As a result of my participation last year in a course held by Boise State University (BSU), I gained the opportunity to create my own courses using 3D Game Lab – an online game-based learning platform hosted by BSU. My primary goal in doing so was to offer information and resources to citizens in our community in an easy to use and fun format that was accessible 24/7. To begin, I chose to create a course on drainage and flooding because this is a topic about which we seem to get a lot of calls or questions. But now as I am nearing completion of the course and getting ready to roll it out for use, I realized there is no good place or centralized location to offer information about serious games designed specifically for citizens. And while regular games have numerous fan sites all over the place where players can talk about the games and exchange ideas and opinions, there's nothing for players or users of these "gov games."

So I figured if our city needed a place to promote our game and a place where people could discuss the game and offer feedback, other agencies could probably use something like this too. And how much better it would be if we could all be located in one place. That way anyone interested in serious gaming related to government and community would not have to search all over the Internet. And if there was a type of guild site for these games, people could go there to see reviews of games, discover new games, or just interact with others who are interested in civic gaming. The members of this guild site could also become a type of Civic Guild which might then offer opportunities reaching beyond only online interactions!

In the end, I was not really sure how much of a need for this was out there or if it would actually work the way I envisioned, but I went ahead anyway and set up a GovGame Directory and Civic Guild site. You can visit the sites by clicking the links below. Because this idea is still somewhat in Beta form, it would be great to get feedback on whether or not people think this would be beneficial, and if so, how the sites could be improved. And feel free to submit your favorite GovGames through the directory site so we can add them to the listing. I know I'll be adding ours once it's finally completed.

GovGames Directory

Civic Guild Site

Today I read a great article about digital citizenship, Digital Citizenship and the Forward Edge Transference, written by Mike Langlois, LICSW. In his post, Langlois discusses many similarities between online and offline behavior. This was interesting to me because as a local government employee, I've also recognized many similarities between offline communities and online spaces. But my focus usually tends to be more on how the community functions as a whole. Langlois is in the psychotherapy and social work fields, so his perspective seems to be more targeted at the individual and interpersonal level. But both of our observations meet at the same very important point in all this – people are viewing, approaching, and behaving in these online spaces as though they are in an actual place. They rely on and feel loyalty and obligation to the digital space where they hang out, and this sense of responsibiilty extends to the people there with whom they interact.

The significance of these observations to offline and online governance should not be underestimated. It will eventually have major impacts as digital populations increase. One example is the current sign of unrest among the population of the virtual world of Second Life. If this were occurring in an offline community, the solution would be to develop a comprehensive plan. And if we acknowlege that people in a digital space are behaving as they would in an offline space, there is no reason to believe we should not apply this same solution to Second Life. If we do not, past experience in the offline world has proven we risk diminishing the success of our community.

While a comprehensive plan is not a cure-all, the practice of going through it and the final document can go a long way in helping move a community forward. These plans are viewed by professionals to be so important that grants are commonly offered to help fund their development. Unfortunately at this time, grant providers have not yet come to the same awareness as some of us that digitial spaces also need these plans. So moving forward on a plan for a virtual community would have to be self-funded or be developed through volunteer efforts. 

Another challenge in developing a comprehensive plan for a virtual space like Second Life is that there are no models to follow. But due to the similarities between online and offline spaces, I believe it would not be too difficult to modify a typical plan to meet the needs of a virtual one. Because I feel so strongly about this, I went ahead and developed a proposal for implementing the comprehensive planning process in Second Life. And I went so far as to have it peer reviewed by an experienced planner. Then feeling confident it offered a well-thought out approach and reasonable solution, I emailed it to Rod Humble. Of course, in the back of my mind, I didn't really expect a response and never received one. I just don't think a private company wants to believe they have anything in common with government. And many private managers or CEOs probably aren't very familiar with how local government actually works and why.

The problem with Linden Lab not choosing to at least consider this solution is that in an offline space, I don't think development of a comprehensive plan is usually undertaken without the "city" being involved. So I am not sure if it would be possible or worthwhile to attempt this without the involvement of Linden Lab. But I do believe this type of exercise and plan would help  address many of the current concerns in that particular virtual world. And I think some group needs to provide the lead that many online communities might eventually have to follow. So I decided to post the proposal here and ask if anyone in the Second Life community sees value in this or believes it would be worth the time and effort or even a discussion or if it is even possible to implement on our own. If not, I suppose it will eventually be another online company that in the future forges this path.

Second Life Comprehensive Plan Proposal 2012

And if you're familiar with history, this probably doesn't surprise you because as you know, back then, the other alternative, water, was usually contaminated and unsafe to drink. Unfortunately while alcohol at moderate doses did not kill as water might have, it definitely was (and still is) a depressant. So people really were not too motivated or even had the presence of mind to innovate and discover new ways of doing things. Then along came coffee and the establishments in which people congregated to drink this new beverage. I suppose in a way it could be looked at as a wakening of the population. People discovered others with similar interests, and they learned about or developed new ideas. To me this seems similar to what I see occurring with people today – but this time it's not driven by a change in consumption of a beverage, but instead is being advanced by a change in consumption of media. And it seems to be particularly accelerated in the virtual world community.

Just about everything new that I have learned or been exposed to over the last 5 1/2 years has been because of my involvement in Second Life and other virtual environments. But when I try to explain this to people who are not involved in this technology, I don't think they really understand why this is possible or the incredible rate at which learning happens in that environment. Probably because I do not explain it well enough. But I was thinking about this today and realized perhaps I should be comparing it to the coffee house story to get my point across. But in my example, television would take the place of alcohol. This is because, like alcohol in the past, television has kept our population complacent and accepting of the status quo. The hours spent sitting in front of that box kept us from reaching out to each other and discovering and sharing new ideas or inspiring each other to reach beyond what we know today.

In my example, the technology making virtual worlds possible would be the new "beverage on the block." And the immersive 3D environments where all this takes place have become the new "coffee house" where any of us from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection can meet, share ideas, learn, motivate, and inspire each other to expand our horizons. I would compare the community congregating in these new meeting houses to those who first started hanging out in coffee houses in the late 1700s/early 1800s. Just like the traditional coffee house, some days you might just find everyone sitting around enjoying the company; other days there's an excitement or buzz in the air because a new topic has been introduced, and people are excited about its potential to change our lives. All of us who spend time there usually leave with much more than what we brought to the table. And the people who have not yet realized what's in the coffee house or what it offers, avoid it and follow their traditional habits not really knowing or understanding what is really going on in there.

In a way, I suppose other online communities and environments could also be considered to represent virtual coffee houses. Just like not only Starbucks serves up a great cup of coffee, so too online tools other than virtual worlds offer technology and a platform where people can meet and share. Over time, I like to think that as coffee houses eventually evolved to become ubiquitous and frequented by a large number of our population, virtual worlds will one day become a common hang out spot for public discourse, discussion, and expression. I wonder if people will look back at this time in history and be able to attribute our future advances to the rise in technology and 3D immersive environments.

I am not sure what it is about Facebook that causes professionals to lose all their judgement and ability to reason and act as an adult particularly when it concerns personnel matters. One outcome of this is that employers are allowing themselves to get caught up in their employees' personal, non-work related use of this online communication platform. And this is happening even though normally what employees do when they are on their own time is not really a matter for concern for employers unless the employee gets involved in criminal activities. And in that case, it usually becomes public knowledge, and the employer need not worry about doing their own investigation. So, this shift to focus on one specific non-work activity does not really make sense or seem right. But what has been more disturbing is that education professionals in the public school system, specifically adminstrators, are practicing this same type of intrusion into the private lives of their students.

When this violation of privacy into a student's private Facebook account occurs, there are several critical differences from the violation of privacy of an adult employee:

• The chances that a student under 18 fully understands their rights is minimal while an adult usually has a better chance of understanding their rights.
• The administrator has a position of authority at a school so the student is more likely to be hesitant to disobey or not go along with requests to share their private, online account. An employee usually respects the employer's authority, but not usually to the point that abuse of their rights is tolerated.
• The administration at a school can, if not monitored or managed well by a superintendent or board, can cause a student problems or harrass them if the student does not go along with this violation of privacy. If this happens to an employee they can seek another job; the only way a student can realistically "quit" that school is to have their family relocate their home. This could be a major disruption to a family relying on jobs or having other kids in that school system. 
• A student might be worried that if he does not go along with the administrator's request, his or her parents could be called increasing their chances in their mind for getting into trouble or being embarrassed by having their parents read their private messages. I don't think too many employees have to worry about their employer calling their mother to share secrets lurking in their Facebook messages.
• For education to successfully occur, there needs to be some level of trust by the student in the adults at their school. And once this trust is broken by a violation of the student's privacy, the environment is no longer conducive for education or participation in other school-related activities to occur. A breakdown in trust between employer and employee might be tolerated for a while, and if it cannot be, the employee has the right and choice to quit.

Wake Up Call to Public Schools

Why is all this important or critical for a school to acknowledge and understand? Based on the social media education we have had at our city, it seems that this practice opens up an employer, or in this case the school, to legal liabilities. If they are regularly monitoring or requiring students to share private account information and messages, we learned they can risk liabilities based on what they read. And what is also critical is if this practice is preventing education from occuring, then schools risk not carrying out their primary mission.

Violation of a Student's Privacy is a Violation of a Family's Privacy

While abuse of privacy by employers and even colleges has become public knowledge and legislators are beginning to consider passing laws to prevent this, there seems to be little information about the abuse occuring at the public school level. Parents are probably not aware this is going on because few teens are going to run home and tell their mom or dad they were called into their counselor's or principal's office to allow full access to their Facebook account. It's embarrassing, and what teen wants to risk having to share their private messages with their mom or dad. But I can't imagine most parents would be happy to know their child is being forced to open up a window not only into their own private life, but potentially the lives of all of their friends and relatives. This intrusion ends up not only violating the privacy of the child, but also that of their whole family and the lives of their friends. Would most people be ok with their child's principal or counselor reading all about every matter that goes on in their family? 

The other issue in all this is if the school is doing something so risky as forcing kids to share private Facebook accounts and messages, they probably have not developed a policy for dealing with it all. So what is to stop the principal from printing out a child's message about the fight their parents had last night or how they found out they have a serious disease or illness or how they lost their job and are worried about making ends meet. And then what is to stop that principal from sharing that with anyone else? If there are no policies, how can this practice be regulated and how can parents be assured their own privacy has not been violated?

I only became aware of all this myself and the problems it introduces because one of my children was the victim of coersion and eventually violation into her private account by school officials. When it occurred, it created tremendous stress and problems for my family because of its effect on my daughter. Her trust in and the respect of the adults at her school has been shattered to the point that she is struggling to look beyond this abuse and allow for the education process to occur. And because I also can no longer trust them to perform their duties with good judgement, I have trouble knowing how to counsel her on how to handle situations at school.

Legislation Desperately Needed

When I read about the push to pass legislation to prevent employers and colleges from requiring access to social media accounts, I realized this needed to be extended to include public schools. And I realized many school officials might not realize these practices are going on. Fortunately I have been able to discuss this with Bradley Shear, an attorney championing this legislation throughout the country. And hopefully if others become aware that abuse in public schools is a real issue, he will be able to convince legislators to also regulate those institutions with these laws. So I decided to go ahead and write this blog to let others know this is going on and to indicate support in adding public schools to these laws. If you want to read the general details of our own, personal experience, I've shared them below.

Our Experience

Normally I don't like sharing the nitty gritty details of my family's life, particularly on my blog. But I'm doing so because it brings to light an issue government agencies need to be made aware of and only by sharing can we convince legislators there is a real problem. In our particular case, the abuses and actions by the administrators at my daughter's school have been appalling. It started because a teacher heard another student spreading rumors about my daughter – all of it unrelated to school and nothing against the law. So the school called in my daughter to demand to know if the rumors were true. This went on for some days, without my knowledge, and culminated in them asking her to open her Facebook account to them which she did. Then the vice principal called me to demand I come to the school immediately to read through her private messages. At the time I was out of town for work and could not make it back until later that night. She had obviously kept the account open long after my daughter had left and told me she would keep it open until I got there. She was almost hysterical about the whole situation also demanding I punish my daughter for what she had alledgedly done. I tried to explain I could not come in and did not feel comfortable punishing my daughter for something I could never prove to have occurred. Finally at the end of our conversation, I told her to close the account, and I would contact her the next day.

But after I hung up, I began to realize what a violation of my daugher's privacy this whole episode was. It did not appear that my daughter had done anything wrong at school yet they had subjected her to an investigation as if she was a criminal and then read through all her messages which would have been equivalent to my teachers going through my diary when I was in grade school. Of course I found out when I got home that this had taken a huge toll on my daughter who ended up crying through most of the rest of the day and therefore missed most of her classes. She was embarrassed and very upset. Particularly so because their line of questioning had also been sexual in nature with them demanding she share with them everything she had done sexually. In this day and age, I just cannot imagine how a school adminstrator could confront a 13-year old girl and demand to know the extent of her sexual experience.

So the next day, I spoke with the principal thinking he would set things straight. But instead I learned about even more disturbing practices. He explained that the reason they had to interrogate my daughter was because the punishment for spreading rumors is different depending on if the rumor is true or not. So he insisted of his need to conduct an investigation into the truth each time they hear a rumor about a child. And obviously he did not see a problem with not contacting a parent first. I tried to point out that by not contacting a parent first, particularly with questioning related to the sexuality of a student, they risk many issues. I asked him if he ever considered they might be interrogating a child who had been a victim of sexual abuse and without first consulting a parent they would risk further causing pain for that child? Fortunately in our case, my daughter does not have that background, but how would they have known if they had not first called a parent? He said he cannot call parents until he has the truth. I told him not to pry into the private lives of my children. And he said he cannot do that – it is his obligation to look out for the morals and ethics of the children at his school. And if he feels they are not leading a moral life (obviously according to his standards), he is going to launch an investigation. And only if he finds they are in fact exhibiting poor behavior will he contact parents. And even then he said he doesn't like contacting parents because most kids don't want their parents to know anything and would rather just talk to him. Of course, I ended the conversation by making it clear he did not have my permission to interrogate or invade the privacy of any of my children without first discussing it with me unless they were violating some school rule. I also indicated I felt he was depriving me of my right to parent my own child and that his staff desperately needed some education in how to handle these matters. His response was, "Fine, for the Broviak children, I will call you first."

I struggled with legally pursuing this matter because it was so stressful and disruptive to my family. It definitely affected my daughter's grades and her relationship with the school. But because we have other children who will or are attending that school and did not want to risk having their education jeopardized, we chose not to pursue litigation even though I was advised we would have a case. Also, I thought it was more important that the school realize they need to change their practices and stop any other child from going through this. 

When I learned a few months after this that the counselor had told another mother not to allow her daughter, who was one of my daughter's best friends, to spend time with mine, I finally called a meeting with the principal and school superintendent. Again I tried to emphasize how wrong these practices were, that they were violating our rights by doing these things, and that they desperately needed to educate their staff. But both men disagreed with my assessment and even went so far as to deny a lot of this happened. Even though I talked to the other mother myself, they said that never occurred. So the only outcome was to change the counselor that my daughter would report to.

For now, they have not again approached my daughter for her private information. We are trying to get through the last part of 7th and hope to make it through 8th with no more problems. But my daughter says they are still regularly taking kids into the counselor's office and telling them they cannot leave until they open up their Facebook accounts to their scrutiny. I asked her what the kids do and she said, "they let them see the accounts because otherwise, they are not allowed to leave the room." And that is just wrong, and something tells me the school's attorney would not be too happy to find out this was happening on a regular basis.

Community events on public property

Where I currently work, all departments are involved in handling event applications for something that will be held on public property because all of us have a potential to be impacted in some way. Although there are some events requiring no city services, most of the time some level of police or fire oversight or protection is needed. For larger events, public works provides barricades, water, garbage pickup, or electricity. The entire process for us is managed by our economic development department, and we do not charge a fee for our support services. The city itself rarely hosts an event all by itself – we do have a few official "city events," but these are usually managed by our local chamber of commerce – not by city staff. We just don't have the employees or funds to support the planning and management of major events. Instead we tend to focus our efforts on activities that promote local businesses. One example is our "Fall in Love with Downtown Geneva" – a month-long contest held in February that involves asking people to register at local businesses to win prizes. Each week our city council picks from the entries and announces the winners at the council meeting. 

Celebrations aren't always fun and games

My event-handling experience with my last employer, the city of LaSalle, was much different. During my time there we really didn't receive many requests from others to host activities on public property. 

The city itself hosted one main, official city event each year and had been doing so since about the mid 1970s in various forms and locations. But during most of my 16 years working for the city, the 4-day event was held each August in the city's main park. From what I remember, each year, this event ended up creating a major disruption to that facility and the surrounding neighborhood. The celebration also took an enormous amount of time to plan, set up, manage, and host. Fortunately for our city, the main planning and management of the actual event was handled by volunteers. But even so, it still required a lot of support from our city staff. For that whole week leading up to the celebration and for several days after we really could work on nothing else because we had to get the park ready for the activities and clean up afterwards. And even though so many people put in long hours and hard work, citizens regularly complained about the celebration. Eventually the complaints got so bad that for the last year of my time there, the elected officials decided to no longer host the event. And from what I could tell, the neighboring communities seemed to have similar experiences.

Events in a virtual community

So because of my background in local government, I've been very interested in observing how Linden Lab, the owner of the virtual world of Second Life, has been handling their community events. The activities taking place in this environment offer experiences similar to those we find in our offline lives with the exception of having a physical presence. However, there are a few benefits available not normally offered in an offline activity – because everyone has a profile that can be anonymously accessed, it's easy to check someone out before approaching them. Also, because of the chat and other communication tools, it's easy to have a real conversation even while attending an event with music – unlike what is possible in an offline venue with music. Another of the many benefits I have found related to events in Second Life is the ability for organizers and hosts of these events to register and advertise events held on private lands. This is helpful because if you are sitting around your virtual place wondering what there is to do, you can just click open the search and see what events are taking place. You can even set an event to notify you before it is starting if you are logged in. (Although I wish there was a mobile app for this so I could get notifications on my iphone.) The registration setup is very easy and quick – I sometimes wonder if this is a service cities could model for their own communities. You can check out Second Life's event listing here: http://secondlife.com/community/events/?lang=en-US

In addition to the offering of tools to support private events, Linden Lab has chosen at times to host their own events. Most, like the celebration hosted by my last employer, relied on significant participation by volunteers for assistance with organization and management. And like what happened where I used to work, this year Linden Lab seems to have made a decision to pull back and not host formal events. In particular the company recently announced they will no longer provide the public space and hosting of their annual birthday celebration. Instead they are asking people to use their private event notification system to let people know about privately-hosted events held to celebrate Second Life's birthday. I am not sure why they made this decision, but as you can imagine there have been mixed reactions from the community. Some are upset and believe Linden Lab should be more involved in the community and show their support by hosting these types of events while others believe it is better to leave celebrations and events to the community itself. What is fascinating is that this is exactly the back and forth we hear from citizens in our offline communities.

Lessons learned

The take away from this is what most of us in government have come to realize: there will always be some people who want their "government" more involved while others want it to back off and let the private sector lead. So where is the balance? What is government's role in community events? My philosophy with local government has evolved to where I believe each agency needs to deliver the services expected and requested by their community as long as their members are willing to fund those services and if the law allows the government to provide those services. The difficulty is in determining just what should be provided because not every community will choose the same services and there are so many conflicting opinions. For offline communities, this decision is usually made by councils who regularly consider requests and vote on policies and ordinances to meet service requests. And if a community is well run, those officials make their decisions based on feedback from members of the community so their decisions reflect the will of the people.

But what is an owner or creator or manager of a virtual community to do? To be successful, they can take a page from the city management book and follow the same process a city would and create a comprehensive plan for the community. This plan, developed with input from the community, provides the guidance needed for community development and management and decision-making. The recent commotion about event hosting is only one more sign that this virtual community has reached a point every city eventually faces if there is no plan for the community's future. And any community developer will tell you that failure to plan the future is planning to fail – even in a virtual community.

Here's a link to the full interview: Meredith Perkins talks Virtual Worlds with Chris Dorobek

Shortly after I started inspecting construction almost thirty years ago, I started realizing most contractors have the same response to similar situations. When I was younger and asked a contractor to do something, the typical response was something like, "Honey, I've been doing this for thirty years, and …." Then they would go on to tell me why I was wrong and they were right. Or they would try to reassure me that whatever they did would be ok, and they knew this because of their vast experience – obviously I could not know that because I had not worked as long as they had.

Of course, not all contractors try to convince you that they know better or you just aren't experienced enough to understand what should really be done. Some are very open about not wanting to do what you ask. In these instances there's the straighforward responses of, "you and I will be long gone when this fails" or "don't worry – it's getting buried – no one will see it."  At least with these they are honest about admitting something might not be right, but are hoping that you don't care enough to require them to do it right. I always liked the one, "you'll never see it from (insert next town over)." And one that always annoyed me was "we ain't building a watch."

Fortunately for me, I was usually confident what I was asking them to do most definitely needed to be done. So the subtle intimidation never really worked with me. My experiences working for cities had given me opportunities to see the failed results of poor construction. And you don't have to wait 30 years to see failures when you work in public works. So most of the time, I could describe exactly what would happen if they didn't do what was required. And I was also fortunate to work with some really excellent contractors who never used those responses and brought a lot of value to a project. 

But after all those years and having thought I'd heard every response in the book, the other day on my construction job I heard a new one. The foreman on my water main job had neglected to follow some of the specifications. And when I called his boss to try to straighten everything out, he obviously did not like me calling to complain and asking him to fix things. So his response to me was, "you better watch it because you're going to get yourself a reputation." I'm still not sure what he really meant . But whatever it was, I do know it was obviously a response he felt would scare me enough for me to change my request or not bother him anymore. But instead of intimidating me, it made me think, I really need to start writing down the things contractors say.