Minnesota Anniversary Project (MAP 150)
This project is so immense, it warranted its own website. Find out more at www.map150.org or read on.
The Minnesota Anniversary Project has now wrapped up. Read more about the Project below, or view the presentation of the final report.
What we do
The Citizens League's mission is to build civic capacity. Looking back, it's clear that many of Minnesota's most prized innovations had their home in the Citizens League: charter schools, the Minnesota Miracle, assisted living, and many more. These breakthroughs were achieved through its hallmark "study committee" process. This model of civic engagement certainly helped to achieve the Citizens League's mission, but the world changed in the 1990's as technology created vast new means of communication, replacing hierarchical systems with networks and open source technologies, giving whole new meaning and potential to "democratic processes." If the Citizens League is to continue to help Minnesota innovate, its methods too must change. So it has launched the Minnesota Anniversary Project to celebrate Minnesota's 150th Anniversary in 2008.
MAP 150's goal is to improve Minnesota's problem-solving capacity by developing tools and processes that place citizens more fully in the role of "co-producers" of the public good. It seeks to put into practice the "wisdom of crowds" in the public arena--processes virtually nonexistent in the public sector.
MAP 150 is currently testing new tools and processes for citizen involvement through a series of demonstration--or pilot--projects. These are:
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Minnesota Property Tax Facts What do Minnesotans really want to know about their property taxes? Here you weigh in and check out what other Minnesotans are saying. |
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Redistricting With redistricting just around the corner in 2010, the possibility looms that Minnesota may lose a congressional district and be subject to a drastic change in districts. Citizens rarely have much of a role in the redistricting process...until now. |
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Students Speak Out Schools across the board face a plethora of challenges. Students Speak Out is a place for students and adults to constructively dialogue about the causes and consequences of these issues, as well as to help create solutions. |
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Aging Services The Citizens League started with the hypothesis that many reform efforts are failing to fix the aging services system is so because most policy design efforts attempt to fix the system's problems, rather than people's problems. This project has contributed to the Citizens League's ongoing work on long term care financing. |
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CitiZing!TM CitiZing! will be Minnesota's first web platform designed for citizens collaboration on public problems, aiming to become the online civic network for collective problem solving. |
MAP 150 is exciting, fast-paced and innovative. Want to know more? Interested in helping out? Let us know! We're always looking for more wisdom to add to our crowd.