When it comes to the state of our deliberative democracy, here’s one thing we do know: There’s never been a time when citizens have had more informational inputs at their disposal. But here’s something we don’t know: Whether citizens have access to the right sort of information — or know how to take action based upon that information — to make informed decisions about their communities and society. What steps can be taken to make sure they do?

That was the audacious mission undertaken by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, a blue-ribbon panel formed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the nonpartisan Aspen Institute. In 2009, the Knight Commission released a report “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age” that included 15 recommendations to better meet community information needs.

Following the release of the report, the Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program commissioned a series of white papers to put more meat on the bones of those recommendations. During this same period, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also conducted an investigation into “the future of media and information needs of citizens and communities,” which culminated in [June] with a mammoth 465-page report. The report provided a comprehensive assessment of the health of the nation’s current information marketplace and concluded that while the overall information ecosystem looked encouraging, there were gaps of concern at the local level.  Importantly, however, the agency also noted that “Government is not the main player in this drama, and the First Amendment circumscribes government action to improve local news.”

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In terms of access to information, Blair Levin, Former Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the FCC, outlined steps to move toward “Universal Broadband” while Jon Gant of the University of Illinois and Nicol Turner-Lee of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies outlined “Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government” in their report on the importance of greater government transparency.

Read more at Forbes.