In January 2009, President Obama said “Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” Since then, various departments and government branches have enacted strategies that serve those core values of the Open Government Directive: transparency, participation, and collaboration. The challenge now facing these countries is that of integrating and encouraging the participation of, literally, millions of people. In this paper we discuss how Open Government initiatives that have been served by IdeaScale have resulted in positive outcomes for governments across these three categories: - Innovation - Engagement - Savings

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IDEASCALE

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At the beginning of his term, President Obama charged the government with
ushering in a new era of accessibility and transparency in American politics with the
Open Government Directive. In January 2009, he said “we will work together to
ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation,
and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency
and effectiveness in Government.”1
Since then, various departments and government branches have enacted strategies
that serve those core values of the Open Government Directive: transparency,
participation, and collaboration.
And now, as a result of this program’s success, the Open Government Partnership
has been launched – it is a global effort to raise government accountability around
the world. Some countries (like Brazil, Norway, South Africa, The United Kingdom,
and the United States) have already delivered their commitments to participate.
And these commitments are no small pledge. As part of their consultation,
participating countries will be asked to
• Share the details of their consultations
• Consult with the national community
• Raise awareness and encourage public participation
• Engage citizens through various mechanisms
• Create a forum for multi-stakeholder consultation2
The challenge now facing these countries is that of integrating and encouraging the
participation of, literally, millions of people. “Managing the voices from multiple
sources is a democratic imperative,” says Josh Folk, Vice President of Government
Relations at IdeaScale, “and it’s no small task, but countries participating in the Open
Government Partnership are already seeking to commit to a solution that leads their
people and their countries into a better future. It’s the right challenge.”
2OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIPS
A New Era of Communication

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The Open Government Partnership was started with the specific goals of promoting
transparency, empowering citizens, fighting corruption, and harnessing new
technologies to strengthen governance. Because transparency, participation, and
collaboration all work towards meeting these goals, citizens are not only encouraged
to participate, the benefit to them is personally palpable.
According to David Cameron (U.K. Prime Minister and advocate of Open Government
initiatives), open government serves its people by
• Enabling choice
• Raising standards and expectations
• And allowing for innovation in solving real problems3
Open Government initiatives that have been served by IdeaScale have also found that
these solutions result in positive outcomes for governments (as well as their people)
across these three categories: innovation, engagement, and savings.
The Benefits of an Open Government
OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIPS
Innovation
In 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) turned to IdeaScale for an
employee innovation challenge. The online competition encouraged VA employees to
discuss what improvements could be implemented in order to benefit veterans’
health. As a result the Department of Veteran Affairs...
• Saw over 4,650 ideas generated by a community of 50,755 employees.
• Received over 325,000 votes and nearly 9,000 comments.
• Saw additional interaction between employees beyond the voting itself;
IdeaScale’s crowdsourcing platform was also used as a knowledge sharing
forum among VA staff
• The top 125 ideas were vetted and 32 were selected for funding.
Engagement
Across the board, citizens and users are ready to submit their ideas in an easy, efficient
way. More than 20 U.S. Federal Government departments have employed IdeaScale
technology.

4. The U.S. Department of State is using IdeaScale to crowdsource ideas and suggestions
on policy. The Obama administration also used IdeaScale to solicit ideas from
government agencies on its Open Government initiative last year, and many others.
In each case, thousands of ideas were submitted which means that thousands of people
were suddenly evaluating, participating in, and engaging with their government. For
example, the National Dialogue on the new Federal Mobility Strategy generated a flurry
of dialogue over the course of the campaign, resulting in valuable feedback over how to
use mobile technologies to improve services to citizens, engage citizens in government,
reduce costs, and increase employee productivity.
Savings
In 2009, President Obama called for “a process through which every government
worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform
better.” For the past three years, the President’s SAVE (Securing Americans’ Value
and Efficiency) Award fulfilled this commitment by enabling Federal employees from
across the government to submit their ideas for efficiencies and savings as part of the
annual Budget process and the American people can vote online to choose the
winner.
The President’s SAVE Award has resulted in:
• More than 19,000 entries posted most recently in 2011 with nearly 13,000
comments and 82,000 votes from 21,000 users.
• Nearly 75,000 suggestions over the course of the past three years
• Innovations that include full use of all Veterans’ medicine, a NASA “lending
library” and reducing Federal Register hard copies by more than 24,000
subscribers.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, “On their own, these cuts will
not solve our fiscal problems, but they are a critical step to creating a more
responsible and accountable Government and a key component of a comprehensive
deficit reduction strategy. It is never easy to end or cut a program; they all have
advocates. But removing the burden placed on us by years of irresponsible policy
decisions that helped generate these deficits is essential to creating an America that
can compete in the world economy—and that can win the future.”4
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5. An Elegant Solution for Complex Questions
IdeaScale presents a unique opportunity to governments seeking to truly
democratize a citizen’s experience. IdeaScale technology allows citizens to submit
ideas to a site and then vote on their favorite ideas. The ideas that have the most
favorable votes bubble up to the top. Agencies and other departments can then
join in the discussion by commenting on ideas and posting updates, effectively
creating a community throughout the creative suggestion process.
Among IdeaScale’s many benefits, it provides
• Public and private communities
• Unlimited ideas, users, comments, moderators, and admins
• Accessible to users with Screen Readers
• SSL/TLS Security Single Sign-on
• SAS 70 Type II audited servers
• Custom Domain and CSS/Stylesheet Customization
• Mobile Optimized and mobile apps with social integration (Twitter,
Facebook)
• Full API access
• Gov Consultation / Pre-Flight Check
• Gov Domain (.gov) access restriction
• Gov “of topic” idea status
Additionally, because governments represent a melting pot and cross-section of
cultures, traditions, and heritages, IdeaScale offers multi-language support, all
while continuing to evolve at the speed of innovation, integrating social media and
mobile capabilities (including mobile application support for iOS and Android).
IdeaScale is the premier idea management tool for the government sector. Over
80,000 ideas have been collected from customers that include the White House,
the Department of Veterans Affairs, global governments, NASA, the FCC, and
dozens more.
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