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Networking Democracy - Final thoughts

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Opening Statements

Discussion threads

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Final thoughts

This is the archive for the "final thoughts" thread.

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This is the final thread we are going to start. In it we'd like people
to sum up, in 500 or so words, what approach they would take to
designing the online process, given all the contributions and
discussions which have gone on so far. We envisage contributions to
this thread being something like Steve Clift's original contribution
(http://groups.google.co.uk/group/networking-democracy/web/online-
engagement-in-a-national-debate---steve-clift) - albeit shorter.

We would like people to imagine they have a timeframe of four months
until the summit, and a budget of around £1 million pounds. I want to
emphasise that we are providing these figures to provide a bit of a
concrete frame of reference - neither of them reflect fixed plans
given to us by the Ministry of Justice.

From: "Suw Charman-Anderson"
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 23:41:09 +0000
Local: Tues, Mar 4 2008 11:41 pm
Subject: Re: [Networking Democracy] Final thoughts

> This is the final thread we are going to start. In it we'd like people
> to sum up, in 500 or so words, what approach they would take to
> designing the online process, given all the contributions and
> discussions which have gone on so far.

I'm sorry... this might sound a little grumpy, but I figure that it's
best to be honest.

The discussions here have been interesting, but I'm slightly
struggling because we haven't had a chance to really interrogate the
questions in any sensible way. I feel a bit like a contestant in one
of those TV shows who has to stick their hands in a closed box and
figure out what's inside, just by touch alone. I'm still not sure what
it is that we've achieved, nor am I clear on exactly what are the
themes and ideas that have come out of the discussions. I feel a lot
like we've gone round in at least a few circles, and a bit frustrated
because some of the questions that came later on in the discussion
seemed to have forgotten some of the earlier discussions.

if i were to suggest a next step, it would be to take a step backwards
to reassess what we are attempting to do. I would convene a small, but
diverse and experienced group of people to get together regularly in
person to interrogate the brief. What is it that we are trying to
achieve? What are the real questions? What are the red herrings? What
are the areas of contention? What questions can actually be answered?
What can not, and why? What are our goals? How will we know when we
have finished? What is success?

Then I'd convene a larger group to collaborate on addressing the very
specific and answerable questions formulated above. I'd use a wiki to
bring together ideas and allow people to flesh out and elaborate on
others' work, (rather than use email which causes people to reiterate
and repeat). I'd consider also using a blog to help raise specific
points that need discussion, and then feed those results back into the
wiki, but that may turn out not to be necessary.

I would ensure there were regular face-to-face meetings, with IRC and
conference calls so that those geographically distant can contribute.
I'd ditch email: no matter how comforting and familiar it is, it's an
awful medium for collaboration.

I would then get someone to pull together a cohesive strategy from the
above work. Note that you only need one visionary person to do this,
and absolutely must avoid getting into committee mode. (It's really
worth reading Joel Spolsky's article about how having one inspired
programmer is worth a gazillion mediocre ones because, as he puts it
"Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if
they work for 100 years."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html )

If even just the experts available on this list were to all contribute
fully to part 2, then part 3 would be best done by a single person,
preferably someone who really gets online culture and can produce
something inspired.

In short I would:

1. Gather a small group to formulate the questions and aims.
2. Convene a much larger group to discuss those questions using a wiki
(and maybe blog).
3. Derive a strategy from the results of the above discussion.

Note that this is actually a lot of work, and needs to be properly paid.

Suw

 

From: David Wilcox
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 07:59:55 +0000
Local: Wed, Mar 5 2008 7:59 am
Subject: Re: [Networking Democracy] Re: Final thoughts

I'm with Suw, who wrote

> In short I would:

> 1. Gather a small group to formulate the questions and aims.
> 2. Convene a much larger group to discuss those questions using a wiki
> (and maybe blog).
> 3. Derive a strategy from the results of the above discussion.

> Note that this is actually a lot of work, and needs to be properly
> paid.

A lot of interesting issues and ideas raised, but within this medium
it don't believe we can offer any coherent proposals for a still fuzzy
brief. Moving to face-to-face would enable us to extract real value
from work so far.

David



From: "David R. Newman"
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:57:40 +0000
Local: Mon, Mar 10 2008 6:57 pm
Subject: Re: [Networking Democracy] Re: Final thoughts

Unlike David Wilcox, I'm willing to take up the challenge of writing a
science fiction account of what might be possible. I will try and make
my assumptions clear, so that when the final brief is decided, we can
see which parts of this vision are worth adopting.

I'll organise this around 4 democratic principles: voice, space,
audience and influence.

1. Influence

Unless the people taking part, from across the UK, whether on-line or
off-line are convinced that what they say will have some influence on
policy, they won't bother. Why waste time writing and talking, if you
will then be ignored. This is the most common complaint we found of bad
consultations in our research across Ireland.

The Oireachtas made their e-consultation an official act of a
parliamentary committee, with hearings and a formal report to both
houses of Parliament. That guaranteed influence.

In this case, the Ministry of Justice has to think of some way of
guaranteeing influence (directly or indirectly). For example, imagine a
Royal People's Commission, with all the powers of a Royal Commission,
but involving many more people than normally serve on such bodies:
hundreds face-to-face and thousands on-line. Whatever approach is
followed, make it a constitutional experiment or pilot, like the
Oireachtas did.

2. Voice

Once there is a point in participating, how do people become aware of
the issue, and learn how and where to participate? How can large numbers
of people, from a variety of backgrounds, be enticed to take part? We
need to get a variety of voices: not necessarily a representative
sample, but sufficiently diverse to cover different parts of the UK
population.

If you want thousands of online participants, then it needs to be as
attractive as a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMO), like
World of Warcraft or Lineage. That is the route the US Army followed, by
commissioning the game America's Army, which they use to encourage
recruitment. I suppose the British Government could commission the game
of "British Politics", in which citizens could, en masse, play
characters like Alan B'stard. But you would need to put aside a few
million to develop a compelling MMO game. Second Life is not accessible
enough (requiring 3D graphics cards) to set up in there.

Instead, I agree with Ella and others that we should go to where people
hang out, both in geographic space and cyberspace, rather than expecting
everyone to visit a government web forum. If people are used to meeting
in chat rooms, mailing lists, social networking sites, community halls,
allotments, libraries, computer training suites, Mums Net, Patient
Opinion, Brighton and Hove Issues forum, sluggerotoole.com, Young Scot
or wherever, then we should make it easy for them to take part there.

In particular, we need to make it easy for civil society organisations
to run events and ongoing conversations.

Prepare packages of tools and information that could help people:
- bring groups together to a place for a face-to-face discussion on
British values.
- collect stories, photographs, videos and audio recordings of their
experiences of what is good about their town, county, country and the UK
(be it in local competitions, or on-line collections).
- run a discussion on British values as part of an existing chat room,
forum or opinion site (which they could then customise, e.g. what
British values inform the NHS on Patient Opinion, what British values to
Irish republicans hate on sluggerotoole.com).
- fill in questionnaires (for those too busy to take part in long
deliberations)
- play short Flash games, where they have to make value-laden decisions,
then ask them to explain why they made the choice they did.

And arrange another set of tools to help each group report on what came
out of the event, stories, discussion etc.

Once it is easy, then we need to raise awareness, first within civil
society groups who might organise events, and then among the general public.

3. Space

We need to design spaces in which everyone feels able to contribute
creatively. They should encourage expression, problem-solving, and
attempts to find consensus, without forcing conformity on people with
different ideas. The "real" world models are from mediation and
negotiation practice.

In education, there is a process called pyramiding. Students do one task
alone, move on to another question in pairs, expand on that in fours,
and so on. Analogous to that people might:

A. Individually tell stories, submit photos or videos, or answer simple
questions, illustrating what they like about living in a particular
town, county, nation or state. These are collected both locally and
on-line in places that can be searched and indexed nationally.

B. In small groups, discuss why they like these things, and what is good
about the way people behave that way (the best of Cardiff, Welsh or
British behaviour). A couple of people in each group enter their
conclusions into regional or national on-line discussion spaces.

C. Topic teams (see below), prepare lists of common features across the
UK, things or behaviours that people everywhere like, giving clues to
"Britishness". Then a few interested people from each group in B take
part in on-line discussions and collaborative writing trying to extract
British values from these lists. They could write it up in a group
reporting tool like Aldo de Moor's GRASS, so that they are not forced to
agree, but make disagreements explicit.

4. Audience

If there is not even anyone who reads or listens to a discussion, it is
a real waste of time. The people who guaranteed influence in 1 need to
be part of the audience, including Ministers, civil servants, MPs,
parliamentary officials, and civil society organisations.

In addition, we need a kind of professional audience: those who work on
the project to ensure this national conversation works. This includes
facilitators, information and publicity staff, and, quite important,
summarisers - people who can extract from a large amount of qualitative
material, important issues, needs and ideas to be worth taking to the
next stage of the process. Technology can help them, but in the end we
need human understanding.

--
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Management
School, Belfast



From: David Wilcox
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:56:24 +0000
Local: Mon, Mar 10 2008 7:56 pm
Subject: Re: [Networking Democracy] Re: Final thoughts

Thanks David, I just didn't have the imagination:-) If Government will
rise to the challenges and ideas that you set out it would indeed be
something special. Brilliant stuff.

On 10 Mar 2008, at 18:57, David R. Newman wrote:

> Unlike David Wilcox, I'm willing to take up the challenge of writing a
> science fiction account of what might be possible. I will try and make
> my assumptions clear, so that when the final brief is decided, we can
> see which parts of this vision are worth adopting.

> I'll organise this around 4 democratic principles: voice, space,
> audience and influence.



From: "Tony Curzon Price, OD"
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:06:07 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Mon, Mar 10 2008 8:06 pm
Subject: Re: Final thoughts

With my £1m and 4 months, I'd be thinking hardest of all about getting
enough people excited about participating. In particular:

1. make the outcome meaningful. we've heard separately that the
people's convention will lead to a proposal that will be put to
Parliament. Fine, if that's a constraint. But make sure to explain
what that would mean, at every level of detail. Will it be a free vote
from the government? Does the convention get involved in drafting the
bill? Do the participants in the convention get acknowledged in the
bill? etc.

2. make online participation meaningful. However measured, your online
conversation-making activities should influence your chance of getting
picked for the convention. reward the talkers having the right kind of
conversations.

3. make reporting of online conversational activity enjoyable -
encourage video walls, stories, etc. encourage use of common tags to
permit aggregation of activity; encourage the collection of survey-
type data. Give away t-shirts signed by Our Monarch saying "I Talked
for Britain" to anyone who demonstrates they have made national
conversation. Photos, tags, survey responses should all count to
earning the t-shirt.

4. leverage existing fora. several people have said this, and it's
absolutely right. A thread on CiF, a YouTube video, a blog, a school
site, a sports forum etc are the right places to have the national
conversation.

5. make the on and off-line conventions interact. make sure the online
continues to be important during the convention period.

I started out this consultation not being sure what a National
Conversation means. I think I am now a bit clearer - it is a nation,
or a good part of it, having had many small-scale semi-independent
conversations about the same topics. The weather, the football, the
soaps all regularly make national conversation. The challenge here is
really to make a national conversation about something which is
usually more of a national soporific. Make it a game, yes, but keep it
very simple.


From: Bill Thompson
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:51:45 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Tues, Mar 11 2008 6:51 am
Subject: Re: Final thoughts

I hope you don't mind me de-lurking at the very end of the
process :-) It's clear we've had lots of interesting ideas and
arguments, but I find myself more aligned with Suw and DavidW in that
it feels like we have not yet managed to reach a place from which we
can move forward with confidence and if anything we've shown just how
slippery the idea of 'national conversation' about a specific piece of
policy can be - and it's a potentially very important piece of policy
in a world where Lord Goldsmith can suggest making children pledge an
oath of allegiance to the monarch.

I'm also not sure that Tony's view that 'The weather, the football,
the soaps all regularly make national conversation' is true in the way
that we want one here, since there are multiple overlapping
conversations and beliefs but rarely a single consensus (except that
the English cricket team is currently rubbish, of course).

With four months and £1m I'd spend the first month doing what Suw
suggests and spend around £100K on it, and then assuming there's
something that can actually be done - not guaranteed - build it in a
month, push it on the social network spaces. Gmail and the BBC iPlayer
(together they'll reach all the UK net using population rather
quickly), run it for a month (people get bored quickly) and spend a
month analysing and interpreting....

Bill



From: Ella
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:49:10 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Tues, Mar 11 2008 8:49 am
Subject: Re: Final thoughts

Hi
I'm presuming a distributed discussion and agreeing with most of the
ideas so far, just adding a little extra detail.

I would suggest that these tasks are done in this order:

1. I would suggest a pre conversation takes place with a range of
stakeholders to look at the questions "What we need a Statement" and
"What it would be used for". If this discussion did not end the
matter, then the answers to these questions would form a major part of
the supporting information.

2. Need to have a clear path of influence.
Write stories of what will happen from the time the contributions are
complete to the time of a vote in parliament. Get a wide range of
people, including ministers, MPs, civil servants and people from well
known media or community sites (BBC, NetMums) and organisations (My
Society, The Hansard Society) to write these stories. (Technically
these stories are scenarios, as you probably know. This is a powerful
design mechanism which helps people from diverse backgrounds
understand something which exists in the future and begin to design
it.)
From these stories/scenarios create a diagram that people can easily
understand.
Use this diagram as a main part of your publicity.

3. Gather and organise supporting information.
Break this down into a series of questions (and possibly sub-
questions) and use these
To create an agenda that organises the conversation over the time
period. This will keep the discussion interesting and focussed. It
will also make it easy to gather the responses in stages and sort them
out.
(Mirroring what I said earlier, I would suggest that these questions
cover whether we need a Statement and what it would be used for pretty
early on)
I would suggest that this information, the diagram of influence and
the agenda are all put together in one website at this point. You can
then refer to this as you recruit online communities and spaces.

4. Each community recruited will have a facilitator, whose role it
will be to keep the conversation on topic and moving forwards. It will
also be the job of the facilitator to summarise the discussion into
input, in the way that facilitators in "break out groups" report back
to the wider group in a plenary. (Though I'd suggest you provide them
with a well-structured and word-limited template). The facilitator
should be paid for this. Larger sites may require more than one
facilitator.

5. As the discussion and collection of input progress, this should be
shown on the diagram described above.

6. There's nothing in this that doesn't apply equally to offline
discussions.

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