ProgressVote: Discussion of relevance
From Open Knowledge Foundation
Is it relevant for Open Knowledge?
At the risk of uncovering my ignorance I make the following proposition:
Traditional concern of Open Data movement: (1) free data → (2) get this data to public in a way it can absorb
Same here: (1) construct freely available and complete dashboard → (2a) get knowledge to user in way he can absorb, i.e. make knowledge truly 'open' (by visualisation), (2b) → get to public in way it can absorb (through index)
But why then this particular form of index? How is the above functionality enhanced in terms of its Open Knowledge-relevance by using a community-driven index rather than a usual one?
Let's zoom out a bit: It is not just the supply of knowledge that must be opened up, it is also creating an open society that provides citizens incentives to demand that knowledge. A society must provide the rooms for active participation, why should Joe Public otherwise worry about Open Data? ProgressVote is creating a new space where Joe can use his knowledge and which motivates him to watch the data in the first place.
Is it relevant for e-democracy?
- ProgressVote is about enabling society to participate in measuring society's progress
- It is about enabling participation by easing complexity, while not disempowering the public through arbitrary assumptions made by an index-constructor
- The user of a normal index is a dump for information, whereas in ProgressVote he is engaging in two-way communication.
German case
In theory, Germany would currently have an enormous opportunity. The Enquête Commission, Germany's body for long-term legislative thought, deliberate in half-mature formation on “Digital Society” and in new formation on de-coupling, decroissance and the construction of an indicator for development beyond GDP. These two areas are clearly related: The digital society can be not only a means to de-coupling but also its renewable resource for the measurement of progress in a Social Economy.
ProgressVote is a suggestion for this progress-indicator and a scheme for fact-based public scrutiny in a digital society.
The Internet-Enquête originally adopted Friedrich's Adhocracy but then got stopped by Germany's Council of Elders for incoherent reasons. ProgressVote does two things: It primarily solves an economic issue with the only (?) solution for non-arbitrary indices by public participation, but it also proposes a new, less ambitious first step to digital collaboration of legislative and public.
ProgressVote as conservative guinea pig
ProgressVote is an information source for legislative decision makers (providing the public's view on social progress). For Bundestag, also Adhocracy would have been an information source; but the Council of Elders seems to have misunderstood it as encroaching on decision-making authority. It may have been too advanced for its time, may have implied too much two-way communication. Bundestag is not yet ready for citizens participating through digital policy-drafting; so ProgressVote would enable citizen's participation just by informing the legislature how they interpret key social-progress data.
Which social progress data? That in turn could be decided in open expert-discussion in Adhocracy or decided by the new Enquête.
ProgressVote opens new chances for liquid democracy but inside conservative role models
Also the idea of digital voting-by-proxies could be trialled for legislative processes in a conservative fashion through ProgressVote. Voters would be able to delegate their vote to a non-parliamentary digital representative but this is not “scary” for established politics since
- it's just a vote on data not on motions,
- which representatives have standing could be decided by the Enquete or drawn from the traditional organisations (although preferably by the users through Adhocracy)
Altogether, ProgressVote's primary aim is to provide a solution to two main issues in the literature on progress-indicators and make them realistic, but it could also provide a (hopefully acceptable) contribution to the Internet-Enquête.
