Hi Chloe,
I had to say
> Merry Christmas 
while reading your report again. You write well. (this coming from an ancient editor).
Nice to see we share the same “overall takeaway” from the summit = the importance of international collaboration and resource sharing across the Open Government space.
So I hope next year we might see the beginnings of an International Civil Society Network (CSN) to complement the OGP project. As you’ve seen, this UK forum is a bit dead. But that’s only because it’s too limited. As you say, we need International Collaboration (on common commitments), not just National Comparison (on individual outcomes).
I’m jealous. It’s taken over a decade and a half for the OGP process to make some inroads into the thick hides of English-speaking public institutions. The progressives, mainly northern Europeans, thankfully don’t carry the baggage of Westminster’s huge silos. So could we get a focus on them and see if it doesn’t influence a change in the UK (and Aussie) silos.
Lucky You. You’ll find the OGP progressives have formed up around that Nordic+ group that Neisha/Scotland is across. Don’t know when their event is next year so if you could make a note on this for when you get back after Xmas, it would be appreciated.
The main community I’m attempting to introduce into the OGP members’ process is the guys who run the National Research and Education Networks, primarily across Europe. The Rational is pretty simple. They have already invented the network technologies which Research groups across the world use to authenticate their users, and share, communicate and store their findings.
Its time to consider what would happen if these public spaces were let out of the research networks. Nothing new there. But we will need an International approach, and limiting our focus to the progressives simply makes it a lot less effort and a lot more enjoyable.
I’ll just point to the two approaches that progressives are taking.
Engineers, like the Dutch, will take this approach of co-designing tools.
Policy makers like the Scots will take a tentative approach to co-designing a Framework
The solution(s) will pop out the resolution between the two approaches.
You might intuit why I said “lucky you”. Its taken over a decade to get to this point.
I hope don’t me writing this long one to you. There’s a chance the penny might drop shortly, once we have a few community managers operating around an International CSN site.
We’ll see. At least, hopefully, you will.
Happy New Year. Simon