NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE via COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE)--Jun 25, 2003--The Democracy Design Workshop at New York Law School, a laboratory dedicated to fostering civic innovation in support of participatory and deliberative democratic practice, has been awarded an $80,000 grant by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The grant will fund the Workshop`s Interactive Democracy Inventory, a Web-based global repository of best practices in participatory and democratic governance.
Designed to foster democratic capacity through information exchange and networking, the Inventory provides a knowledge infrastructure to inform and connect practitioners worldwide. This fully searchable database is intended to facilitate problem solving and stimulate innovation through the application of participatory and democratic solutions. The Inventory allows members of this community of interest to upload, index, and search information about organizations, practices, events, scholarship and law. It also helps match those ''doing democracy'' to those studying and documenting participative practices across multiple domains. Early work on the Inventory was funded by AmericaSpeaks and the Council of Europe.
The Democracy Design Workshop (www.nyls.edu/democracyhome.php) is directed by Beth Simone Noveck, an associate professor of law at New York Law School, where she also directs the Institute for Information Law and Policy. She is a founding fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The Workshop aims to be a meetinghouse for thinkers and practitioners who, through research, dialogue and design, explore how to use technology to strengthen democracy online and off.
''We are delighted by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation support for our work,'' Noveck said. ''By using cutting-edge, open-source technology for the promotion of strong democracy, we can create a tool for the exchange of best practices and ideas in collaboration and participation, helping practitioners learn from and engage with one another.'' Noveck added, ''The Inventory is our flagship civic innovation design project. It is the knowledge base to support our civic innovation endeavors and represents precisely the kind of interdisciplinary, problem-solving work that should be part of contemporary legal education.''
New York Law School Dean Richard A. Matasar said he is pleased that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has chosen to support the Democracy Design Workshop.
''In the coming years, the challenge to all democratic institutions will be how to involve citizens in decision-making,'' Matasar said. ''Without such participation, the legitimacy of government might be questioned. And, without the information that ordinary citizens can provide, decisions cannot be informed. Professor Noveck and her students are working on novel solutions to this problem and this grant will provide strong support for their work.''
Supported by New York Law School and by the Information Society Project of the Yale Law School, the Workshop continues those schools` long tradition of working across conventional boundaries. The Workshop draws upon the best current thinking - and thinkers - in law and policy, ethics and philosophy, communications and media, business and organizational theory, science and technology, and the arts. All of these disciplines are essential to building and strengthening the social practices of democracy and the deliberative structures upon which they depend.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (www.rbf.org) promotes social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Through its grant-making, the Fund supports efforts to expand knowledge, clarify values and critical choices, nurture creative expression, and shape public policy. The Fund`s programs are intended to develop leaders, strengthen institutions, engage citizens, build community, and foster partnerships that include government, business, and civil society. Respect for cultural diversity and ecological integrity pervades the Fund`s activities.
The Fund`s Democratic Practice program focuses on four goals. Two of those goals, encouraging civic engagement and fostering effective governance, are pursued largely in the United States. The Fund`s other goals--enhancing access and promoting participation, and ensuring transparency and accountability--focus primarily on transnational institutions. In addition, the Fund may pursue one or more of these program themes in a limited number of the Fund`s ''pivotal places,'' based on a careful assessment of local needs and priorities.
Recognizing that there is no single model of effective democratic practice, the Fund will emphasize flexibility and adaptability to different contexts.
ABOUT NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL
Located near the centers of law, government, and finance in New York City, New York Law School is one of the oldest independent law schools in the United States. Its faculty of noted and prolific scholars has built the school`s curricular strength in the areas of tax law, labor and employment law, civil and human rights law, media and information law, urban legal studies, international and comparative law, and interdisciplinary fields such as legal history and legal ethics. The Law School enrolls 1,400 students and has more than 11,000 graduates.
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