[laughs] I’ve written three books on the topic, Joichi, so plenty of experience. We’re tomorrow running a co-design project that we’ve done most recently in five cities in Mexico, previously in five cities in Africa.

In my capacity as head of The GovLab, I worked with governments around the world on digital transformation and government innovation. Thanks.

I’m Beth Noveck, currently serving as the chief innovation officer for the state of New Jersey, was previously the deputy chief technology officer and the head of open government for the Obama Administration. I’ve also advised both the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and worked for David Cameron, Prime Minister of ...

Bye.

Talk to you…

We’ll do that. Thank you. That would be great.

Thank you. Thank you, Dane. Let’s save the chat, if you don’t mind, because there are a lot of links in there, and if we don’t copy and paste them…

That’s right, or even have dinner or something if you’re there as long as six days. That’s great. Let me ping you back about that very shortly. I’ll be in DC after I get my act together.

Pick up a hobby.

Number two, again, also if you’re willing, no obligation, but I’ll send you the draft of the testimony that I’m working on, a lot of which is astroturfing, but it will discuss vTaiwan. Again, they’re interested in astroturfing, and so that’s the hook for me to talk about this.

Thank you very much. I’m grateful for the offer of the more time. Unfortunately, I’m behind, so I don’t have it. What we’re going to do is we’re going to circle back with drafts so you can see them, number one.

Audrey, anything we didn’t ask you? I know you’re interviewed constantly and get to talk about this all the time. The last quick question is what do you think is useful to you in terms of what hasn’t been said, what audiences haven’t been covered, or what would be helpful ...

Dane, any things we forgot, details, etc.?

Non-vTaiwan examples. There are obvious global movement projects like Ushahidi or Safecast. Curious what’s on your radar screen, either in terms of good tools and technology, really good process, or other characteristics that’s on your radar screen.

Do you have favorites out there at the moment as you look around, like “I love this project” or things that you’re most excited about in terms of other examples?

Yes, see e.g. Madrid. For me, it comes back to it’s both the institutional headwind, but it’s not just the attack on power. It’s the failure to comprehend the need to create things that are implementable, that are doable, not just to come up with ideas.

Not surviving forever doesn’t mean they don’t work. They change into other things, that’s fine, but why some things last and other things don’t, and what it takes to institutionalize a project like a sort of culture change like this.

I’m just wondering both first about vTaiwan, to come back to that question again, but also then in terms of the field generally, what’s your sense about why some of these projects work.

What you’ve observed as someone in this field looking at other projects, some have survived political transition and elections and changes of the party, and some have not even lasted through one administration. Obviously, the PO network and the training piece you’ve talked about in the past has been very ...

Yeah. I just want to come back to the original question for a moment. You’ve answered this in many different ways about this question of institutionalization, and it doesn’t have to be only about vTaiwan.

Sorry, back to you, Dane.

We were also going to use your priorities for one of the things we’re doing with AARP. Again, I’m not sure that it works all that well [laughs] in this context.

That’s very helpful. The concept is a good one. I’m just not seeing, the way Robert does it, that it’s working in practice. It’s an important innovation. It’s something I’m going to talk about in terms of the ability to create a more deliberative online commenting environment.

Interesting.

The most recent thing with the Scottish Parliament, they then turned it off. The Parliament chose to do one consultation with it on and then one consultation with it off, which is interesting from a research perspective. That’s another topic. I was just curious about whether you’re seeing more balanced ...

Awesome. We will take a look at this. I was curious in particular because I was trying to write something about Robert’s pros and cons feature. I was looking at one of his recent consultations, and they’re all pros and no con comments. Their most recent thing they did with ...

Divine pig case.

I’ll force it to. Don’t worry.

This one. It’s thinking.

Let me go back here.

Is it just github? That one doesn’t auto-translate because it’s got a graphic on the front page.

Maybe any time in the past is most useful in terms of giving us…

Just out of curiosity, since Google Translate sucks here, is there one of these ideas or discussions…I mean, the translate works. Which one would you say is the most active if we wanted to look, to dig in? When it translates, it comes out pretty shitty looking. Do you have ...

To put it nicely, you sort of stole it, forked it, forked the concept, right? It’s not Robert’s stuff, correct?

Audrey, the forum for the new Join site, is that all home-grown? It looks a lot like your priorities in many ways in terms of having the pro and con feature.

Sorry, Dane. I’m interrupting.

Somebody has to get the coffee. There’s no replacement for that in collective intelligence.

Was the food stations?

Maybe I should bring snacks to my congressional testimony. [laughs]

The food being the crucial ingredient in…

[laughs] Five years? I’ve lost track of time. Just how you’ve gotten people to evolve from that thinking only about ideas to thinking about implementation of ideas.

The difficulty, and that’s where the multi-stage, multi-part process has been so transformative and hard to do in a lot of places, is getting people to focus on what it takes to implement something, to create a workable proposal. I’m just wondering if you have any reflections at this point ...

I want to probe a little bit more though the question of bridging the gap between ideas and implementation of ideas and what the learning has been. The initial phase of every project like this, any engagement project, always starts with people having suggestions, ideas, complaints, “Do this, do that, ...

Helpful.

I’m curious about, over time, this trade-off between essentially what’s the complexity of the process and the desire for simplicity and whether there hasn’t been a push to say, “We want one thing, and one platform, and one way of doing things,” how you’ve managed to maintain this kind of ...

I think this is on the list, Dane. I’m sorry, but I’m jumping ahead. The question is, in so many places, the goal is to get to simplicity, one platform, one interface. Simple, simple, simple. It’s so hard to explain to people even how one platform works. This is multiple ...

It begins with Wednesdays as they call it here.

Is it the PO network that meets every Wednesday?

I’m going to mute because all of this racket in the background.

It’s giving me a blank screen. Dane, is it working for you?