Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing

Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing

Noveck, Beth Simone

Hardcover

Technology & EngineeringGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 0674286057
ISBN13: 9780674286054
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Nov 2 2015
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.40 Width: 5.80 Depth: 8.30
Language: English

Government of the people, by the people, for the people expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left the people out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today's complex challenges.

Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter--if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens' expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools--what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise--are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government.

Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people's knowledge and know-how.

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