Open-source governance (also known as open governance and open politics) is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry, employing their collective wisdom to benefit the decision-making process and improve democracy.[1]
Theories on how to constrain, limit or enable this participation vary. Accordingly, there is no one dominant theory of how to go about authoring legislation with this approach. There are a wide array of projects and movements which are working on building open-source governance systems.[2]
Many left-libertarian and radical centrist organizations around the globe have begun advocating open-source governance and its related political ideas as a reformist alternative to current governance systems. Often, these groups have their origins in decentralized structures such as the Internet and place particular importance on the need for anonymity to protect an individual's right to free speech in democratic systems. Opinions vary, however, not least because the principles behind open-source government are still very loosely defined.[3]
Applications of the principles
In practice, several applications have evolved and been used by democratic institutions:[4]
Open-government mechanisms including those for public participation and engagement, such as the use of IdeaScale, Google Moderator, Semantic MediaWiki, GitHub, and other software by actual ruling governments – these mechanisms are well-developed, especially in the UK and the US,[5] or by civil society and citizens directly for example, Opengovpioneers[6][7] in the UK, and the Scottish Nature Finance Pioneers[8] in Scotland.
Open-politicsforums and wikis, where political issues and arguments can be debated, either within or between political party constraints, taking three distinct forms:
Political-party-platform development, in which ideas are solicited from anyone or almost anyone and openly discussed to a point but the ranking and devotion of resources to developing ideas is reserved to party members or supporters. A variant is the non-partisan think-tank or citizen-advocacy group-platform development as has become common in Canada, for example the Dominion Institute policywiki.[9]
Citizen journalism forums obeying stricter rules to ensure equal power relationships than is typically the case in blogs, strictly designed to balance libel and free speech laws for a local jurisdiction (following laws strictly is part of the open politics ideal).
Open party mechanisms to actually govern and operate formal political parties without the usual insider politics and interest groups that historically have taken over such parties; these experiments have been limited and typically take the form of parties run by referendums or online. An example of this is Italy's Five Star Movement.
Hybrid mechanisms which attempt to provide journalistic coverage, political platform development, political transparency, strategic advice, and critique of a ruling government of the same party all at the same time. Dkosopedia is the best known example of this.
Some models are significantly more sophisticated than a plain wiki, incorporating semantic tags, levels of control or scoring to mediate disputes – however this always risks empowering a clique of moderators more than would be the case given their trust position within the democratic entity – a parallel to the common wiki problem of official vandalism by persons entrusted with power by owners or publishers (so-called "sysop vandalism" or "administrative censorship").
Common and simultaneous policy
Some advocates of these approaches, by analogy to software code, argue[citation needed] for a "central codebase" in the form of a set of policies that are maintained in a public registry and that are infinitely reproducible. "Distributions" of this policy-base are released (periodically or dynamically) for use in localities, which can apply "patches" to customize them for their own use. Localities are also able to cease subscribing to the central policy-base and "fork" it or adopt someone else's policy-base. In effect, the government stems from emergent cooperation and self-correction among members of a community. As the policies are put into practice in a number of localities, problems and issues are identified and solved, and where appropriate communicated back to the core.
These goals for instance were cited often during the Green Party of Canada's experiments with open-political-platform development.[citation needed] As one of over a hundred national Green party entities worldwide and the ability to co-ordinate policy among provincial and municipal equivalents within Canada, it was in a good position to maintain just such a central repository of policy, despite being legally separate from those other entities.
Difference from prior initiatives
Open-source governance differs from previous open-government initiatives in its broader emphasis on collaborative processes. After all...
...simply publishing snapshots of government information is not enough to make it open.
The "Imagine Halifax" (IH) project was designed to create a citizens' forum for elections in Halifax, Nova Scotia in fall 2004. Founded by Angela Bischoff, the widow of Tooker Gomberg, a notable advocate of combining direct action with open politics methods, IH brought a few dozen activists together to compile a platform (using live meetings and email and seedwiki followup). When it became clear that candidates could not all endorse all elements of the platform, it was then turned into questions for candidates in the election. The best ideas from candidates were combined with the best from activists – the final scores reflected a combination of convergence and originality. In contrast to most such questionnaires, it was easier for candidates to excel by contributing original thought than by simply agreeing. One high scorer, Andrew Younger, had not been involved with the project originally but was elected and appeared on TV with project leader Martin Willison. The project had not only changed its original goal from a partisan platform to a citizen questionnaire, but it had recruited a previously uninvolved candidate to its cause during the election. A key output of this effort was a glossary of about 100 keywords relevant to municipal laws.
The 2004–05 Green Party of Canada Living Platform was a much more planned and designed effort at open politics. As it prepared itself for an electoral breakthrough in the 2004 federal election, the Green Party of Canada began to compile citizen, member and expert opinions in preparation of its platform. During the election, it gathered input even from Internet trolls including supporters of other parties, with no major problems: anonymity was respected and, if they were within the terms of use, comments remained intact. Despite, or perhaps because of, its early success, it was derailed by Jim Harris, the party's leader, when he discovered that it was a threat to his status as a party boss.[citation needed] The Living Platform split off as another service entirely out of GPC control and eventually evolved into OpenPolitics.ca[11] and a service to promote wiki usage among citizens and political groups.
The Liberal Party of Canada also attempted a deep policy renewal effort in conjunction with its leadership race in 2006.[12][13] While candidates in that race, notably Carolyn Bennett, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, all made efforts to facilitate web-threaded policy-driven conversations between supporters, all failed to create lateral relationships and thus also failed to contribute much to the policy renewal effort.
Numerous very different projects related to open-source governance collaborate under the umbrella of the Metagovernment project;[14] Metagovernment uses the term "collaborative governance",[15] most of which are building platforms of open-source governance.
Aktivdemokrati is a Direct democratic party, running for the parliament of Sweden[16] Democracylab.org is a Seattle Washington nonprofit (501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, partnered with the Oregon 150 Project,[17] building an online public think tank in which the votes of users determines policy, seeking to connect the values people hold to their positions on issues and the policies they advocate.[18] Votorola is software for building consensus and reaching decisions on local, national and global levels.[19] The White House 2 was a project which crowdsourced the U.S. agenda, "imagining how the White House might work if it was run completely democratically by thousands of people on the internet." Wikicracy has developed a Mediawiki-based platform using most of Open politics criteria[20] These grassroots efforts have been matched by government initiatives that seek similar goals. A more extensive list of these and similar organizations is available externally.
Future Melbourne is a wiki-based collaborative environment for developing Melbourne's 10-year plan. During public consultation periods, it enables the public to edit the plan with the same editing rights as city personnel and councilors.[21]
The New Zealand Police Act Review was a wiki used to solicit public commentary during the public consultation period of the acts review.[22]
At linux.conf.au on January 14, 2015, in Auckland, New Zealand, AustralianAudrey Lobo-Pulo presented Evaluating Government Policies Using Open Source Models, agitating for government policy related knowledge, data and analysis to be freely available to everyone to use, modify and distribute without restriction — "a parallel universe where public policy development and analysis is a dynamic, collaborative effort between government and its citizens". Audrey reported that the motivation for her work was personal uncertainty about the nature and accuracy of models, estimates and assumptions used to prepare policies released with the 2014 Australian Federal Government Budget, and whether and to what extent their real world impact is assessed following implementation.[23] A white paper on "Evaluating Government Policies using Open Source Models" was released on September 10, 2015.[24]
Open politics as a distinct theory
The open-politics theory, a narrow application of open-source governance, combines aspects of the free software and open-content movements, promoting decision-making methods claimed to be more open, less antagonistic, and more capable of determining what is in the public interest with respect to public policy issues. It takes special care for instance to deal with equity differences, geographic constraints, defamation versus free political speech, accountability to persons affected by decisions, and the actual standing law and institutions of a jurisdiction. There is also far more focus on compiling actual positions taken by real entities than developing theoretical "best" answers or "solutions". One example, DiscourseDB, simply lists articles pro and con a given position without organizing their argument or evidence in any way.
Its advocates often engage in legal lobbying and advocacy to directly change laws in the way of the broader application of the technology, e.g. opposing political libel cases in Canada, fighting libel chill generally, and calling for clarification of privacy and human rights law especially as they relate to citizen journalism. They are less focused on tools although the semantic mediawiki and tikiwiki platforms seem to be generally favored above all others.
Power to the (wired) people What's Wrong With Politics and Can Technology Do Anything To Fix It? by Mitchell Kapor, October 7, 2004
Berry, D M.& Moss, Giles (2006). Free and Open-Source Software: Opening and Democratising e-Government's Black Box. Information Polity Volume 11. (1). pp.21–34
Social software, also known as social apps or social platform includes communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle capturing, storing and presenting communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote co-operation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before. The opportunities offered by social software are instant connections and opportunities to learn. An additional defining feature of social software is that apart from interaction and collaboration, it aggregates the collective behaviour of its users, allowing not only crowds to learn from an individual but individuals to learn from the crowds as well. Hence, the interactions enabled by social software can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many.
Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected representatives. Elements of direct and representative democracy are combined in this model.
In politics, emergent democracy represents the rise of political structures and behaviors without central planning and by the action of many individual participants, especially when mediated by the Internet. It has been likened to the democratic system of ancient Greece in the sense that people could publicly participate as much or as little as they please, although a form of representation exists which is based on personal trust networks instead of party affiliations. More recently, American writer and researcher Clay Shirky has referred to this as "the power of organizing without organizations."
E-democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is credited to digital activist Steven Clift. By using 21st-century ICT, e-democracy seeks to enhance democracy, including aspects like civic technology and E-government. Proponents argue that by promoting transparency in decision-making processes, e-democracy can empower all citizens to observe and understand the proceedings. Also, if they possess overlooked data, perspectives, or opinions, they can contribute meaningfully. This contribution extends beyond mere informal disconnected debate; it facilitates citizen engagement in the proposal, development, and actual creation of a country's laws. In this way, e-democracy has the potential to incorporate crowdsourced analysis more directly into the policy-making process.
Governance is the process of making and enforcing decisions within an organization or society. It encompasses decision-making, rule-setting, and enforcement mechanisms to guide the functioning of an organization or society. Effective governance is essential for maintaining order, achieving objectives, and addressing the needs of the community or members within the organization. Furthermore, effective governance promotes transparency, fosters trust among stakeholders, and adapts to changing circumstances, ensuring the organization or society remains responsive and resilient in achieving its goals. It is the process of interactions through the laws, social norms, power or language as structured in communication of an organized society over a social system. It is done by the government of a state, by a market, or by a network. It is the process of choosing the right course among the actors involved in a collective problem that leads to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of acceptable conduct and social order". In lay terms, it could be described as the processes that exist in and between formal institutions.
Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression. CDT seeks to promote legislation that enables individuals to use the internet for purposes of well-intent, while at the same time reducing its potential for harm. It advocates for transparency, accountability, and limiting the collection of personal information.
Media democracy is a democratic approach to media studies that advocates for the reform of mass media to strengthen public service broadcasting and develop participation in alternative media and citizen journalism in order to create a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of society and enhances democratic values.
Social peer-to-peer processes are interactions among humans with a peer-to-peer dynamic. Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a term that originated from the popular concept of the P2P distributed computer application architecture which partitions tasks or workloads between peers. This application structure was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster, the first of its kind in the late 1990s.
Electronic participation (e-participation) refers to the use of ICT in facilitating citizen participation in government-related processes, encompassing areas such as administration, service delivery, decision-making, and policy-making. As such, e-participation shares close ties with e-government and e-governance participation. The term's emergence aligns with the digitization of citizen interests and interactions with political service providers, primarily due to the proliferation of e-government.
Open government is the governing doctrine which maintains that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction, it opposes reason of state and other considerations which have tended to legitimize extensive state secrecy. The origins of open-government arguments can be dated to the time of the European Age of Enlightenment, when philosophers debated the proper construction of a then nascent democratic society. It is also increasingly being associated with the concept of democratic reform. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 for example advocates for public access to information as a criterion for ensuring accountable and inclusive institutions.
In governance, sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors using a random representative sample. This minimizes factionalism, since those selected to serve can prioritize deliberating on the policy decisions in front of them instead of campaigning.
Liquid democracy is a form of delegative democracy, whereby an electorate engages in collective decision-making through direct participation and dynamic representation. This democratic system utilizes elements of both direct and representative democracy. Voters in a liquid democracy have the right to vote directly on all policy issues à la direct democracy; voters also have the option to delegate their votes to someone who will vote on their behalf à la representative democracy. Any individual may be delegated votes and these proxies may in turn delegate their vote as well as any votes they have been delegated by others resulting in "metadelegation".
Collaborative e-democracy refers to a hybrid democratic model combining elements of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy. This concept, first introduced at international academic conferences in 2009, offers a pathway for citizens to directly or indirectly engage in policymaking. Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn describe it as an "innovative way to engage citizens in the democratic process," that potentially makes government "more transparent, accountable, and responsive to the needs of the people."
Open-source political campaigns,open-source politics, or Politics 2.0, is the idea that social networking and e-participation technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns. Netroots evangelists and web consultants predict a wave of popular democracy as fundraisers meet on MySpace or Facebook, YouTubers crank out attack ads and bloggers do opposition research.
Open-source architecture is an emerging paradigm advocating new procedures in the imagination and formation of virtual and real spaces within a universal infrastructure. Drawing from references as diverse as open-source culture, modular design, avant-garde architectural, science fiction, language theory, and neuro-surgery, it adopts an inclusive approach as per spatial design towards a collaborative use of design and design tools by professionals and ordinary citizen users. The umbrella term citizen-centered design harnesses the notion of open-source architecture, which in itself involves the non-building architecture of computer networks, and goes beyond it to the movement that encompass the building design professions, as a whole.
Government crowdsourcing is a form of crowdsourcing employed by governments to better leverage their constituents' collective knowledge and experience. It has tended to take the form of public feedback, project development, or petitions in the past, but has grown to include public drafting of bills and constitutions, among other things. This form of public involvement in the governing process differs from older systems of popular action, from town halls to referendums, in that it is primarily conducted online or through a similar IT medium.
Loomio is decision-making software and web service designed to assist groups with collaborative, consensus-focused decision-making processes. It is a free software web application, where users can initiate discussions and put up proposals. As the discussions progress to initiating a proposal, the group receives feedback through an updatable pie chart or other data visualizations. Loomio is basically a web based forum with tools to facilitate conversations and decision making processes from starting and holding conversations to reaching outcome.
Civic technology, or civic tech, enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.
Online deliberation is a broad term used to describe many forms of non-institutional, institutional and experimental online discussions. The term also describes the emerging field of practice and research related to the design, implementation and study of deliberative processes that rely on the use of electronic information and communications technologies (ICT).
The People's Code is an ongoing open source project that aims to make all US Federal agencies and departments utilize open source software, (OSS), for their platforms, at a pilot minimum of 20% open source. In so doing, Federal departments and agencies can be more transparent with the work they do. Software can eventually be streamlined across all agencies, and people can begin to make suggestions on how to improve the code and policy these departments work on. The belief that citizens should have this information available and open to them, is the idea behind what the Obama administration coined as the, People's Code.
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