https://github.com/jdcasey/lfk-research

Citizen-driven research and advocacy group for decision-making in the government of Lawrence, KS
https://github.com/jdcasey/lfk-research

advocacy citizen-participation government local-government research

Last synced: 4 months ago
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Citizen-driven research and advocacy group for decision-making in the government of Lawrence, KS

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/jdcasey/lfk-research
• Owner: jdcasey
• License: cc-by-sa-4.0
• Created: 2017-12-19T05:34:52.000Z (over 8 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2017-12-19T07:48:33.000Z (over 8 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-03-11T12:58:10.045Z (over 1 year ago)
• Topics: advocacy, citizen-participation, government, local-government, research
• Homepage:
• Size: 10.7 KB
• Stars: 1
• Watchers: 2
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

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README

          
# Research for Informed Decisions (RID) - LFK

RID is a citizen research / reasoning organization aiming at collecting, curating, and advocating for policies that will improve the lives of our residents.

## Values

We strive to help our government make informed decisions, assuming the welfare of the majority of residents is the criteria for a good policy. Our research AND position papers will be sourced / cited and publicly available for any to read.

**Facts matter, and it is critical to show your work.**

## Goals

* Advocate for the best outcome for most residents

* Conduct research around policy questions

* Curate research from citizen contributors

* Marshal background research to provide facts and solid arguments before our local government

* Provide web presence that makes research and arguments accessible to decisionmakers 

## Methods

* Citizen-driven: Citizens ask the questions, conduct the research, curate the results, and present before the government

* Provide a point person to present RID point of view during city commission meetings

* Provide advocacy in Facebook comments / other social media venues

* Advocate for RID positions in social media, newspaper op-eds, etc.

* Collect research on specific questions underlying policies being considered, curated topically

	* Research should be published via Facebook post, to be accessible

	* Formatted FB posts will be curated and included in the website

* Domain Experts - experts on a topic who oversee research creation and curation

* Potential collaborations:

	* Connect with universities to broaden our research

	* Connect with other local advocacy groups to broaden research and coordinate work

* Organizational activities:

	* Conversations prompting and during research is private to the group

	* All research published under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, for anyone to read

	* Feedback centralized to email / similar to moderate trolling activities

* Provide materials containing web links whenever representing the group in public

* Research presented for veto in the group

	* RID Guiding Council can override veto on recommendation of Domain Expert

## Composition

RID members will perform one or more of the following functions:

* RID Guiding Council - determines research / advocacy strategy for the group, and handles disputes

* Community Management - helps manage the maintenance of our organization by:

	* Managing experts of different research topics

	* Managing social media presence - eg. Facebook group, etc.

	* Managing outreach to other organizations / speakers

* Topic Manager - guides / curates the research in a given topic

* Position Manager - guides / curates the argument marshaling research to a specific government proposal

* Media Promoter - provides our arguments / research on appropriate social media venues (comments, posts, etc.)

* Position Presenter - presents our arguments / research on government proposals at appropriate meetings (via public comment, etc.)

* Research Contributor - Asks research questions, conducts research

## Open Questions and Possible Future Directions

* Do we need funding? How will we know when we do?

* How to create Facebook presence?

	* Structure

	* Content

	* Who will maintain it?

* How to conduct private conversations during research phase?

* How to handle content production process / make it accessible?

* How to delegate topic curation / management

* Who will do outreach:

	* other groups

	* local university

	* high schools

	* guest speakers?

* How to enable contributors to reference their work from resumes, etc.

* How to train citizens on:

	* Research / content production

	* Formatting

	* Curation

	* Social Media engagement

	* Direct government engagement

* How to track progress on research / event execution? 

* How to track progress on organizational development??

## License Information


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.