Here the content of the three slides from the “WE, THE PEOPLE” session:
- THE CHALLENGE:
•Make people happier, because they are more satisfied with the way governance works.
•Make better decisions by opening-up governance to more people and perspectives.
•Help people become aware that they are part of global and local communities with common problems.
•Build constructive communities of initiatives and reformers.
2. THE STAKEHOLDERS:
•EVERYBODY (including):
–Government
–Public Administration
–Civil Society
3. THE SOLUTION
•Tools to make citizens better able and more willing to care and participate: visceral experience of democracy, show them the results of engagement.
•Accessible and inclusive tools and processes to make decisions better and more transparent– open data, open evidence, fact checking, better public understanding of what is being decided, and on what basis.
•Continue and strengthen the conversation between initiatives in different countries and cultures – make platforms interoperable: an Internet of Democracy, not a Facebook of democracy.
Here are all of the suggestions/proposals that came from the We The People session. It’s worth a read, it ranges from technical to political to inspirational to aspirational to just plain important. Good job everybody, and thanks for a great session!
- Digital divide
- Time
- Decrease time needed for work
- Current and future contracts
- Semantic web (which vocabularies? using transaction contracts for good relations, + friend of a friend)
- Accessibility (web interfaces, graph visualization, smartphone applications)
- Interfaces (online and offline + bridges)
- Reputation (database with history of transactions & participations)
- Microformats (eID?)
- Microdata (HTML5)
- Folksonomies
- Profiles
- URIs
- Input (various data, questions, needs, resources and availability)
- DDoS as legitimate protest
- Liquid Democracy
- Participatory, Post-Democratic
- Address Polarization
- Single Issue Participation
- Examine Different Democracy Models
- Make General Election Days a National Holiday, to make voting and canvassing easier and part of culture
- Communities of practice (support for it?)
- Games
- Direct democracy
- No unique centralized database for public data (use distributed alternatives)
- Focus on people needs
- Distribute control over resources and infrastructure
- Create central place to share and reach
- Add accountability to election promises
- Narrow issues addressed at any given point
- Reward informed participation
- Motivate participation in inactive groups
- Expand participation
- Include mechanism for long termism (e.g. a minister for future generations)
- Can you impose participation by law?
- Build up a community of different stakeholders
- People will not participate if they are not listened to, and if they don’t see the quick results of that.
- Radically change party system to allow more individuals / smaller parties to enter meaningfully
- Strengthen gov powers so people are motivated (so they feel more directly affected)
- Thinking about a new kind of governance is necessary
- Democracy is a bad idea (demos = the people = okay, cratos = power = not okay). Power leads to inhumanity.
- How can a representative democracy manage participation from the people? They can’t because participation is not direct. You vote for a man and ideas, not for real needs, both individual and societal.
- Find easier ways of educating people on rights/responsibilities on different levels of participation, i.e. local, national, continental, global
- Use mashup of online/offline methods and channels
- Representative democracy isn’t efficient. Random people could do a better job, like juries in justice courts.
- Vote with mobile phones
- Clearly show actions taken (it’s okay to “chat” but we should be able to turn opinions into actions -> “so what”)
- Adopt others practices to local context
- Ensure inclusion
- Use low-cost tools
- Create trust
- Speak in a more universal language
- Be more open participation, entry to representation, money/power
- Communicate clear goals
- Freedom: freedom of speech, etc.
- A change of the type/patter of democracy: consensual democracy.
- Make people understand their role and power in democracy.
- In order for the democracy to be working better people need to regain their faith in this system. So how do we do that? Make politicians trustworthy figures that actually do what they promise and stick to their principles.
- Basic income
- The quality of democracy. Rule of law everybody must have equally rights in front of law, inclusively the minority rights in front of I.
- The quality of democracy (Larry Diamond): Rule of Law, Freedom, Equality, Participation, Elites (political representants -local/national government) recruitment.
- Responsive government: deliberation based on / influenced by public opinion (not just in electoral campaigns!).
- Transparency.
- The Internet must be a link between citizens and public institutions.
- Best solutions: Show good practices, best solutions and make them be known by everyone. Present them.
- Equality: between people poor or rich.
- Higher level of public engagement: transparency through open / e-Government.
- Politics must be understandable by every single citizen.
- Make a debate live at the local level engage people, invite them to express their opinion.
- Show individual how decisions taken can affect him/her personally.
- The queality of democracy Larry Diamond. 1. Rule of Law everybody must have equal rights in front of low, inclusively we have to respect the minority rights without discrimination; 2. Freedom freedom of speech; 3. Equality between people; 4. Participation direct participation, not only voting the nights to imply in local government. Putnam how to made democracy work; 5. Transparency.
- Reduction of leverage of politicians over policy-making. Participative Budgeting.
- Participation direct participation (not only the vote) the rights in imply in Local Government.
- Communicate Europe to all the europeans.
- Study EU affairs at school.
- Important to link People's needs?
- Re-conceiving the democratic system (rather than use/hope for the actual for changes).
- Fix broken cycle.
- Principle: Fair System.
- Only anonymous proposals.
- Action: Ask to people to evaluate idea.
- No one representing anyone else.
- No delegation of votes.
- Transparency Public services * Empowerment.
- More vegetables.
- Change the idea of representation: how ruling/decide to facilitate.
- Jettisoning: Wealth + Priviledge.
- Open City: Digital access to public services (Maps, Data, "my" city). "Sensible city" (MIT).
- Public downside of bureaucracy.
- Participatory budgets (culture, infrastructures...).
- List criteria for Deep Cultural Change.
- Fact checking Collaborative intelligence in political accountability.
- Using open data.
- Ideas only evaluated on content.
- City states.
- How to make everyone's voice is heard?
- Rituals of significance.
- Technology to enable, education to get participation (or is technology meant to bring about interest, can it?)
- How to get depth?
- Action-based networking (more doing, less talking).
- More WE.
- Higher level of decentralised authority Devolution.
- Get back the prescription of life-style to the people (or any non-profit stakeholder of society) -> Inverse marketing logic/psychological wellbeing in sustainable development
- We need super local solutions
- Share
- Democratic education: not at higher education level! Responsible and conscious electorate
- Integrate youth in local/national councils
- Creation of an Edgeryders Thinktank conference every other year in Strasbourg in Brussels
- Creation of a European open data portal
- Restore or apply fundamental human rights (freedom of speech, right to demonstrate, right of association)
- Liquid Democracy
- Gamification
- Learn and practice at least one other language than English
- Develop data visualisation on political facts
- Citizens’ knowledge and expertise
- Political education
- Open data set which can serve for collaborative applications to allow citizens to co-design solutions and improvement of government services
- Development of new models of leadership and governance, exploration of alternative ways of exercising power that emerges under conditions of open government
- Deconstruct participation unbuild it
- Opengov connectivity evaluating and valuing gender constraints in the collaborative approach more integral approach to social development
- Positive towards excluded people
- Local citizens forums
- Collaboration diversification of hybridised strategies and initiatives. Wider variety of solutions and experimentation to allow wider range of citizen engagement
- Civic local and national activities
- Collaborating networking
- Collaborative heterogeneous designing of types of people in society, articulate them to describe mankind, define oneself with qualities and potential
- International association of open governments with a citizen-driven collaborative platform
- Make better use of social media to actually influence the outcome of different political decisions, higher level of public engagement, e-government, open government
- Global open collaboration, one focused on transformation, online community, inspired by Edgeryders prototype, built upon a shared vision complemented by respectful collaboration
- Return to the rules of direct parliamentary representation (deputies directed to the people not to a party)
- Fact-checking, fact based political discourse
- Mapping and connecting regional and local initiatives
- Use flow dynamics (rafting) modelisation for reinventing participative structures
- Exchange open data best practices, parks and gardens departments, model contracts
- Open data and educational collaborative platform to prepare populations for cataclysms
- Put civil society representatives in charge
- Active citizen networking
- Open the political space
- European League of Rebalancing
- Visceral Experiences of Democracy
- Free data, free information, free ideas
- Make general elections a national holiday to create excitement and make voting and canvassing easier
- Examine different democracy models
- Address polarisation
- Liquid democracy
- Single issue participation
- Elite recruitment into local and national government
