RE: David Hahn-Baker questions

[patricia bonner <bonner.patricia@epa.gov>]

David Hahn-Baker questions:

"How do you hope and expect that this dialogue will make a difference or it's too early to tell with this activity, how has the other dialogue that you did made a difference in the real world?"

First the second question - we would not have had this event if the first dialogue had not happened.  Jennifer Crawford noted in a day 1 message that the first event had been very useful to the Office of Environmental Information in developing the Public Access Plan.   It also was "mined" for good ideas in redeveloping web sites.  I am still personally looking for ways to finance the possible pilot projects with libraries.    The networking begun during that event has continued....people discovered they liked other individual's thinking  and have stayed in touch.   

As the lead staff person for the development of the Policy and its implementation plan, I've hoped for this Dialog to happen for nearly a year.    Why?   Because of all of the talent and ideas that could be tapped into with the technique, and because once people start talking to one another those good ideas build on each other.   As one of my earlier messages stated, a group of us is mining the site as the discussions progress and gathering the ideas for best practices, training, evaluation and thoughts for improving the Policy into separate documents which we plan to share on this website as soon after the event ends as possible.   
We will be using the first three documents to enhance the plan for implementing the new Policy.      We hope that all of you who had specific suggestions for improving the Policy will send them as formal comments (see how on this website:  http://www.info-ren.org/network-democracy/epa-pip/comment/comment.shtml  ) before July 31 when the comment period ends.  

AND......yesterday in response to Fred's question re: money... I did some web research and composed a message re: grants support from EPA.  It disappeared off the screen.  If possible today or tonight, I will repeat the process and compose it off line so it can't get lost again.