I am excited to announce that Joanne Caddy has joined the E-Democracy.Org Board. She is participating strictly as an individual, but in public engagement circles many know her as the lead editor for the OECD’s Citizens as Partners guide early this decade.
Exploring public participation the world over is Joanne Caddy’s passion and profession. Her first forays into the field, as part of doctoral research, took her to Central Europe where the post-1989 transitions to democracy made public participation a reality. Currently a policy analyst for the OECD’s Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development, she has the chance to listen to, and learn from, national level civil servants from 30 member countries as they discuss common challenges and exchange good practices, tips and tools for strengthening public participation to improve policy, services and public trust. In 2006-2007 she served as Senior Advisor for e-participation to the New Zealand State Services Commission and helped craft the Guide to Online Participation launched in September 2007. The Guide was novel in that it actually practiced what it preached: the entire text was drafted on a wiki platform open to members of a Community of Practice whose members were drawn from government, business and civil society. It is in her personal capacity, as a long-time observer of online participation, that she has joined the Board where she hopes to contribute to E-Democracy.Org’s future development – as its successful model is taken up and adapted to local contexts in other countries. Joanne resides in Paris, France where the OECD is headquartered.
We are extremely pleased to welcome Joanne to our Board. We now have Board members scattered around the world France (1), UK (1), Washington DC (1), Minnesota (3), Colorado (1) and look to continue building a Board that will help build our future as a globally local movement for information-age democracy and community participation.
Thank You Sheldon Mains!
Sheldon Mains joined us way back in 1996 as a short-term Executive Director when we had a small grant to build for our election 1996 activities. (We started with the world’s first election information website in 1994.) He helped us gain our 501.c3 non-profit status and served on our Board from 1997 through 2007. Today he is a non-profit technology consultant and most recently served as an elected member of the Minneapolis Library Board (which has now merged with the county library). As he left the Board he demonstrated his commitment to local democracy by helping start the Seward Neighborhood Forum with Peter Fleck and Becca Dagget. You can track Sheldon’s posts to our public forums via his profile page on our forum site. We miss Sheldon’s get to the point wit on our monthly Board meeting teleconferences already. Thank you Sheldon.
Steven Clift
Board Chair, E-Democracy.Org