Open Instant Hansard

Few people read Hansard.  By and large, they aren't missing much - it's scripted, melodramatic street-theatre.  It used to be that where the real action happened was committee, which is often going in camera these days - and even then, it's still scripted street-theatre.

Those who do pay attention to Hansard are Government Relations people, for obvious reasons, political staffers, same, and issues-managing public servants.  For some, it's a job; for some managers, the transcribing of Question Period is a value-add product they can offer their bosses.

Which is interesting, because Cabinet Office already does this; if you're on the inside, you get a rough version in relatively short time, while the polished version gets made public later.  What's the point of individual Ministries duplicating work done by Cabinet Office?  How many work hours get wasted on repetitive tasks that, because there's no time for polish, results in duplicated work of lesser quality?

This is why I was fascinated to be asked by Gnowit, a start-up looking into government issue monitoring through new tech and digital tools, what I thought about real-time speech-to-text tools as a service offering.

Of course it would be a great tool for anyone who monitors government issues to have, but taken further: imagine we could automate and make real-time available all government proceedings for everyone - stakeholders, bureaucrats, the public?

That would be an amazing step in the direction of Open Government, which is where we're supposedly heading.  As it happens, the tech to do this already exists; some of it is costly, but certainly no more so than the number of person-hours that go into transcription.  There are alternative, cheaper versions being made available for folk like teachers, too - also of use to students.

It might sound like a simple thing, but it isn't.  Instant, tech-driven Open Hansard would involve a massive culture change, a reduction of relevance in the work of many public and private employees and a loss of control and supposed "value add" on the part of many a manager or consultant.  

As such, this is the kind of change that would be resisted.  The tech could be questioned, the importance of body language nuance that escapes tech emphasized, so on and so forth.  From an economic standpoint, lots of people would be looking for new work to do if they lost this piece, many of them potentially from the street.  Municipalities that have never recorded their sessions and, therefore, never been truly open would certainly drag their feet on implementing any new policies or tools related to openness.

Still, it would be better for democracy.  It fits within the mandate of Open Government.  The tech exists and, frankly, we're starting to move that way regardless.

I'll be interested to see how this progresses moving forward, but guarantee - those too stuck in traditional methodology and the influence it gives them will find themselves left behind.

How the Lost Art of Negotiation Led to TWO Government Shutdowns

Come to think of it, our House is closed for business, too.

Transparency.  Trust.  Not the appearance of each, not the discrediting of opposition, but real, honest example-setting leadership.

One can but imagine.

Schmooze or Lose: How the Lost Art of Negotiation Led to a Shutdown

By Jack and Suzy Welch

With all the finger-pointing and name-calling going on in Washington these days, it’s hard to believe a delegation of kindergarten teachers from Dubuque hasn’t arrived to put an end to the nonsense. But no. The blame game goes on and on and the government stays shuttered.

And meanwhile, the people watching the story play out – and, we would say, especially leaders in business – might be missing the most important lesson of it all.

You have to schmooze.

Clarification: You have to schmooze early and often. You can’t suddenly burst out of your office to build relationships when you hear rumbles of trouble from down below, and it’s certainly too late by the time a crisis flares. No, schmoozing has to be what you do all the time as a leader; it has to be a massive part of your job. Walking around, having a coffee, sitting and listening, getting real, letting people get real with you. Showing who you are, what you care about, exposing your hopes and dreams and values. Asking people the same about themselves.

Building — in two big fat words — trust and transparency.

And look, we’re not talking about the standard, ho-ho-ho kind of social schmoozing you do with your customers and your team and your boss. That’s easy. That’s like President Obama schmoozing with Nancy Pelosi, or John Boehner schmoozing with Eric Cantor.

Leaders have to do something harder and more essential; something that can feel awkward at first. You have to schmooze with your known “adversaries” too, say, for instance, your union, or the group of employees who hate your new strategy and want the old one back. The resistors that exist in every organization. The perennial naysayers. Smart and annoying. Them.

Because if you don’t schmooze with friend and foe alike as a leader, unpleasant or wildly inefficient as it may seem, one day a crisis will come and, without thriving relationships and ongoing dialogue, it will shut you down, be it in the grand corridors of Capitol Hill or over in the three cramped rooms you call headquarters.

Here’s an example of what we mean. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, GE was plagued by strikes. That changed in the ‘80s when the senior team made it a priority to meet with the unions at every possible opportunity. The idea was to create constant, candid dialogue about values and goals, treating union leaders with the dignity and respect they deserved, whether it was at the plant or national level.

There wasn’t a strike at GE for 21 years. Did that mean management and labor suddenly started to see eye-to-eye? Hardly. But where there had been suspicion and wariness, there now was transparency and trust. No more “first dates” every three years, sitting grimly across from each other at the bargaining table. Schmoozing had smoothed the way.

Now, we’re not Luddites. We love dashing off an email and texting can’t be beat for efficiency. Y call Sally abt her promotion when u can just send a :-) ?

But the day Sally has a bone to pick with you about a new initiative or a promotion she didn’t get – and she’s ready to start building a coalition around her position – a :-) isn’t going to cut it. She needs to have seen you smile in person, and heard your voice and mind – and you need to have seen and heard and known her too.

People will always have legitimate differences. What’s happening in Washington right now is, underneath it all, based on them. But for leaders, the building of transparency and trust is what makes those differences negotiable.

It turns foes into friends with different opinions.

Jack Welch is Founder and Distinguished Professor at the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Through its executive education and Welch Way management training programs, the Jack Welch Management Institute provides students and organizations with the proven methodologies, immediately actionable practices, and respected credentials needed to win in the most demanding global business environments.

Suzy Welch is a best-selling author, popular television commentator, and noted business journalist. Her New York Times bestselling book, 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, presents a powerful decision-making strategy for success at work and in parenting, love and friendship. Together with her husband Jack Welch, Suzy is also co-author of the #1 international bestseller Winning, and its companion volume, Winning: The Answers. Since 2005, they have written business columns for several publications, including Business Week magazine, Thomson Reuters digital platforms, Fortune magazine, and the New York Times syndicate.

Trudeau Sets The Example

On Monday, staffers in the offices of Liberal MPs across the country started tracking their bosses' travel and hospitality expenses, preparing to post them online this time next month.

For the first time, voters will be able to see how much their representatives spend on each plane trip, taxi ride and dinner.

But voters in ridings represented by MPs from other parties will continue to be in the dark.

Team Harper has talked a good game about transparency.  In fact, they've shilled out a lot of public dollars to promote how transparent they are.  Meanwhile, they have in practice been anything but.

Now, here comes Trudeau, walking the walk and setting the bar by which is opponents will be judged.

Leading by example, as it were.

It's now up to the other Parties to prove to Canadians that they're as committed to transparency in deed as they have been in word - and as Trudeau is being in practice.  Instead of owning up, so far all they've done is point to previous, unsatisfactory efforts or tried to belittle Trudeau's efforts by calling it a "stunt."

They'll have a hell of a time selling that one to their voters, especially as those constituents eye with envy the real political transparency enjoyed by their neighbours.

There is, of course, a lesson in this:

When you aren't weighing the pros and cons of doing something you know is wrong, or of not thinking an action through, you're spending more time doing what you know to be right and making sure you've thought through the consequences.

While I still think it's a bit cynical not to roll out some more detailed policy now, allowing for good ideas to be debated, I am increasingly impressed with how Team Trudeau is playing the political side of the equation.

Who doesn't love it when a plan comes together?

UPDATE: So, on the policy front?  It looks like we're getting there.  While Harper continues to criticize like an Opposition Leader, Trudeau is starting to pivot into a statesman.  Punching above his weight, indeed...

The Golden Shift in Canadian Politics

 

 

It’s possible that Canadians will, out of impatience, dismay, or a sense of resignation, let the government reset the agenda this fall without a more thorough exposition of this sorry mess. But, for the sake of the integrity of our political system, they shouldn’t.

 

To the victor go the spoils.  The ends justify the means.  History is written by the victors.  He who has the gold (or majority government) makes the rules.

 

That, in a nutshell, is politics, with one addition - whatever you can get away with works.

 

It's this last that is causing so many political operators problems these days, because the benchmark for what you can get away with has shifted rather dramatically.  As with most changes in information tech, practice tends to lag behind capacity on the adaptation curve.  A seasoned generation of backroom operators are using new tools in old ways; convinced they're the smartest people in the room, it doesn't occur to them that maybe other folk have adapted more quickly.

 

It isn't an insiders game any more, with voters on the sidelines - thanks to Twitter and the like, we're all on the field now.

 

What happens when these folk get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, or caught in a lie, or caught with their pants down?  They're turning to the old tools of circle the wagons, bait-and-switch and digging up dirt on opponents.  The problem is, it's not so easy any more - it's not just the political chattering classes and the media pundits who need to be distracted - it's a growing number of Twitter users, Facebook posters and photo takers and civic engagement/watcher groups ranging from Anonymous to the Samara Institute.

 

It's no longer enough to hope that a story won't have legs or that you can spin yourself out of any hole you dig - there are simply too many ways for bad behaviour to be caught and those behaviours connected into patterns.  Maybe you can punt the consequences to a successor or maybe the blame will be born by your whole class, but that's hardly sustainable planning, is it?

 

You can't get away with murder in Canadian politics and, thankfully, our Political Parties limit their offensive tactics to character assassination.  Consider this yet another shift - the water hole of unethical tactics you can get away with is shrinking at an ever increasing rate.

 

There's an easy way to stay ahead of the curve, of course - that's to assume that everything you do can and will be revealed and act accordingly.  The word for that is transparency.  Yes, real transparency means more work on the front-end and yes, it assumes other players are equally going to play by the rules but it also mitigates your chance of digging your hole deep enough it becomes your grave.  Besides, as we've seen - people at all levels are on the lookout for wrongdoing to criticize.  If you keep your nose clean and remain open about it, that laser-like scrutiny will focus where the dark spots truly lie.

 

It's amazing what a little golden sunlight can do...

 

Political Ignorance and Blizzard's Blinders

If there's a vote, their best hope is that the electorate has a massive amnesia attack or takes their stupid pills that day -- and gives them another tax-and-squander majority.

 

In other words - free speech at all costs, but if you don't think exactly the way we do, you're clearly an idiot.

 

That's a wrong-headed approach - the same one that's gotten Vic Toews into trouble, repeatedly.  If you assume the public is dumb, then you don't want to risk exposing their ignorance to information with which they might form opinions that disagree with yours (and are therefore stupid).

 

But then you're withholding information, denying yourself constructive criticism and stifling a fundamental piece of our democratic process.  Then, to keep the message control up, you end up dictating to the Public Service, going over the head of our democracy entirely.

 

Freedom of speech cannot exist in an information vacuum.  By hiding the facts and indiscriminately dehumanizing anyone who disagrees with them, the "free-speech" Political Right prove themselves to be hypocrites. 

Blizzard can spin all she likes (and I have no doubt that she believes her own reactive rhetoric), but the fact is that every Party left with an unchallenged majority falls into the trap of putting long-term partisan interests ahead of the public good.  That's why we have a Parliament in the first place.  Which is why it's dangerous at any level for government to start interfering with the functioning of Parliament - when the institutional heart of our democracy ceases to function, so does the illusion that we have a representative system.  When government refuses to do it's job, others - like Anonymous - will step in and fill the gap. 

 

We have never had a government try to be as transparent and direct as Premier Wynne is attempting to be - in trying to promote a much-needed political culture change, Wynne is exposing herself and her government to all kinds of attacks from Opposition Parties who see winning power, not serving the province, as priority. 

 

No, she's not perfect and yes, the temptation to circle her political wagons and fall back to the traditional fight-or-flight of blood-sport politics will gnaw at her.  If the Opposition refuses to join the conversation - and if they succeed in using Wynne's open approach against her - you can guarantee that political operatives from all Parties will take notice and information will retreat back into the shadows.  Bureaucracies will increasingly be controlled by political masters.  Individual leaders and their own ideologies will drive the nation instead of evidence and public interest.

 

That's what gets us things like the press being denied the opportunity to speak to Omar Khadr, Canadian military being forced to consider "political truths" and the social costs that come with propping up the Canadian economy with cheap foreign labour.  Who knows how the RCMP bungling of Rehtaeh Parsons case and the politically convenient timing of the would-be VIA Rail bombers fits in. 

 

When governments start to treat the public like idiots and assume they can fool us with political slights of hand, the people will lose confidence in government entirely and turn elsewhere for the leadership they crave. That's how revolutions begin.

 

When you take the approach that you're smart and everyone else is dumb, all you're doing is proving your own ignorance - at everyone's peril.
 

The Social Media Community: With Great Power...

Secondly, there’s no denying that social media has changed the way we communicate, interact and, in many cases, do business—and, as such, content like tweets and Facebook posts now carry as much weight as other, more traditional forms of communication.

 

 

There's a fascinating picture emerging about how social media is rejigging the rules of social engagement that hopefully everyone is paying attention to. 

 

There's no question that tools like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr allow more information to be shared by more people to larger audiences almost instantaneously; this is both a good thing and a bad thing.  It's good in the level of coordination and social solidarity it provides - look at how platforms like Ushahidi make disaster relief coordination between individuals, organizations and nations around the world that much more seamless.  Smartphone Aps like Guardly add an extra level of security to women walking university campuses at night.  Rapid response just keeps getting faster. 

 

Look also at the amazing level of coordination and pro-social behaviour that happened in response to the Boston Marathon - citizens were tweeting their love and support, letting others know if blood donations were needed at hospitals and where worried friends and families could turn to learn if anyone they knew who was in the race was injured.  The bombing was horrifying and tragic, but the response was the exact opposite of what terrorism is supposed to produce - a sense of community and comfort instead of heightened feelings of fear and vulnerability.

 

I'd also argue that social media is leveling out the playing field between the haves and have nots in a manner similar to the influence of unions a century ago.  Connect the dots between various e-campaigns over the past decade or so; former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty backed down on increased restrictions for young drivers in response to a Facebook campaign.  Similarly, #TellVicEverything stopped The Canadian Harper Government's Internet restrictions Bill dead in its tracks.  A robocall push-poll by Porter Airlines rapidly led to a sharing of information between people called on Twitter; within a day, the who and what behind those calls had been exposed online.

 

Then there's Anonymous; where the existing political or justice systems fail to fill their public mandate, there is now a powerful entity watching the watchers.

 

This is where the power of social media starts to slide into darker territory, though, and where the need for responsibility comes in to play.  @Vikileaks was done anonymously (though it didn't stay that way) and was really a mini-terror campaign directed against Vic Toews.  Cyberbullying is a terribly invasive form of individually-targeted terrorism (which is essentially what bullying has always been).  Hacking and information bleeding happens all the time; though most of us are more familiar with the "OMG - you should see this pic of U going around" variety, these privacy breaches can be much more damaging - and also point out a major weakness in the institutions we are supposed to trust with our personal information.

 

Which is where the hacking of AP's Twitter account and the circulated story about White House bombings and a wounded President come in.  One single tweet, coming from a reputable handle in an age of rapid-response and information dissemination briefly threw the market - the engine of the economy - into a nosedive.  that was just one tweet; picture a more coordinated attack that hacks the social media accounts of multiple respected agencies (media, government, banks, whatever). 

 

Picture the Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast spooling out over social media, except with the story a nuclear explosion over a major city.  It would go viral in seconds; timed and coordinated properly, the average citizen would be left with conflicting information and no way of knowing what or whom to trust.  Call it Invasion of the Social Media Snatchers.

 

It's for good reason that governments and organizations are seeking ways to clamp down on Internet security; the potential risks posed by hacking are stupendous and horrifying.  What's more - as would-be terrorists realize they can do the terror-infliction thing without putting themselves in harm's way, the use of hacking, information theft and misinformation campaigns are only going to increase. 

 

How can we say this with certainty?  As I've written elsewhere - as Western governments increasingly use advanced military weapons like drones to do their dirty work while keeping their hands clean, those on the receiving end are going to look for any and every way to respond in kind.  It's a historical trend - when you can't fight a super power head-on, you employ creative, guerrilla tactics.  The guerrilla war is increasingly online.

 

You can try to clamp down on e-terrorism all you want; as history teaches us, building more complicated locks simply results in smarter criminals.  This is not a battle that will be won through escalation - the only way to end the conflict is to look at the root causes behind what informs and facilitates e-terrorism and information manipulation.

When you have governments that withhold the facts from their citizens and only spool out pieces of partisan rhetoric, the playing field is wide open for misinformation; people already don't believe government is being open and honest, so they are that much more likely to believe alternate sources.  The way to combat this risk is for government to be more proactive, transparent and frankly, honest about what they're doing, what problems are arising and to proactively engage with citizens for solutions.  That way, people feel they are part of the government process and are less likely to be swayed by alternate misinformation; they will also feel more comfortable turning to official sources for verification before jumping on whatever meme is circulating on a given day.

 

The second piece is just plain good PR - instead of picking fights with specific enemies to reinforce relationships with established partners, governments, Political Parties and all organizations need to build stronger relationships with a more diverse range of players.  Altruism, after all, is selfishness that plans ahead; you're less likely to face a sneak attack from someone who you have supported or collaborated with in the past.

 

Social media might not create information, but it does disseminate it rapidly between massive audiences.  Not only can average citizens from anywhere on the planet compete with talking heads for attention; Established Voices can be co-opted through hacking to devastating public effect.

 

That's power money can't buy.

 

With great power, however, comes great responsibility.  That responsibility lies on the shoulders of every person with access to a computer, but unless they have positive role models (like government) encouraging responsible use of the medium, we will simply be looking at an online tragedy of the commons.

 

If that's not a reason to rethink partisanship, negative attacks and reactive policy, I don't know what is.

 

Why Transparency Matters

Because ultimately, opacity is inefficient.  It breeds complacenes and laziness.  If you want to keep your edge sharp, you gotta run against it every now and then.

An insulated boardroom is an ineffective boardroom

By Lucy P. Marcus

January 15, 2013

 

 

executive boards | libor | ubs

“The level of ignorance seems staggering to the point of incredulity. Not only were you ignorant of what was going on, but you were out of your depth.”

‑ Andrew Tyrie, MP, chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS)

Last week senior executives of UBS testified before a British parliamentary panel about their part in the Libor-rigging scandal. What they said sent a discouraging signal that they, and others in the banking sector, are still operating as if they are out of touch and tone-deaf in a sound-proof room.

U.S. and British authorities have implicated UBS, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland, among others, in fixing the Libor rate over several years. UK lawmakers, responding to a public outcry, set up the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards to look into the UK banking sector’s professional standards and culture; discover lessons to be learned about corporate governance, transparency and conflicts of interest; and clarify the implications for regulation and government policy.

Andrea Orcel, chief executive officer of UBS’s investment bank, told the committee that “the whole executive board and board are very focused at recovering the honor and the standing that the organization had in the past.” But that’s still putting the emphasis and focus on the wrong thing. What these institutions need to be thinking about is rebuilding trust and stability. Using phrases like “recovering the honor” sends the message that they are focused on themselves and not on the effect their actions have on those around them – their clients, the employees and the global financial system.

The global financial system has depended on “trust me” and “we’re the experts,” and an implication that the whole thing is too complicated for people outside the upper echelons of the financial services industry to understand. But now, with the Libor-rigging scandal, with JPMorgan’s London Whale and with the perceived collapse of the banking system and bank bailouts, the financial services industry has broken that trust. It has become clear that a lot of the people in the industry, – indeed, a lot of people sitting around the industry’s board tables ‑ don’t understand what is happening there, either.

It is time for financial executives to think about the changes they can make to earn back people’s trust and demonstrate that they are trustworthy and can bring stability back. A blueprint would look something like this:

Action: Enough talk. There have been plenty of mea culpas, including in last week’s PCBS hearing, and lots of talk about what the financial services industry should do and what it needs to do. UBS’s Orcel talked about the need to “reform the governance, incentive structure and the overall supervisory approach right across the global financial industry.” People have lost trust, and no one is going to believe it until they do it. The focus is now on results.

Governance: Bank boards and senior management need more people who understand what the banks are doing, understand what they need to be doing, are unafraid to ask hard questions and are able to take swift, strong action. Barclays has a new chairman and a new chief executive, and they have set out clear ideas about re-examining what happens around the board table. They are saying all the right things, but they’ll have to demonstrate that they can bring about real change.

Transparency: If banks are taking action and making changes, people need to see it happening. JPMorgan’s board voted this week to make public an internal review on the failures that led to the loss of more than $6.2 billion. That is a step in the right direction. Any time there is a question of openness, the default answer has to be “yes.”

Accountability and performance: It is earnings week for some of the biggest financial services firms. It’s being reported that Barclays and Deutsche Bank will cut investment banker pay up to 20 percent. Pay packages and bonuses need to reflect the down times as well as up. If they do not, people will know it is business as usual. Also, it was reported this week that Goldman Sachs toyed with the idea of delaying UK bonuses to take advantage of a fall in tax rates but decided against it. Even considering such a move rekindles mistrust and the feeling that banks are simply not getting the public mood.

***

Lastly, the public has a part to play in all this. It was taxpayer money that bailed out a number of these institutions around the world. We cannot be passive and hope that others will sort this out for us. We all need to be speaking up on this issue, asking the questions of the institutions that we have bailed out and holding lawmakers to account to ensure they continue to monitor the financial services industry.

People did trust the financial services sector, but it broke that trust, several times over, and it is going to be a long road back. The industry will need to prove it is willing to be action-oriented and bring about real change, have oversight that counts and be transparent and accountable. Most of all, they have to know that people are watching, and that the attention is not going away.

When Social Media Meets Magna Carta

When social media meets Magna Carta, you never know what will go viral on a vice-regal representative — and get away from you.

Interesting, that.

The Linguistics of Politics

He believes this was not just a case of the scribes having a bad day at the office. There seems to have been an unusual absence of scholarship, with no evidence of any lists of symbols or learning exercises for scribes to preserve the accuracy of the writing.

 

 

The Koreans invented their own writing system - they did it to ensure literacy among the broader populace, as learning Chinese characters was a complicated task that only elites with free time could master.  The resulting phonetic alphabet is one of the easiest to learn in all of human language.  The system was designed with the user in mind; the rules were carefully recorded and taught to ensure continuity.

 

King Se-Jong created this system because he understood the intrinsic value of knowledge and communication.  He wanted to spread the light of wisdom throughout his kingdom, knowing the benefits would be countless.  The Chinese system was still kept in tandem because there was value in having multiple systems to record and share ideas, both to inform and provide counter-balance.

 

Now look at this writing system, undeciphered, lost to history.  The Mr One Hundreds might have created their own system for political reasons; to be distinct from the Mesopotamians or to ensure that only the elites had access.  They defined themselves, after all, on how many people they ruled over - not by what they accomplished.  So cautiously did they guard their literary secrets, however, that the system could not be sustained.  Without collaboration, without sharing, without embracing diversity, their story ended up going extinct.

 

It's the same with writing as it is with language, culture or ethnicity.  That which stagnates in isolation dies.  That which embraces diversity, transparency and collaboration evolves and continues.

 

There's a lesson in here, somewhere, for both language purists and governments that ignore process.

Pro-Omnibus, Anti-Abortion?

 

Two things that caught my attention today:

 

1) The Conservative Government is looking to pass another omnibus budget bill.  The last one didn't just deal with the budget - it included far-reaching changes that Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is still fighting to get details about.  While the bill was widely derided by Opposition and the media, the average Canadian didn't really much seem to care. 

 

2) Jason Kenney favours Bill M-312 - ostensibly about mandating a Parliamentary Committee (on which the Tories would have a majority and their committee-disruption manual at hand) to decide when human life begins but, come on - it's really about declaring abortion as murder.  Kenney is far from the only Member in the Harper Caucus that is anti-abortion; many of their base is, too.

 

Kenney is a Senior Pitbull in the Harper team.  He's not beyond using creative means to realize his own personal agenda.  He probably gets to have some say-so on the contents of far-reaching omnibus budget bills, too.

 

We have a Harper government that, now entrenched with a majority, is testing just how little the Canadian public cares about the functioning of our parliamentary democracy.  They're enacting massive budget bills that cynically include all kinds of things that relate to their partisan agenda and then aren't telling us what those things are.  We have a Tory Caucus, including senior Cabinet Members, who are advocating for policy changes unpalatable to the majority of Canadian voters.

 

Would Stephen Harper include anti-abortion provisions in an omnibus bill and then bury the details so that the public can't find them?  If I can think of this, you can bet the Stephen Woodworths of the world have as well.  Someone, somewhere, has surely whispered this message in a political ear: come on, the public doesn't care.  The Opposition can't do anything to stop us.  You know it's the right thing to do.  We have the chance, now, we can't afford to lose it.  Put a clause in the the budget bill.  You'll regret it if you don't.

 

Sound dramatic?  It's also entirely possible, if the Canadian public doesn't start to actively care about how Stephen Harper is abusing our system of democracy.  There will certainly be things in the upcoming omnibus budget bill that don't belong there, but support the CPC's partisan agenda.  If Canadians don't make a fuss about it, we are reinforcing the message that omnibus bills are a great tool for skirting the process and implementing partisan agendas without scrutiny or transparency.  The people with unpalatable notions will seize on that and apply internal pressure to get what they want, whether it's in Canada's best collective interests or not.

 

This is why we have to start caring.  To paraphrase Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of small-minded and harmful policy is for the average Canadian to not pay attention.

 

Zen Ronin: Matt Damon On Image

I just think now it's kind of jumped the shark. There's just no way to do that. There's no way to control an image anymore. There's no way to have mystique anymore -- unless you really remove yourself and lock yourself away somewhere. But, then, what kind of life is that for you? You know?

So what do you do when it becomes painfully obvious you can't trick people into believing you're something you're not?

You consciously accept the scrutiny and instead focus on becoming the best you possible.  You accomplish that not by expanding yourself at the expense of others, but by testing yourself to the benefit of society.

Perhaps there are no giants anymore, but as we start to live consciously, we're all bleeding into something a little bit larger.  The whole is more than the sum of its parts, etc.

Transparency of Olympian Proportions

“I feel that the commission ended up becoming an apologist for Dow Chemicals and is taking Dow’s side in the debate about whether or not Dow bears responsibility for the Bhopal tragedy,” Meredith Alexander told Amnesty International.

In the age of social media, there's nowhere to hide - every action, every justification gets scrutinized in the court of public opinion.

Don't like it? Too bad - it's the new reality. We all have to adjust. The truth may hurt, but it also sets you free.

Welcome to the Conscious Revolution.

The Truth Will Set You Free

"Imagine a scenario where your 'anonymous' comments on a newspaper website or in an online chat forum, could be tracked back to you personally, simply by linking your IP address and browser data across multiple platforms."

- Dr. Ann Cavoukian

There is great fear that the immediacy, reach and memory of the Internet is destroying anonymity.  The implication in this is that anonymity is desirable.

I can see why not everyone is interested in being under the microscope.  While an understandable concern, I don't think it's as much of a risk as we have convinced ourselves.  If everyone was on TV all the time, there wouldn't be anybody left to watch - the same applies here.

There's another side to this, though.  Anonymity is about the individual not having responsibility in a social context.  That approach has failed - now, people are demanding more.  The theme today is of the individual being accountable in a social context; the notion of responsibility is something that is gaining in resonance, globally. 

Personally, I see this level of transparency as a positive response to urban living.  When time was, you always had to mind your manners; smaller communities meant less anonymity and greater social accountability.  The Golden Rule has been repeated across time and cultures, for good reason.

This level of transparency is, ultimately, liberating.  When you aren't weighing the pros and cons of doing something you know is wrong, or of not thinking an action through, you're spending more time doing what you know to be right and making sure you've thought through the consequences.  That's better for the individual and better for society.

As they say - the truth will set you free.

UPDATE: The FBI is apparently looking to develop an application that would allow for them to monitor social media. This is the kind of thing that makes people's spines shiver - government sneaking looks into your personal lives.  It's Big Brother McCarthyism meets Minority Report. 

There's a flip side to this coin, though - with the Internet and social media, the playing field is increasingly equal; information can and does find the means to go both ways.  Hence, WikiLeaks.

We're all going to be holding each other to account, which is how it should be.

UPDATER: Another story about how the content and context of a Twitter comment led to an unitended consequence.  We're all being forced, by public accountability, into thinking a bit harder before we open our mouths or strike our keys.  This is a good thing.

UPDATEST:  #tellviceverything.  Need I say more?

Updated-ier: Robocalls.  Crime might pay in the short term, but there are fewer and fewer dark corners in society to hide in.  The light of transparency shines ever brighter.

And Rounding Out 2013:

The Tables Have Turned: Now We're Watching the NSA

And closing off 2014, courtesy of #ghomeshi:

I predict that, just as the accusations made by Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas ushered in a sensitivity to sexual harassment many years ago, the Ghomeshi saga will create a sea change in Canadian’s views toward abuse of power in the workplace and the responsibilities of everyone involved.

 UPDATE #elxn42, Fall of 2015:

In the past, such incidents would have made the news for a few days but not necessarily caused resignations or event cancellations, he said.

"Things that would have boiled and disappeared now have a more immediate fallout."