which is very much making things understandable
also for lay people, I needed a different narrative for myself.
And the best I could come up with so far is the scheme
that you can see here on the screen of a transition from the pyramid to the
circle. And it has nothing to do with
political orientation left or right or good or bad. The pyramid isn’t bad and the circle isn’t
good. It’s just different modes of
mapping our own world.
And one thing I noticed is that feudalism is still
prevalent even though we have democracies.
But a lot of feudalistic thinking is still used when we map our own
world. When we see in our school history
books how our constitution works, in many countries you still see a pyramid
with the government at the top and then the parliament in the middle and the
voters at the bottom.
In the past it was the king, the nobility, the clergy
and serfs.
We used it many times to show the organizations of our
corporations with the CEO and the shareholders at the top, the employees at the
bottom.
In some ways that’s how we still map our spiritual
world with the respective god at the top and the whole midrange of saints and
things like that and the humans at the bottom.
And even in humanist psychology, in the advertisement
industry especially, of course you all have met Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in,
Now, when we look at the more spherical modes of
organization, this is what is happening in that our borders are blurring. A key element of the pyramidal organizations,
whether it’s religions, nations, corporations or media business models is that
there was a very clear definition and who is in and who is out. Where does the journalism end and where do
the users begin? Where does the
government apparatus end? Where does the
public sphere begin?
And I think one of the most confusing things of our
time is this blurring of borders. Media
companies were very confused by looking at some of these new start-ups. They couldn’t figure out, are they commercial
or are they non-commercial? This
Craigslist in the
The workplace, same thing. In the past we knew exactly who was in the
company and who was in the outside. Now
we have this whole world of freelance people or people working for several
companies at a time. We have people who
live in different nations, double citizenship.
All these things are fairly new and I think that’s
also a mindset of the fixed borders that governments and people who work in
e-government projects have to face this confusion how to deal with citizens who
think that their user-generated or voter-generated government projects know
better than you and your government yourself.
Many times when you speak with people who are still in
this mindset of the pyramid, you hear them speak about the internet as a place
instead of something that permeates all of our life like electricity.
People say, where did you buy that? And they say, I went onto the internet and I
bought it on the internet. Younger
people often say, I bought it online, which describes how they bought it and
not where they bought it.
I think we are experiencing a shift in values. If I can flip this to the next slide; it’s
very simple; there’s actually not much being added. Yeah, one back. I think the definition of power in the more
pyramidal mindset was power is measured by how much control you exert. Controlling the message a very big topic in
politics.
The lead currency right now is authenticity. We have all learned that you cannot control
the message on the internet. So, all you
can do is be very authentic.
What does this all mean for governments? Ask yourself, who is the middleman because
there will be a middleman or middle-woman that will be cut out eventually, the
more citizen-generated government projects there will be.
Assume that user-generated government projects will
also change your internal modus operandi.
Don’t think you can build and populate platforms on your own. Sometimes you have to go to where the action
already is.
Let me tell you, Google tried to just copy the idea of
a social network based on other projects that were already out there. And Google, with all it’s power, was not able
to make Orkut its social network. A
competitor in the
Don’t just think of the internet as a pipeline to the
voter and back. I think this is
something you already have described in much better terms. I’m personally looking forward to platforms
that allow for public deliberation, that don’t just treat the internet as a
delivery platform from the voter to the voter.
But I look forward to platforms that help citizens also understand how
complex some topics really are.
And lastly expect topics on the voter’s agenda that
you yourself don’t think are really important.
You might have heard about former Prime Minister Blair’s idea of an
online petitioning system where citizens could petition for certain topics. And one of the most popular topics in the
British citizenry was that the British Anthem should be replaced by a pop song
of Spandau Ballet.
--- Laughter/Rires
MR. BLAU: And
that’s something journalists are also wrestling with at large is that now on
line we can see exactly how popular each article is. In the past we only know how many copies a
magazine sold. Now, we know which
article is the most popular. And often
that can be very intriguing and often it can be very frustrating.
In closing, I think it is also important to remember
that our lifespans are very short. And
what’s happening right now maybe isn’t so brand new at all. It’s just happening with new technologies.
I think we are actually returning to something. We are returning to a culture and we are also
returning, especially on a local level, to modes of government that we had
before, before the advent of broadcasting of the age of industrialization. We are going back to a culture that is what
it always was, highly regionalized, highly diverse and mostly non-commercial
and driven by amateurs.
An amateur is now a somewhat derogatory term. But it comes from the Latin word, amare which
means to love something, to be passionate about something. And I think citizens who are passionate, who
express their love for their community is the one thing we need the most and
that we should really welcome in our democracies.
Thank you.
---
Applause/Applaudissements
MS MILLER:
That’s a terrific note to end on.
Thank you, Wolfgang.
We have a few minutes for questions. And I apologize if the panellists have gone
on too long. We’re all quite passionate
obviously about our work and our observations.
But we have two microphones here. If you would just come up, introduce yourself
briefly and if the question is addressed to the whole panel, let us know that
or if one specific person, that’s fine too.
Thank you.
MR. SKOCK:
Hi. My name is Vladimir
Skock. I run the Canadian Cultural
Observatory in culture.ca at Canadian Heritage.
E-consultation and going beyond consultation to
engagement is something everybody is talking about. I’d like a really frank assessment whether
you think governments in advanced democracies are actually ready for it
and are they ready for
what, you know, the Web 2.0 social technology platforms?
And should in fact those platforms for those types of
consultations be on government sites or are the rules around government sites
not letting it really happen as the technology is making it available?
MS MILLER:
Terrific. Don, you want to
respond, or begin to respond?
MR. LENIHEN:
Sure, I guess I can give you a short -- I think a short and frank
response, at least from where I come from.
The first thing I’d say is this, is the status quo is
no longer an option. I’m thinking of the
political system that we’ve got.
Our practice is a democracy, such as they exist, and
it is changing. And I think on the other
hand the political culture and the institutions themselves have not changed or
not changed much. It remains very much
as it was, it is a command and control system to sort of move to some of the
things that Wolfgang said. We do need to
move more towards his circle.
But here is where I think we are. For most politicians
the risk of moving to a much more collaborative and open kind of system is high. They promise to the public, the public still
plays the game, the public wants the promises and then if they don't deliver we
can live with that. What they are not
ready to do is actually take a very different way of engaging people.
And I guess I would say this, is that right now there
is only one or two directions that we can go.
Either, as it gets harder and harder for politicians to deliver on
conventional agendas, they get more and more centralized, they start pulling on
the reins, right. First they choke their
own sort of the people that work for them, the departments, and then they choke
their ministers.
And you can only choke so many people and you are
pulling so hard on the reins trying to control the world around you that I
think you have got to realize that that is not going to work. You have to change the way you play the game
and open up, if you like, and become more collaborative, move more towards the
circle. There are a few politicians I think.
I would like to say right now, one of the reasons I am in New Brunswick
is they are trying to do something like that, they are trying to say the right
way is not more consolidation and more centralization, it is to loosen up on
the reins and bring other people into the tent.
And there is only two choices and we are going to find
out one way or another I think that the first one just doesn't work.
MME DELMAS : Effectivement, on n'est pas prêt. Les outils sont là, mais la volonté politique
n'est pas encore là en
Mais ce qu'il faut, c'est recréditer la démocratie
représentative.On élit des gens, et on se rend compte que, finalement, via
internet, on peut être aussi, quasiment aussi qualifié qu'eux, et on a envie,
du coup, de pouvoir les aider et on a besoin d'être écouté par eux.
Et moi, ce que j'attends, c'est qu'on donne du sens à
cette démocratie représentative, qui, pour une fois, prendrait vraiment de la
valeur, et ces activités entre les élus, qu'il y ait plus de transparence dans
le modèle de ce que Ellen Miller a montré tout à l'heure.
MR. BLAU: I
think that maybe one of the most powerful things a government can do is offer
APIs, application interfaces where then citizens can use this enormous wealth
of government data. And I think
governments will be surprised by what users will do, citizens will do with that
data and what new creative solutions they will come up with.
In regards to the motivation of governments to move
online, I sometimes look at governments as monopolies. And this fact that they are monopolies within
their countries is balanced by the fact that the whole team ideally gets
exchanged frequently. But still, they
don't have a competitor in that sense.
And media companies also were dragging their feet and what forced them
to go on line; was the traffic that user-generated content created and also the
fact that there is always one who is more courageous and who is going ahead and
then the others have to follow.
I think, like you said, Don, politicians have a lot to
lose, just like journalists have a lot to lose in what is happening right
now.There will always be journalists, but maybe a different kind of
journalist. And I looked around in
different industries and in different sectors of society, for instance, in the
energy industry we have user-generated energy now and over the internet the
role of energy companies is totally changing.You see even the military, the
role of professional soldiers and especially generals is changing because there
is user-generated battlefield intelligence that is changing the doctrines.There
is even journalists, more corporate R&D in many other areas.
So the professionals always have their place, there
will always be a place for professional politicians. But just like in these other professions,
they will have to upgrade and I think their role will go more towards being a moderator. Just like, again, journalists really have to
upgrade their skill set right now so that they have an advantage and an added
value that legitimizes that they want to sell their content.
MS MILLER: We
have just time for one more question. I
don't see anyone at the microphone.
So I will take the prerogative of the moderator
here. I think we all have examples, an
example or perhaps two in many countries of where government has become more
open or a politician has gone forward and created a policy wiki or the
Government of New Brunswick inviting you in, you know, to help them figure out
how to actually engage citizens.
Wolfgang, you may have the answer to this question,
Don and Quitterie as well, do we know of governments other than the Government
of Estonia, which is recognized for reinventing or inventing itself on the
internet so that it doesn't have this institutional resistance, we have never
done this before, it is scary, we don't know what it is going to mean, it could
be destabilizing, etc.
Who is leading us, whose example in the world, where
in the world, where there are governments that have embraced this concept and
that we should be looking toward?
MR. LENIHEN:
Well, if I can start, I will just say this, is that if there is such a
government I don't know of it. At least
the kind of changes that I think are necessary, which are really changing the
way governments govern, there are interesting examples in lots of different
countries and they usually happen via accident or circumstance or some inspired
leader who comes along and just has the right disposition and leads people.
I guess what I do want to say is that I believe that
we can institutionalize some very fundamental changes. And I think a lot of it does go back to what
Wolfgang was talking about, the right kind of culture and all those things, we
can't overlook that. We can't just use
the technology to change government and democracy. It is a high risk. I think we have to figure out how to do it
and you can institutionalize those changes, but we have got a long way to go.
MR. BLAU: I
would be equally hard pressed to mention any government. I see
MME DELMAS : Moi non plus, malheureusement, je n'ai
pas de modèle à suivre, et j'aimerais bien en avoir. C'est plus facile comme ça quand on a une
route toute tracée.
La seule chose que je
Je sais qu'au parlement européen, il va y avoir un
réel effort, et il est temps puisque les Européens, les citoyens d'Europe, ne
croient pas du tout dans cette institution, qui leur paraît très éloignée, très
bureaucratique, et action pas incarnée par des visages et des personnes qui
eux-mêmes portent des lois.
Donc, je pense qu'il faut avoir beaucoup d'espoir,
mais encore une fois, si les politiques ne décident pas de le faire, si les
professionnels de la politique ne décident pas de le faire, d'autres le feront,
et, malheureusement, encontre.
Et c'est aussi ça qui m'inquiète, moi. C'est que chez nous en
Il vaut mieux encadrer et faire en sorte que les
politiques se mettent à l'écoute. Mais
en tout cas, cette expérience était intéressante. Juste pour vous expliquer, il y eu un
collectif de chercheurs, donc, d'experts.
Il y a aussi des jeunes de banlieues, dont vous avez tous entendu parler,
qui se sont mobilisés ensemble pour défendre la même cause, et je pense que
c'est symboliquement très beau.
MS MILLER:
Well, thank you. Thank you very
much. I think I see a new project for
the Sunlight Foundation, which is perhaps beginning a wiki so people can add a
examples of this and perhaps we will have created the ideal list of examples
that way.
Thank you all for attending. We appreciate your questions, your interest
and we will be here for a few minutes in between sessions if you have
additional questions.
Thank you.
--- Applause
--- Whereupon the session
concluded at 3:09 p.m.