thinking

If you feel there is an important participation-related recommendation to make that falls outside the scope of the topics listed above, feel free to submit your recommendation as a draft here, and work with others to put together the best set of such recommendations.

Drafting Directions: Review the comments from the Discussion blog as well as comments made by government employees and review the submissions in From the Inbox. Incorporating earlier input, you may write your own draft, or combine and edit those of others to create a new one.

Writing policy requires translating good ideas into clear, specific directions for practical implementation. Hence a good recommendation will be no more than 4 sentences and a set of recommendations will be no more than 1 page. To be of maximum use, a recommendation should address:

- Who is being directed to do something? (e.g. “All agencies must…”)
- What is the institution being directed to do?
- Why is it important that they do so?
- How will success be measured?

Note that per the terms of use, your drafts are expected to be (among other things) civil and on-topic. We are depending upon you, the community, to help maintain the quality of this process, by reporting drafts which appear to violate these terms. Once reported a sufficient number of times, drafts will be submitted for moderator review. They will then be republished in their original place, republished as an "off-topic" draft, or archived off-line if it can not be republished.

Return to Open Government Directive, Phase Three: Drafting, or to the OSTP Blog.

I received this email from a friend. Why are we paying people to take a six month vacation? You must implement a better system to make sure this is not happening - I am tired of paying for other people to play when I work 24/7.

The email reads: Halliburton finally laid him off. He made $91,000 last year and doesn't have a thing to show for it! No savings, etc. But they do have nice cars! They are headed to CA for 6 months, so have leased out their house here in Fruita (one of the new ones in Vally Vista). They rented a 1 bdrm apt for $1300 a month. Larry's daughter just wants to live in CA near the beach. A great placed to visit, but not to live!!! They will figure it out fairly quickly when they see how few people speak english, how rude they are and the high crime rate.
I read in the Daily Sentinel that President Obama is interested in the wonderful health care insurance in Grand Junction, CO as a model for other communities. Someone is lying to him. I had Rocjky Mountain HMO for 30 years with very few claims. They would not let me change type of policy due to high blood pressure and they eliminated everyone out of my type of policy until there were just a few of us left that had pre existing conditions and charged $1,000 per month and paid only 1/2 of any bill we received. Obviously, I am without insurance now. Don't let these people fool you, they weed out anyone who has potential claims and then rip of Medicare to boot.
Require all federal agencies to procure 100% recycled paper for all publications, internal documents, correspondence, printed receipts, all other printed materials. Require all organizations receiving federal funding to use 100% recycled paper for all printed materials related to federally-funded projects and contracts. Give companies that have traditionally won government paper contracts, but do not have the capacity to fill orders with 100% recycled product, 3-5 years "grandfather clause" to convert production. Recycled products have remained a niche for too long. Our government could boost this market significantly while encouraging the paper industry at large to build capacity for recycling. (Why we need more standing, living mature forests and less logging: not only do live trees mitigate global warming and soil erosion, they provide travel corridors and habitat for wildlife including migratory birds, several of which are currently under threat of extinction [We need the birds for pollination and insect control among other things.] Logging employs whole communities, however, and so careful consideration must be given to conversion of the industry into profitable "green" jobs.)
*Folks, I know that the majority of us that believe that our representatives do not share the same priorities that we do. Let's start with asking for a mechanism that we can express the issues that mean most to our collective welfare. I.e, we need balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. Don't play sides, both are to blame. Go through the top 50 brainstorming ideas - there are a small number of ideas that few of us dispute. We need a way to get our representatives to understand that those are the People's issues. This recommendation is to tell the government that we want a way to tell our representatives what is important to us. And, we want the government to act on those recommendations. Let's be honest, there will be a small number of issues that we all have in common. Let's create this recommendation to have the U.S. people bring these issues up and have the government address them. We need a direct voice to our government bypassing our collective representatives. Like the 12th man on a football team (the crowd), we need a 101st 'senator' - the People. Let's write this recommendaton from the viewpoint that there are a number of common issues that we want addressed. We need a mechanism to convey this to our representatives/government. The measure of of the success of this mechanism will be the number of issues that are brought up before our representatives and we see the results of their vote. The success of our representatives will be the frequency that they follow the will of the people. We have been presented by this opportunity by our government, let's take advantage of it. Our greatest disappointment should be that our government does not act upon our demands. Please try to address these ideals in your edit.*

Who:

The United States government is requested to provide a mechanism by which their citizens can bring up issues and those of greatest importance to us be determined.These issues will not be filtered and those of greatest importance determined by a vote of qualified voters. This vote will not be based on the vote of our local representatives but based on a transparent vote amount that is immediatebly visible as it occurs. (Qualification determined by the connection to a "registered" U.S. citizen - no stuffing the ballot box!)

What:

A growing number of U.S. citzens believe that there is a growing disconnect between how our representatives are behaving and what we expect from them. To be more specific, it is unclear how our beliefs are affecting their actions in Congress. What we require is a means of expressing those issues of greatest importance to us and determining how that expression is influencing our representatives. We require a means of expressing our collective opinion and then judging how each representative matches our expectation. This should be a very simple comparison of expectation versus the represntatives votes/support.

The content is limited: erase ** content as you fill in *why* and *how*. Take responsibility

When cities incorporate now they have 4 different kinds of governmental structure to choose from, strong mayor/weak city council, weak mayor/strong city council, etc... Due to the fact that most politicians are elected these days on the basis of some combination of cash, charisma and connections, people who don't possess these advantages are at a significant disadvantage when they run for office. In order to level the playing field a fifth form of government shall be allowed as one of the choices a municipality can make. The new form of government would work according to the following rules.

There will be two voting periods, a primary and a runoff.

In the primary, anyone who wants to run for an office will submit a list of 5 problems and their solutions to those problems to the elections commission. The elections commission will then print the list of problems and solutions on a ballot without including any names. (The problems can be anything a candidate thinks is important.) In the primary election voters will vote for the whichever set of problems and solutions they think best meets their own priorities.

In the runoff election, the top 5 winners from the primary will be revealed and allowed to campaign for office. Making their identities public at this stage will let people consider the candidates' past history in the decision-making process. After the runoff election the winner will not only be able to implement his or her solutions, they will also have the solutions presented by all of the other candidates as a source of fixes for the remaining problems.