What's New
Collaborative Planning For Groundwater Management (3/08/10)
John Folk-Williams The collaborative approach to water resource planning has been growing over the past 15 years, especially where urban, agricultural and environmental needs are straining the local supplies. Like many other public water managers, the Sonoma County (California) Water Agency faced a decline in groundwater supply throughout the Sonoma Valley as pumping steadily increased because of growth.
The Opportunity Of Climate Change - Yes, Of Course We Can (3/01/10)
Eileen Barker I attended COP15 as a delegate from Mediators Beyond Borders (MBB), an international group of mediators from over 20 countries. We were there to advocate for the use of mediation and other collaborative processes in climate change negotiations and disputes.
Moving Toward Agreement From The Extremes (3/01/10)
John Folk-Williams In this post, I want to review studies that extend this discussion to other frames of reference. Cass Sunstein, a prominent law professor, addresses the role of deliberation as it relates to the formation of extremist groups and the larger political institutions that control extremism through the system of checks and balances. Though these books address different types of policy discussions, they agree that fruitful dialogue can occur among people holding extreme and opposing views but only if they are willing to consider new ideas and possible changes to their positions.
(2/23/10)
Keith Seat
Freedom of Information Act disputes are now being mediated by the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), which was created within the National Archives and Records Administration and officially began work in September 2009. In its first months, OGIS has begun work on about 40 disputes. OGIS, which will have a staff of six, is working with a contractor to add online dispute resolution and is seeking to provide more transparency into matters it is mediating. In addition to directly resolving disputes, OGIS is tasked with providing suggestions for FOIA improvements. OGIS also plans to provide mediation training to FOIA officers in federal agencies to reduce the number of disputes that arise from the roughly 600,000 FOIA requests made each year.
Federal Computer Week (January 14, 2010); OGIS Website
Collaborative Rationality (2/22/10)
Larry Susskind In their extraordinary new book, Planning With Complexity (Routledge, 2010), Judith Innes and David Booher make the case for a new way of knowing and deciding.
Consensus Building And The Unshakable Rightness Of Belief (2/22/10)
John Folk-Williams Anyone who’s worked at building consensus on public policy knows the frustration of trying to reason with someone who just won’t change a position or even consider alternative possibilities. They may refuse to accept any evidence that seems to disprove their positions and become aggressive and disruptive in the face of challenges. Sometimes, it’s possible to write off this unshakable dissenter as an oddball individual, well-known to the rest of the group as such. But in a collaborative process each person represents a specific interest and has an important role to play in reaching agreement. A careful response is needed to move dialogue in a productive direction.
Open Source Negotiation Of Public Works (2/15/10)
Victoria Pynchon You might recall an earlier post in which I reported the (both expected and astonishing) results of an open source project in which researchers "opened up a set of 166 scientific problems from the research laboratories of twenty-six firms to over 80,000 independent scientists," resulting in the resolution of one-third of the problems that the research labs had been unable to solve without assistance.
Consensus Building: Changing Minds To Reach Agreement (2/01/10)
John Folk-Williams For a diverse group to reach consensus, at least some of the participants – perhaps all of them – have to change their minds. They come into the room with differing, often fundamentally conflicting ideas about the challenges they face. They likely disagree on how to define problems, technical methods that should be used to explore potential solutions and the options that might meet their needs for an acceptable solution.
Moving Fast, Going Slow: Implementing The Open Government Directive (1/25/10)
John Folk-Williams Deadlines are fast approaching for federal agencies to complete the initial tasks under the Open Government Directive. Publishing new data sets, opening websites, completing longer-term Open Government Plans, and dozens of others. But notably missing is any deadline or deliverable addressing changes in agency cultures and processes. Yet every day those basic dimensions of government life influence managers and staff to resist new levels of openness.
(1/19/10)
Keith Seat
A North Carolina appellate court interpreted the detailed provisions requiring mediation of funding disputes between the board of education and the board of county commissioners and determined that appropriation of more school funds by the county does not again trigger the notification and statutory mediation process if the amount is still considered insufficient by the school board. If the mediation has not been successful by the statutory deadline, the mediator must declare impasse, which triggers the right to file suit and gives the court subject matter jurisdiction.
Duplin County Bd. of Educ. v. Duplin County Bd. of County Com'rs, 2009 WL 3837004 (N.C. App., November 17, 2009) (Subscription Required)
The Open Government Directive & Changing Federal Culture – 2 (1/11/10)
John Folk-Williams As a mediator, I have this annoying habit of taking all sides of an issue seriously. Further, as a colleague once put it to me, people in our line of work need to combine optimism about outcomes with cynicism about motives. So I thought I’d offer doses of both in looking at the brighter and darker prospects for the federal agency culture change promised in President’s Open Government Directive.
The Open Government Directive & Changing Federal Agency Culture (1/04/10)
John Folk-Williams Will federal agencies really become more fully transparent, participatory and collaborative, as the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive promises? Hopes are high among advocates of the new policies that such practices will become the standard across the government.
(12/29/09)
Keith Seat
After lengthy consideration, the Texas Department of Insurance launched a mediation program on September 1 for Hurricane Ike claims, but has received only a handful of requests for mediation. The Department allows insurers not to participate in the program, so only three companies covering one-fourth of the state’s property insurance have chosen to do so. Further, the program relies on insurers to do outreach to claimants, resulting in a modest number of letters being sent to policyholders and raising concerns that the companies may cherry-pick who they contact. As in past programs, the insurers cover the cost of mediation.
Chron.com (November 5, 2009)
Copenhagen Deal Will Require More Than A Little Give And Take (12/21/09)
John Sturrock Last week, I found myself in the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, the location for the negotiations on climate change. It is a vast cavern, with scores of rooms serving as the location for talks, presentations, media activity and lobbying. I was struck by the sheer mass of people, with laptops, leaflets, cameras and TV screens, milling around in the hope of influencing discussions. That image has stayed with me as we hear daily of the difficulties facing negotiations.
New Year's Negotiation Resolution: Dialogue With The Public Conversations Project (12/21/09)
Victoria Pynchon Join me in my New Year's resolutions to focus on our similarities and common interests rather than on our differences and conflicting goals; find common ground; share the experiences from which our opinions dervice (our stories); set aside argument in favor of dialogue; remember that each one of us is struggling with some great burden despite outward appearances; and, that squeezing the last nickel or concession out of our bargaining partner fails to recognize that we are all in this together.
Me and Joe Lieberman: Fantasy Negotiations and Little Irrationalities (12/16/09)
r.d. benjamin Joe Lieberman, the independent Senator from Connecticut, pissed me off today. First, he is screwing up the pending health care reform legislation, and second, he is forcing me to consider my commitment to negotiation and mediation. Others seem to enjoy fantasy football or picking the perfect baseball team. My amusement, as twisted as some might find it, is picturing myself in ‘the room’ negotiating the big stuff, like health care policy ‘reform’ pending in the U.S. Congress.
The Back Of The Napkin: New Approaches To Visualizing And Communicating Ideas (12/14/09)
John Folk-Williams Effective visual presentation of technical data allows collaboration participants to understand and remember information quickly and efficiently. Visual explanation is just as important in conveying key concepts that guide a group in defining its goals and creating options for consensus agreements. In recent years, several masters of visual communication have published influential books offering new methods for ending the dominance of the bullet-point slide show.
Mediators Calling For Climate Change Mediation Provision (12/10/09)
Kenneth Cloke Mediators Beyond Borders (MBB) is calling on all delegates to include a mediation provision in the climate change treaty. Currently, the Kyoto Protocol includes negotiation, conciliation, arbitration, and judicial options, but not mediation.
Mediation And Climate Change (12/07/09)
John Sturrock Climate change and its effects are no respecters of national borders. We are told that we face unprecedented alterations to weather patterns across the globe. Disruption of this sort may pose potentially serious security risks for many countries as competition for scarce resources grows and the pace of change outstrips our ability to adapt. Mass migration is one such threat. This could bring about dangerous conflicts within and between states. We will need to find ways to address these.
Resolving Complaints About Irresponsible Corporations (12/07/09)
Larry Susskind Corporations are supposed to pay attention to environmental, health, safety, labor, tax, consumer protection, information disclosure, and human rights laws wherever they set up shop. But, we've all seen and heard stories about multinationals guilty of violations in far-away places. They have been charged with allowing unsafe working conditions, blocking legitimate unionization efforts; ignoring environmental and health standards, bribing officials, and turning a blind eye to human rights violations.
Community Collaboration: Air Quality Resource Teams (11/30/09)
John Folk-Williams This video, from Policy Consensus Council and Community Focus, depicts a community collaboration program established by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in 1991. The program created Air Quality Resource Teams in each of the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, all of which continue to operate.
What Do You Do When Consensus Fails? (11/23/09)
John Folk-Williams This is the nightmare scenario for any consensus process: After months of hard work by 20 or 30 participants, one or two holdouts, perhaps representing narrow or personal interests, block agreement and frustrate the entire effort.
Multi-Party Facilitation - Improvisation: How to ‘Do The Jazz’ in Multi-party Facilitations (11/12/09)
Alex Azarov Multi-party facilitations often reach such levels of complexity that the facilitator must be thoroughly prepared. However, things often don’t eventuate the way we predict and preparation alone is not enough to avoid a possible de-railing of the process. A skilled facilitator must be able to manage unexpected group dynamics in a similar way to a jazz musician taking part in an improvised performance.
Click here for MORE ARTICLES
