On Transparency and Engagement in the Academy

[Diane Cline]

I participated in Government 2.0 Camp, an Un-Conference held this past weekend in DC. About 350 government workers, scholars, new media gurus, consultants, and interested members of the public gathered to brainstorm and share ideas on making government more accountable and facilitating citizen participation. Un-conferences, also known as BarCamps, are a self-organizing way to bring large numbers of people together. You set up like a conference, but the agenda is blank. Everyone gets 1 minute to introduce themselves, and if they want to host a conversation, they say so and give it a title. On stage, a team writes down the session titles and assigns them to a room on the grid. We had about 55 sessions each day. People decide which topics interest them and go to those rooms. We had bagels for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and the total cost for the conference including the venue rental was $20,000, with about 100 sponsors donating between $50-250 for the publicity. My role at the conference was to capture the conversations on murals, which is part of the work I do at Over The Horizon Consulting.

Communication in business and government is under transformation. Data and information is more accessible than ever, and being analyzed and interpreted by multiple voices in many new ways.

But what about inside the academy? Information about faculty, student body, fellowships, salaries, hiring practices, and university investments and finances is still closely held by the few administrators with access. Information is disseminated downwards in conventional memos and directives, top-down. Faculty meetings are still as dull as ever, chaired by leadership to convey information downstream and occasionally vote on decisions that have already been made. So long as faculty meetings follow Roberts Rules of order, a model of efficiency that effectively stomps out human emotion, creativity, and imagination, nothing can change. The system is perfectly designed to produce the results we currently get.

What if faculty and students could have an un-conference, where anyone could propose a conversation topic to host in multiple sessions to talk together about creating the kind of community where strengths, interests, passions, and talents are nurtured, supported, and encouraged? Where people collaborate and share ideas openly with a spirit of inclusiveness and collaboration to create a future-oriented community?

How many faculty are Retired-In-Place, burnt out or tuned out, tired of the administration's broken promises and strapped budgets and general lack of inspirational leadership? How many students feel disconnected, unheard and invisible, wondering if anyone really cares about them? Community is built on trust. Sharing data and decision-making promotes trust. Universities ought to be bastions of freedom, academic and otherwise. How free do you feel?

Ten Measures for Transparency Success from Gov 2.0 on Vimeo.