iSolon.org is a policy institute committed to
exploring and advancing opportunities for democratic reform brought
about by new information technologies. It focuses on the
most difficult areas of democratic reform─where elected officials have a
conflict of interest in bringing about reforms that might reduce their
own power.
New from iSolon.org
June 22, 2009
Free riding: a deeply embedded media tradition
Harvard's Nieman Watchdog publishes J.H. Snider's first in a two-part series on media free riding on the work of others. The first part discusses the problem; the second part how new technology could help alleviate it.
June 12, 2009
The switch to digital TV—an early bailout that went awry
Harvard's Nieman Watchdog publishes J.H. Snider's critique of the digital television transition on its final day. The transition began more than 20 years ago.
June 11-14, 2009
Annual Convening of the National Institute on Money in State Politics
J.H. Snider argues for Redistricting Juries and other related
democratic reforms at the annual convening of the National Institute on
Money in State Politics.
June 4, 2009
ShowMeTheSpending.org Coalition News
ShowMeTheSpending.org features J.H. Snider's work on public school budget transparency.
May 20, 2009
Democratize
School Budget Data
Education Week, the leading trade publication in K12 public education, publishes J.H. Snider's commentary on how to use new information technologies to democratize public access to school budget data.
May 12, 2009
Turkeys,
Thanksgiving and Roll Call Voting Records
Karl Kurtz, the National Conference of State Legislatures's expert
on legislative institutions, discusses J.H. Snider's turkey paper
in The Thicket at State Legislatures.
May 11, 2009
Would You Ask Turkeys to Mandate Thanksgiving? The Dismal Politics of Legislative Transparency
The Journal of Information Technology & Politics publishes the final version of J.H. Snider's working paper researched during the Spring of 2008 while Snider was a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
May 4, 2009
Eye on Redistricting: Florida's Where the Early Action Is
Congressional Quarterly article on the the Hudson/iSolon
conference on redistricting reform.
May 4, 2009
Reforming American Redistricting: Lessons from British Columbia
Conference on redistricting reform cosponsored by the Hudson Institute and iSolon.org.
May 4, 2009
The
Case for Redistricting Juries: Lessons from British Columbia’s
Revolutionary Experiment in Democratic Reform
J.H. Snider's Working Paper presented at the Hudson/iSolon
conference on redistricting reform.
May 1, 2009
DeMint Leads Bipartisan Effort To Make Senate Votes More Transparent: Democrats and Republicans urge modernizing Senate website with easily searchable XML vote database
In a press release announcing a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee
on Rules and Administration seeking to make U.S. Senate roll call
votes available to the public using the XML format, U.S. Senator Jim
DeMint cites iSolon.org's work on this issue.
April 27, 2009
Online voting records user unfriendly
Politico's Victoria McGrane cites J.H. Snider's work on public
access to legislators' voting records. For more information, see
Would You Ask Turkeys to Mandate Thanksgiving? The Dismal Politics
of Legislative Transparency (SSRN prepublication working paper
version). On May 6 McGrane wrote a follow-up story,
Senate picks up the slack on data, mentioning the impact of her
earlier story in getting the Senate to post its roll call votes in XML
format.
April 25, 2009
Citizens
Assembly News Digest -- April 2009
The latest issue of iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly News Digest.
March 18, 2009
Public School Systems Should Post Compensation Data Online
The Washington Examiner publishes J.H. Snider's Sunshine Week commentary on the
need to proactively disclose public expenditure data.
March 9, 2009
ShowMeTheSpending.org Coalition Partners
ShowMeTheSpending.org names iSolon.org
a coalition partner.
February 26, 2009
Mixing Advocacy, Scholarly Research and Journalism: Can the New America Foundation Square the Circle?
The Center for Media and Democracy's
PR Watch publishes J.H. Snider's article on the ethical tensions in a successful, state-of-the-art, public policy think tank.
February 18, 2009
Open Government Rhetoric Versus Reality
The Washington Examiner publishes J.H. Snider's commentary on the
politics of the recently passed digital TV legislation.
February 8, 2009
Need Teachers? Show Them the Money
The Washington Post publishes J.H. Snider's commentary on the need for
better public disclosure of teacher compensation data. For a
related commentary published in Education Week, see
America’s Million-Dollar Superintendents.
February 3, 2009
Strengthen Think Tank Accountability
Politico publishes J.H. Snider's commentary on the need for
better public disclosure of think tank ethics and ethical conflicts.
January 21, 2009
Don't Delay the Digital TV Transition
Ars Technica publishes J.H. Snider's commentary critiquing U.S.
House and Senate bills seeking to delay the digital TV transition.
December 2, 2008
Future Shop One-Page Flyer
Publicity for Future Shop.
November 18, 2008
Future Shop Praise and Preface
Publicity for Future Shop.
November 14, 2008
Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and Buy
Authors Guild backinprint.com reprint of the J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn book on e-commerce published by St. Martin's Press in 1992.
The book features
a new preface analyzing the growth of e-commerce during the past two
decades and
forecasting that the changes in the consumer marketplace over the next
twenty years could be even greater.
November 12, 2008
Voting for Glass Houses
In the November/December issue of the Columbia Journalism Review,
Michael Schudson and Danielle Haas report on J.H. Snider's "Would You Ask Turkeys to Mandate Thanksgiving?"
On May 11, 2009, the Columbia Journalism Review followed up
with another story on the same topic,
Senate
Goes XML: A quiet shift is hailed.
October 1, 2008
School board's TV debut delayed
The Capital quotes J.H. Snider's critique of excessively costly and undemocratic televised school board coverage.
September 27, 2008
Spectrum Policy Panel at the 2008 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference
The J.H. Snider's serves as moderator and discussant.
September 21, 2008
Democracy 2.0 Grant Summit - Money in Politics
J.H. Snider serves as a grant contest judge for this event co-sponsored by Mobilize.org, the Sunlight Foundation, and Common Cause.
August 18, 2008
Americans for Redistricting Reform Advisory Committee Member
Organizations
Americans for Redistricting Reform names iSolon.org as an Advisory
Committee Member Organization.
July 19, 2008
Annual meeting of the National Online Legislative Associates (NOLA)
J.H. Snider presents the findings of his
Shorenstein Center working paper and conducts a discussion on the future
of technology enhanced legislature procedure, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, July 18-19, 2008. NOLA is the trade association of online legislative information providers.
July 14, 2008
Would You Ask Turkeys To Mandate Thanksgiving? The Dismal Politics of Legislative Transparency
The Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
publishes J.H. Snider's Working Paper #1. Published in the
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, May 2009.
July 14, 2008
Would You Ask Turkeys To Mandate Thanksgiving? Using Citizens Assemblies to Reform the Process of Democratic Reform
The Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
publishes J.H. Snider's Working Paper #2.
June 28, 2008
Harvard Hosts 2-Day Citizens Assembly Conference; New Zealand Parliament Allocates $4.3 million for a Citizens Assembly
The latest issue of iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly News Digest.
June
27, 2008
iSolon.org Launches Citizens Assembly Facebook Group
The Citizens Assembly Facebook group provides an online place for
academics and practitioners interested in citizens assembly based democratic
reform to come together as a community to pursue their common interests.
May 30, 2008
The Role of News Media in the Governance Agenda
J.H. Snider serves as workshop discussant at this joint event sponsored by the Communication for Governance and Accountability Program at the World Bank and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, May 29-31, 2008.
May 17, 2008
Crackpot or Genius? Canada Steps onto the World Stage as a Democratic Innovator
The Journal of Public Deliberation publishes J.H. Snider's concluding remarks at the Harvard University Canada Program's conference on democratic deficits and citizens assemblies, May 8-10, 2008.
May 14, 2008
Designing Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
The Journal of Public Deliberation publishes J.H. Snider's review of the first major book to be written about citizens assemblies.
April 14, 2008
J.H. Snider selected to be a Rockwood Foundation Fellow in Media, Communications, and Information Policy
Snider will be a Rockwood Foundation Fellow for the 2008-2009 fellowship year.
March 20, 2008
The Quest to Protect Creative Policy Ideas
The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes J.H. Snider's commentary on the problem of rewarding innovative public policy ideas when it isn't practical to patent such ideas.
March 17, 2008
Online contract access would let in more sunshine
In an editorial, the Capital (Annapolis, Maryland) cites J.H. Snider's critique of government databases that are not integrated
with each other.
March 13, 2008
Councilmen want county contracts published on Web: Say move will increase government transparency
In a front page story, the Capital (Annapolis, Maryland) cites
J.H. Snider's critique of government databases that are not integrated
with each other.
February 29, 2008
J.H. Snider on Spectrum Policy (half hour segment, with Snider segment beginning at 18:50)
Counterspin, a radio program run on NPR affiliates, interviews
J.H. Snider about his Nieman Watchdog
article (see below).
February 28, 2008
OpenTheGovernment.org Coalition Partners
OpenTheGovernment.org names iSolon.org a coalition partner.
February 21, 2008
Is the spectrum just too complex for reporters?
Nieman Watchdog publishes a commentary summarizing J.H. Snider's Kennedy
School presentation.
February 19, 2008
The Government’s $19.3 Billion Auction of Spectrum
(as of Round 61 on February 12, 2008) Why don’t you know more about the government’s allocation of this vital natural resource?
J.H. Snider argues at a Kennedy School dinner sponsored by the
Shorenstein Center that spectrum politics has become a paradigmatic
example of special interest politics and that the quality of spectrum
journalism is a major cause of the problem.
January 28, 2008
J.H.
Snider, President of iSolon.org, begins his work as a resident fellow at
the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public
Policy, located at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government
Snider will be a fellow at the Shorenstein Center from January 28
through May 31, 2008.
January 28, 2008
Tom Fiedler Named Shorenstein Guest Lecturer -- Four Spring Fellows Named
Editor & Publisher reports on the appointment of the new
Shorenstein Center fellows
January 17, 2008
Saskatchewan Premier and Citizens Assembly Advocate Defeated; New
Zealand Parliament Debates and Defeats Citizens Assembly Legislation
The latest issue of iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly News Digest.
January 16, 2008
iSolon.org Launches
Citizens Assembly Forum (beta version)
The Citizens Assembly Forum provides an online place for academics and
practitioners interested in citizens assembly based democratic reform to
come together as a community to pursue their common interests.
November 1, 2007
Ontario Citizens' Assembly
Proposal Down But Not Out
The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation's Amy Lang summarizes
and reviews the latest issue of iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly News Digest.
October 19, 2007
Ontario Citizens Assembly Referendum Defeated;
Addendum:
Saskatchewan Premier Promises a Citizens Assembly if Re-Elected on
November 7
The latest issue of iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly News Digest.
October 11, 2007
New Voting System Goes Down To Defeat
In a front page story, the Ottawa Citizen quotes J.H. Snider on
the significance of Ontario's experiment with a citizens assembly.
October 5, 2007
School Board Backs TV Idea
Baltimore Sun quotes J.H. Snider's critique of local school
system's use of technology to cover itself.
September 14, 2007
Ontario’s Public Education Campaign Launches; U.K.’s Prime
Minister Explores Creating a Citizens Assembly
The latest issue of iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly News Digest.
June 19, 2007
Citizens Assemblies: A Mechanism for Enhancing Legislative Transparency
and Accountability
iSolon.org policy brief prepared for the workshop, "Toward More
Transparent Government," held at the National Academies of Science on
June 19, 2007.
June 15, 2007
From Dahl to O'Leary: 36 Years of the 'Yale School of Democratic
Reform'
J.H. Snider's book review essay tracing the history of the citizens assembly
proposal from Dahl's 1970 After the Revolution (Yale University Press)
to O'Leary's 2006 Saving Democracy (Stanford University Press).
