International Civic Engagement

International Journal for Public Participation - Winter 2007 Issue

The International Journal for Public Participation recently published its Winter 2007 issue - http://www.iap2.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=247.

Features

When Citizens and Officeholders Meet: Variations in the Key Elements of Public Meetings
John Gastil and Todd Kelshaw

Civic Deliberation: An Exploration into Civic Deliberation, Emotional Response, and Political Involvement
James Price Dillard and Steven J. Backhaus

Governing Nature, Governing Ourselves: Engaging Citizens in Natural Resource Decisions
Matt McKinney and Will Harmon

Matching Public Interaction Skills with Desired Outcomes
Jan Inglis

Understanding Abnormal Public Discourses: Dialogue and Deliberation Defined
Todd Kelshaw

Understanding Deliberativeness: Bridging Theory and Practice
Janette Hartz-Karp

The Challenge of Enhancing Public Participation on Dams and Development: A Case for Evaluation
Claudia Baldwin and Vivien Twyford

Reviews

The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule is Giving Way to Shared Governance and Why Politics will Never be the Same
By Matt Leighninger (reviewed by Carolann Cole)

Deliberation and the Restoration of America's Democratic Potential
By E. Terry Jack and Edwards Wright (reviewed by Michael D'Innocenzo)

Reply to D'Innocenzo, by E. Terry Jack and Edward Wright

Voices of Hope: The Story of the Jane Addams School for Democracy
By Nan Kari and Nan Skelton (reviewed by Michael Briand)

Summer Programs on International Affairs & International Trade

The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Summer Programmes 2008
June 16 – July 25
• Two intensive three-week programmes on key challenges of world politics, diplomacy and multilateralism
o International Affairs and Multilateral Governance, June 16 – July 4
o WTO, International Trade and Development, July 7 – 25

Deadline for Applications: April 1, 2008
Programmes and Admissions information http://hei.unige.ch/summer (until January 1st) http://graduateinstitute.ch/executive/summer (from January 1st 2008)

Champenois Jasmine
Email: executive@hei.unige.ch

Call for Papers - IPAA National Conference Academic Day - 18 June 2008

[Courtesy of International Public Management Network Listserv]

The Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) is the professional association for people interested in government reform, policy issues, trends, best practice and innovation in public sector management.

The 2008 IPAA National Conference will be held in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday 19 and Friday 20 June 2008 in the Crystal Palace Convention Centre at Sydney's iconic Luna Park. 

A pre-conference Academic Day will be held on Wednesday 18 June 2008.  Academic and practitioner researchers are invited to submit proposals for papers or panels for the Academic Day which will focus on the key themes of the conference and the future direction and challenges for public administration theory and research.  The Conference organisers particularly encourage proposals that adopt a comparative and international perspective and address the implications of research findings for public administrators.

The IPAA National Conference will focus on four key themes:

Organisational Capacity Building: the business of work, eg, workforce planning, performance management, governance and ethic! s

Partnerships: partnering with the private sector, other departments, other levels of government, NGOs and universities, and partnering models such as Governing by Network

Service Delivery: innovative models of service delivery, and interaction between departments and levels of government

Communities: working with engaged communities, and unpacking community.

The Academic Day will examine these four themes by asking what is shaping and influencing the activities of public sector agencies across these core functions.  How might these functions change in the future and what challenges are likely to emerge?  Can public administration theory explain the continued effort to modernise the structures, relationships and processes of public administration? 

If you are interested in submitting a paper for consideration, please provide an abstract of up to 300 words (by mail to the address below or preferably by e mail in a format compatible with MS Word and including National IPAA Conference paper abstract Academic Day in the Subject line), accompanied by your full contact details including affiliation, by the abstract deadline of Thursday 28 February 2008.

For more information on the Conference please visit www.ipaa2008.org.au or contact Craig Boaden at craig@nsw.ipaa.org.au if you have any questions.

2007 Global Accountability Report

The One World Trust has published the 2007 Global Accountability Report, an annual assessment of the capabilities of 30 of the world’s most powerful global organizations from the intergovernmental, non-governmental, and corporate sectors to be accountable to civil society, affected communities, and the wider public.

A Compact for Post-Secondary Education

National Governors Association executive director Raymond C. Scheppach wrote at Stateline.org:

High-quality post-secondary education is crucial to ensuring America’s competitiveness in the global economy. U.S. colleges and universities equip our students with advanced critical-thinking and adaptive skills to generate new knowledge and solve problems. While America’s public post-secondary education system is still highly prized, many countries around the world are not only improving on our system, they are developing new models—models that link more closely to the innovation needs of these countries’ industries and regions and that are graduating a growing number of highly qualified students, particularly in science, math and engineering.

Read his full column at http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=265698.

New Report: Local Networks Gaining in Strength and Impact

[Courtesy of UN Global Compact]

The UN Global Compact and the Barcelona Center for the Support of the Global Compact yesterday launched the first comprehensive survey of Global Compact Local Networks. The report presents a detailed analysis of 90 emerging and existing networks and showcases numerous examples of network activities from all regions of the world.

"Local Network Report: Deepening the Engagement of Participants at the Local Level” marks the first systematic attempt to gather and present statistical data and information about local networks, and has been produced in close collaboration with local network focal points around the world. The report presents lessons learned regarding how networks emerge and are sustained, as well as how they deliver local results and contribute to the overall mission of the UN Global Compact. In addition, the report highlights inspiring and innovative solutions developed by local networks to give the ten universal principles a concrete and practical local meaning, and therefore makes an important contribution to defining what corporate citizenship means in different national contexts.

“Local networks continue to play a crucial role in the Global Compact, and the report shows the extent to which these networks are becoming a vibrant reality all over the world”, said Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact. “Ultimately, change must occur at the local level. At the same time, the Global Compact can only thrive and fulfill its promise when networks are sensitive to cultural, linguistic and institutional characteristics across countries. This report provides a good snapshot of where we stand today”.

Spain's eGovernment Portal Now Offers Access to 565 National, Regional and Local Public Services

From Government Technology International:

www.060.es is the first portal to give unified electronic access to Spain's public services, regardless of which administration runs them, according to the EU's Epractice News. The new version will enable users to personalize this facility and adapt it to their own needs. Of the 565 services that can now be reached via the site, 325 are provided by the various departments of the General State Administration, 181 by Spain's autonomous communities and 23 by local authorities.

Minister of Public Administration Elena Salgado presented the enhanced version of the portal when she opened the tenth edition of Tecnimap, Spain's eGovernment fair.

Apart from additional services, 060.es now offers interactive functions, including one that permits users to evaluate and comment on the services provided. Surveys and FAQs have also been added, as well as new ways to personalize the site. For instance, users who have logged on can manage their subscriptions to electronic bulletins and publications, earmark their most frequently used services and their favorite searches, and send other people links which they think might interest them.

The portal is one of the three elements in Spain's Red 060 (Network 060), dedicated to giving citizens the information they need. The other two constituents are local offices and the telephone hotline number after which the network is named.

Social Capital Events

From Fabio Sabatini of Social Capital Gateway:

Dear All,
this is to let you know about two interesting upcoming events:

- The Summer school on "Social Norms" will take place in San Sebastian, Spain, on July 14-17, 2008. The deadline for submitting an abstract is January 31, 2008. Please follow the link for further details:

http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/eng-sansebastian2008.html

- The workshop "Happiness and capability: measurement, theory and policy" will take place in Njimengen, the Netherlands, on 22nd August 2008. The deadline for submitting a proposal is 31 January 2008:

http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/eng-nijmegen2008.html

Jews and Muslims Set Up Big Interfaith Effort

From the Washington Post:

Two major Jewish and Muslim organizations unveiled an interfaith dialogue curriculum Saturday and are urging their hundreds of thousands of members to use it. Both sides say it is the broadest Jewish-Muslim interfaith effort in the continent's history.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, North America's largest Jewish movement, announced the partnership with the Islamic Society of North America at his group's biennial convention in San Diego.

"As a once-persecuted minority in countries where anti-Semitism is still a force, we understand the plight of Muslims in North America today," Yoffie said yesterday. "We live in a world in which religion is manipulated to justify the most horrific acts, a world in which -- make no mistake -- Islamic extremists constitute a profound threat. For some, this is a reason to flee from dialogue, but in fact the opposite is true. When we are killing each other in the name of God, sensible religious people have an obligation to do something about it."

This summer Yoffie became the first major Jewish leader to address ISNA, the continent's largest Muslim organization with 30,000 attendants coming to its annual convention. ISNA President Ingrid Mattson addressed the 980-congregation Jewish group yesterday, the first leader of a major Muslim group to do so.

The manual and video are built around five sessions that touch on topics including the place of Jerusalem in Jewish and Muslim tradition and history. The toughest potential sticking points will probably be related to Israel and to stereotypes both groups carry about the other, Mark Pelavin, director of interreligious affairs for the Jewish group, said in an interview. "Jews want to know how Muslims feel about terrorism in the name of Islam, and Muslims want to know how Jews feel about Palestinian suffering."

Eleven synagogue-mosque pairs have already been set up as pilot programs, including two in the D.C. area: the Islamic Society of Southern Prince George's County of Temple Hills and Temple Solel in Bowie is one, and the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling and the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston is the other.

Yoffie also announced that the two groups created an adult curriculum on Islam and pressed every synagogue to consider offering it.

"There exists in our community a profound ignorance about Islam, along with a real desire to learn about what moves and motivates Muslims today. We must respond to this desire with serious programs of education," he said.

Both groups already have dialogue programs with various other faith groups, but on a much smaller scale.

Web Site on Federal Grants, Loans and Contracts Debuts

From GovExec.com:

The Office of Management and Budget rolled out a new Web site Thursday that will provide information on all major federal grants, loans and contracts. The new site, dubbed USASpending.gov, is dedicated to improving transparency by providing the public with information on all major federal transactions.

The launch fulfills one of the key requirements of the 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which requires full disclosure on a Web site maintained by OMB of all organizations receiving more than $25,000 in federal funds. 

Full story: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=38846&dcn=e_gvet