Bottom Up Policy Consulting

Bottom-Up Policy Consulting is one of the three essential components of an Open Source City, specified in the Introduction.

Right now, policy consulting is conducted in an “ivory tower” model: closed, top-down and based on private expertise. An ivory tower approach vests development in the hands of professionals whose skills are proprietary (and hence closed to third party scrutiny) and whose expertise lies in developing a product that is not released publicly until it is completed, after which the public opportunities for feedback are severely limited.

Open policy consulting, by contrast, is bottom-up: community-led, contributing and evaluating a much wider array of possible ideas, and engaging the public at the very earliest stages of development.

The expertise in an open consulting model lies not in developing the product itself, which is best done via community engagement, but in fostering the collaboration that makes community development possible. Under this approach, many contributors put forward enhancements and fixes, and the project managers decide, based on community feedback, which additions to pursue in more detail.