Building Civic Engagement Infrastructure That Earns and Sustains Trust A strategic memo on institutionalizing democratic participation and civic engagement capacity in New York City governance. Original memo published by Democracy Local on December 19, 2025, titled “We Govern the Way We Campaigned: Together.” Addressed to the Community Organizing Subcommittee of the Mamdani Transition Team and authored by Liz Barry, Executive Director of Metagov. ^^ Submitter's Note: Converted to StratML format from the source by ChatGPT and edited in the form at https://stratml.us/forms/Claude/Part1.html Democracy Local DL 32b2adc1-db70-404b-9255-9bd6d828525d A civic organization focused on strengthening democratic participation and local governance. Metagov A nonprofit laboratory for digital governance contributing expertise in collective intelligence and civic engagement infrastructure. Liz Barry AUTHOR | Executive Director, Metagov ^^ Elizabeth “Liz” Barry (US/Ireland) is a world-leading expert in real-time systems for gathering, analyzing, and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words. She is the Executive Director of Metagov.org, a nonprofit laboratory for self-governance in a digital age, where she directs a research area on interoperable deliberative tooling. Previously, she served as Head of Partnerships at The Computational Democracy Project, the foundation she co-founded with the creators of the Polis technology to steward open source code and methods for collective intelligence. Since witnessing the Sunflower Revolution firsthand in Taipei in 2014, Liz has tracked the democratic upgrades in Taiwan, and worked with facilitators, social movements, civil society organisations, journalists, indigenous nations, peacebuilders, and democratic governments young and old to implement "listening at scale" in 25 countries and counting. Her innovations in large-scale interactions began years ago when she painted “TALK TO ME” on a sign and listened to over 100,000 people on the sidewalks of New York City and around the United States. These and her other participatory science initiatives have been covered by the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, The BBC, PBS, NPR, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Guardian, This American Life, The New Yorker, Associated Press, Reuters, Nature, and other national and international media outlets. New York City Residents Residents whose participation, trust, and collective knowledge are essential to democratic governance. New York City Government Municipal institutions responsible for designing and sustaining civic engagement infrastructure. A New York City where the majority of residents can personally and meaningfully participate in the governance of their communities. 6df1c694-b2d8-4f71-a8b9-789ed93bd99d To transform campaign-driven civic energy into durable, trustworthy democratic participation embedded in everyday governance. 968d2891-e772-4a38-82a7-262748042461 Participation Treat meaningful civic participation as a default feature of governance, not an exception. Fairness Build trust through procedural fairness, political access, and genuine listening. Transparency Ensure civic processes and technologies are auditable, understandable, and accountable to the public. Public Sovereignty Maintain democratic control over the tools and infrastructure that shape civic participation. Governing Capacity Institutionalize the democratic energy of electoral mobilization into sustainable governing capacity for New York City. b6b79116-c3b2-4811-b4a3-c1778d007164 Participation Reduce structural barriers to participation by making access, compensation, translation, and remote engagement baseline features of civic processes. 579cd754-faf4-4e1b-a60b-222ebb644265 1 Input Build institutional capacity to listen, learn, and respond to diverse public input using structured deliberation and assistive technology. f730b02f-2159-4f86-897d-2ad07f34f897 2 Examples cited include Taiwan’s Participation Officers Network and tools such as Talk to the City, enabling large-scale deliberation without flattening nuance. Coordination Coordinate civic engagement efforts across agencies and programs to share learning and serve public servants as well as residents. 4d37b14c-6073-44fc-8c33-54cafd53d643 3 Systems Design participatory systems that resist domination by concentrated interests through interoperability, transparency, and public governance of tools. 54ebcf1a-9d73-4f90-9445-33753bea1ccc 4 Deliberation Pilot deliberative approaches at limited scale and institutionalize them based on demonstrated success and public trust. da09a94d-30c5-43fa-b2e6-c63f514089f7 5 East Belgium’s permanent citizen assemblies are cited as an example of experimental approaches becoming durable democratic institutions. 2025-12-19 2026-01-05 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memo-we-govern-way-campaigned-together-democracy-local-cmoac/ Owen Ambur Owen.Ambur@verizon.net