4.1.8: Measuring Project Success and Project Sustainability

Test the viability of Web 2.0 tools and social networking technologies to put the Government in better touch with the public.

Other Information:

As mentioned, this is a pilot project to test the viability of Web 2.0 tools and social networking technologies to put the Government in better touch with the public. The end product of this project will be a publicly available report from CeRI on the value of this approach to increasing openness in Government, including lessons learned and any identified best practices. This will ensure that every Government agency has the option to learn from the work done here and adopt this approach to further open its doors to the public. Even where resources are not available to allow Government agencies to use this approach, interested members of the public could take the lessons learned from this project to use the same collaborative approach to involving others in developing better comments for submission to the Government. The project also further refines a software platform built specifically for this project that Federal agencies could use in the future to facilitate public commenting on rulemakings and any other documents. In evaluating the success of the project, Cornell and the DOT will take advantage of the following: • Evaluation of more than one rule, allowing the use of different outreach and collaboration techniques to best evaluate which is most effective; • The CeRI’s neutral objectivity in evaluating best practices and lessons learned; • Objective evaluation measures, such as site traffic, trends, and navigation behavior; • Subjective evaluation measures, such as the quality of submissions or data and the amount of consensus achieved in a particular summary; and • Possible American Bar Association evaluation and recommendations on the pilot project.

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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