Government ADR & the ODR Forum

First a correction: a while ago I mentioned that Esther Vilalta Aura Nicuesa, a colleague from Spain, had participated in a conference on the "crime of silence." I was incorrect - she had passed information on to me from one of her colleagues who had, in fact, attended. Sorry for the error, Esther.

Yesterday I chaired a meeting of representatives from some small government agencies with ADR programs that deal primarily with external customers (citizens, private sector organizations, etc.). We met to discuss whether there exists a special community of interest among those of us who supply third parties to sit between the government and the public, or between non-government parties. The consensus was that we do share some common interests, and that the traditional government ADR community, while supportive, can't offer as much as we can offer to each other. Consequently, we are going to go ahead with a larger Small Agency ADR Summit some time later this year, bringing together a much larger group of small agencies and small, externally oriented programs. Our hope is that our coalition (or whatever we call ourselves) will be able to share best practices, training, etc., all of which will benefit the public we serve. I'll write more about this effort as we move along.

The ODR Forum is coming up very soon(June 2nd and 3rd in Buenos Aires). As far as I know, I'm speaking in some venue about ODR and e-Government, and I've put together a paper discussing the ODR program at the NMB. After a couple of other friendly readers have given me some feedback, I'll post it, and the Forum will include it in the online proceedings. I'll also send down to the Forum a short report on the results of an informal survey that I did to get feedback from students who have taken ODR classes over the past several years. I'll post that, too, when the final version is ready.