Democracy innovation and the return of social led engagement

Over the last few years, we’ve seen new and exciting experiments in direct democracy emerge: the Open Ministry – Crowdsourcing legislation site in the Finish Parliament; the Icelandic e-democracy and participatory budgeting website Better Reykjavik; Podemos, the new decentralised Spanish political movement and the municipal citizen-led coalitions Barcelona en Comu and Ahora Madrid.

You could also include Italy’s Five Star Movement in the range of options springing up that use technology to engage directly with people. Since the Brexit decision in the UK the world of politics has got a little potty and if the craziness continues you can expect a further proliferation of options.

Clandestine political meetings

I was introduced to one such option in clandestine circumstances this week, under the guise of hearing Paddy Ashdown’s post Brexit views on the tech sector.  Imagine my surprise when we were given an early introduction to More United.  This being a new platform that aims to influence politics without being a political party. The concept being that the world of politics needs to innovate to bring everyman back into the centre, rather than the extremist or populist end of the spectrum. A key aim is to enable people like to participate in and change politics in a way that has never been possible before. One of the principals of More United is for A United Kingdom that welcomes immigration, international co-operation and a close relationship with the EU.

A crowded space in the new world of politics

One aspect I did find interesting was how More United (if it’s not a political party) positions itself next to https://www.change.org/ and Steve Hilton’s Crowdpac, a Silicon Valley political tech start-up.  He was formerly a visiting professor at Stanford University and the senior advisor to David Cameron and played a leading role in the modernisation of the Conservative Party and the implementation of its government reform programme.  

Hilton also recently wrote More Human, in which he argued that the frustrations people feel with government, politics, their economic circumstances and their daily lives are caused by deep structural problems with the systems that dominate our world – systems that have become too big, bureaucratic and distant from human scale.  He was also a prominent supporter for the leave team in the referendum.

Decentralised Citizen Engagement Technology

These could both be part of Francesca Bria’s Europe-wide project D-CENT. The project investigates opportunities for technology to re-energise democracy and politics. D-CENT gathers citizen-led organisations that are transforming democracy and looks to help them develop the next generation of open source, distributed and privacy-aware tools for direct democracy.  These tools, innovative in both the commercial and public sector domains, are spreading across the political spectrum, governments, parliaments and the public shaping the new political institutions of the 21^st Century.

Do good. Make Money

Whilst I’ve been unpacking the rise of new open social democratic platforms this trend cross pollinates into the rise of the mission-driven business, where purpose and something of meaning is part of the powerful draw to start and create innovative solutions across the world to deliver change.

Signals, noises, elections and technologies of engagement

The views contained in this blog and all of my blogs are very much my own. For those in the UK it can’t have escaped anyone’s attention that we have a forth coming election on the horizon. My polling card arrived in my mailbox and it got me thinking how old fashioned the process of elections is.  I recently attended Nesta’s showcase event Future Fest. At this year’s event you could make a case for Edward Snowden to be the headliner with his session on the challenges and implications of his experiences.

Crowdsourcing democracy

One of the main themes of the event was future democracy and through a range of talks and presentations we explored the rise of new parties. The majority are pretty traditional in their methods, but one or two are radically reinventing how parties should work.  Could we have an internet led and based political party in the UK. This idea isn't new as these Open network parties are appearing across Europe with parties such as Five Star and various Pirate Parties. Further afield Democracy OS in Argentina has designed an impressive way for people to propose ideas and shape them online. When you describe it like that you could find yourself using an Innovation Management System such as Wazoku’s idea spotlight.

Signals and noises

At one of the sessions we heard from Matthew Falla, co-founder of Signal Noise who are mapping our digital cities with data and it reminded me of Nate Silver, American statistician and writer, and his stellar performance in 2008.  He’s known for his successful baseball analysis, think pre Opta and the world of data based training, and his work on elections. He is currently the lead editor of the FiveThirtyEight blog.

For the November 2008 presidential election predictions he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states. He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 U.S. Senate races that year. So some reasonable credentials and bring this closer to home.  I recently say the picture below

When you get behind the numbers makes for a very interesting race and if this picture turns out to be right, they’ll be changes on the horizon.

For those who want to find out more checkout the blog and Silver's book, The Signal and the Noise, was published in September 2012, not the most riveting read but if you are interested in the power of data definitely worthwhile. I’m sure they’ll be all manner of analysts out there taking note.