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Advocacy
Tracking of
legislative agendas
Group discussion of
issues
Group development of
position papers
"Community memory"
documents and meeting notes
Discussion
Both the information and communication resources of Internet can enhance the community response to local issues.
Online pages are an ideal setting for advocating issues , for calling attention to problems and suggesting options. Advocates can organize their arguments with all the necessary detail. They can reference other material online and provide their own "spin" on the work of others.
Organizations may have a stake in the policies or budgets set by government. Legislation tends to move rapidly at certain times. Online information can be quickly kept up to date. A history or comparison of legislation can be available. Ideally, this process is maintained by government. Even then, other organizations may wish to organize their own material - especially when suggesting alternatives. Organizations may rally others to action as legislation is being proposed.
People may be unfamiliar with the political process or with the appropriate contacts they should make. Educational material of this sort may already have been developed by other organizations. It is then appropriate to simply link to the other site.
An organization may sponsor a group discussion of a specific issue. A staff member may be designated to help keep the discussion on topic, to supply answers to questions raised and to create a summary or archive of discussions.
The disadvantage of forums is that they tend to be linear - material or comments are contributed, then the comments or contributions which follow tend to "bury" the previous material. Eventually, it is removed for lack of space. Material is contributed in order of the date added. There are not likely to be hypertext references. Readers would prefer to read the critical material without the extraneous detail and in sequences more appropriate to the content. Messages on a single theme can be "threaded" as a sequence of comments and responses. But it may be most useful for one person to serve as a "weaver" - identifying material in summary statements that seems most important. Material may also be archived and available through keyword searches.
A task force may work much more efficiently if members can review drafts and comment on evolving material between meetings. The time taken at meetings to work on specific wording can be reduced.
People who may miss a meeting will have a chance to catch up. Others with secondary roles can read and contribute to the efforts of a drafting committee.
As with the planning process, some of the material may not be public. But access can be limited using passwords.
Community process can be limited by memories and by turnover among participants. Only people who participate in most events and over a substantial period of time can have a broader perspective of this experience. Archiving material from community meetings , reports and position papers provides a document file that can help to bring everyone up to date.
Key documents are also useful to those outside a specific group or neighborhood who can use the details to be clearer about the perspective of participants.
Much time is wasted in communities repeating material to bring others up to date, restating positions well worked out at a previous time and failing to recognize the synergy between the experiences and perspectives of one community or sector and another. This may be particularly true across cities. Better communication makes it easier to learn from the mistakes of others or to understand the value of innovations developed in other places.
Hypertext is particularly useful for organizing this kind of material. References can easily be made from one document to another. And overviews can be prepared to summarize events and documents complete with pointers to the original material.