I was half asleep when I first heard Senator Elaine McCoy’s voice.  She was being interviewed on CBC’s Ottawa Morning about an idea she had for a web site. Government reporting cycles tend to be too long to report in a timely way, she was saying, but if there was a way for Canadians to help the government help Canadians, wouldn’t they? These were temporary measures; they would need to be targeted in order to be effective.

The idea merged all of my interests: to engage with all kinds of Canadians using online technology to crowdsource the reporting of how the Stimulus Budget was impacting citizens and communities might help Canada weather the economic storm.  If we could come up with a way to measure it early and repeatedly, we could have almost real time data on which to base decisions. I was almost sold.

I blogged about it right away. I could see a “Government improvement enabled by citizen monitoring” post two years from now.  I would offer encouragement, if nothing else.

Gwen, at Senator McCoy’s office, e-mailed me that day.  We fixed an appointment for Monday after work, with an agreement that I’d bring some/body(ies) with me.  We needed a number of questions answered to figure out if this idea was do-able.  I didn’t have the expertise.  Luckily two peers, Well, one Peers and one Akerman, responded to my plea for participation.

Richard, Morgen, Gwen, Senator McCoy and I had an excellent first meeting; not least of all due to the coffee.  We shared ideas and gave language to what were still only vague ideas at that point.  We all thought it was possible but we’d have to spend some energy to make it happen. And more than that, we would need to recruit more people.  Senator McCoy had some, I figured I had a couple of people I could call on for help.  We all jumped in with both feet.

This is the first time I enter into a collaborative agreement.  I feel like I should be paying or getting paid.  But mostly I think this is just a really great learning experience.  I call it professional development.  I learn skills I can add to my CV. I work with dedicated experts who sit patiently through theories about Zombies2.0. and questions about twitter etiquette or iPhone apps.  So far so good, if we can get some momentum going, I really think we could create a platform to let citizens and government interact while we figure out how to do more with less.

Can’t wait to hear your ideas about what we could do with this site.