Thoughtscapes: May 2007

It’s finally out there! Thank you to the many of you who supported the initiative- you are far too numerous for me to name you all- my gratitude to you for caring about a better world! Special thanks to Chad Lupkes for helping improve the concept, seeding intial pages and for his enthusiasm and commitment to making a better world!

Government wiki or Giki is a wiki application designed to be used by governments and citizens alike. It's mission is to help citizens and government organizations to form a community around common purposes to make the world a better place.

Wikis are increasingly used internally by companies and public sector organizations, some as prominent as Adobe, Microsoft and the FBI. They represent an alternative to centrally-managed Content Management Systems. They potentially allow a more flexible approach to Project Management than dedicated software.

Features of Giki

Features of giki specifically helpful to citizens and organizations include:

creating a participatory space for evolving a common purpose, mission and sharing visions.

updating project and budget information and benchmarking against similar activities elsewhere in the world.

sharing functions and procedures and discovering best practices with other similar bodies elsewhere.

keeping organizational information: its constitution, its organizational structure and contact information current.

evolving a way for cross organizational dialogue where common or shared purpose matters.

Using Giki

This wiki space is a great opportunity for citizens to evolve a shared vision with government agencies- to learn and update information on the functions offices of different agencies, to compare practices worldwide.

It’s great for governments too- One way to organize communities around missions. Great possibility space to listen to what the purposes government organizations should serve in a new world. A fantastic way to see and share the practice of government.

This is a wiki to help the community to create a better world for everyone. Remember, we're all in this together!

Giki is YOUR single point to connect with communities, share purpose, missions and practices for local and global governance.

Giki will include articles for government departments for different countries, states and towns across the world. It will include information on the constitution, purpose, mission, offices and indicators of performance. It may include a history or timeline of people in office, purpose and focus at the time, rules, laws, and performance indicators.

In fact it will contain the information that will help YOU to build a better world fro everyone.

The idea is to get the community to share and evolve purposes, missions, document critical issues, performances and create a chaordic model of governance from a "Neutral Point of View" of wiki.

An example

Imagine a small government disconnected without a web-site can now reach out to the community it serves. Or dedicated citizens can help people from thier communities connect around their governments.

Imagine helping your government to discover what purpose is more relevant now- as against the decades or centuries ago that its constitution was laid out.

Imagine government departments discovering common projects, practices. Or just projects addressing the same space and that need to be coordinated. Even in the same town!

Imagine the community from San Francisco creating a wiki page on the DMV there- its purposes, practices, goals, programs and performance.

Imagine someone in Bangalore or Delhi making a similar page for the Department of Transportation or Road Transport Organization. Perhaps many more across the world have a similar page.

Now imagine the opportunity to connect- create common purposes, evolve best practices. Imagine the opportunity to create global citizenry and local responsibility.

Making it happen

Like to see a different way to make your voice be heard? To live a life that matters? To contribute to the "long now"? To address the long tail of government?

Newbies to wiki's can experiment adding and editing at http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Sandbox .
If you have used wiki's like wikipedia before just go straight to http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Giki.. Those who would like to learn more about using wiki's can go to a quick tutorial. Don't worry even I learnt how to do it for this project in 15 minutes! If you would like to experiment before you make contributions use this area, its called a "sandbox".

Many of you are experienced and passionate about building communities, build a community around issues that matter to you. Remember this is a space about mutual respect and love. So long as you do not violate that it's your second chance to live a life you would like to live.
And of course, invite your friends and family in this adventure to make a difference.

May your efforts bear many successes and your experiences fun and rewarding!