[p2p-research] Fwd: alternative democracy project

[Michel Bauwens]

Preview of contribution by Matt:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Matt Cooperrider <mattcooperrider at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 1, 2009 at 1:38 AM
Subject: Re: alternative democracy project
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


Hi Michel,

I wrote the post, motivated by the release of our facebook app.  I don't
seem to have posting permissions anymore. What's the process?

Meanwhile, a draft below.  Feedback welcome.

Thanks
Matt

---

One of the most promising entrants in the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Institute
Challenge <http://challenge.bfi.org/> was Your Own Democracy (YOD) <
http://gongszeto.squarespace.com/yourowndemocracy-explanation/> by Gong
Szeto, a feature rich platform for online political engagement.  YOD
proposes to offer a suite of useful tools, such as collaborative bill
building, issue tracking, and real-time data about citizen sentiments.

YOD also overcomes one of the usual problems with e-governance applications
- they are no fun.  YOD solves this by using standard social network best
practices, always tying issues to action opportunities, awarding points for
actions completed, and presenting its application suite using a financial
trading desk metaphor for the interface (Americans love stocks).

While it gets many things right, YOD faces the same challenge as every other
"Facebook for government" out there: it has to become as widely adopted as
Facebook in order to become relevant.  Democracy is messy and ultimately
local, and this holds true on the web.  It is difficult to convince users to
allocate time to a new social network, even if they feel a civic
obligation.  In addition, a platform that attempts to put all of the
necessary features in one place thereby increases its coordination costs,
and is less able to take advantage of the rich ecosystem of democracy
applications being built by independent developers.

If we are to truly evolve to "Government 2.0", powered by online democracy
applications, it will come down to cross-platform protocols rather than a
single platform.  In the U.S., Brooklyn nonprofit Gateway to Gov <
http://gatewaytogov.org/> is developing Civic ID <
http://wiki.gatewaytogov.org/index.php/CivicID_Use-Case>.  Based on the Open
ID <http://openid.net/> identity protocol, Civic ID preserves a user's
identity across online platforms, ties that identity to the user's official
voter status (congressional district, party affiliation, etc.), and
maintains a record of that user's signed petitions and other political
declarations.

With protocols such as Civic ID in place (it is nearly complete) we can
imagine political engagement applications and widgets across a number of
existing platforms, allowing users to build movements without leaving the
comfort of their favorite social network.  This allows application
developers to focus on crafting tools for specific needs and specific online
locales, rather than trying to "build it all".

My own company, the Independence Year Foundation<http://iyear.us>, is
adopting this strategy.  We recently released the iVote4U Facebook
application <http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=73324219930>,
which allows users to learn about their representatives, declare opinions
about them, and initiate mini-campaigns to steer representatives' votes on
legislation.  In the near future, we plan to integrate with Civic ID, and
will build sister applications on platforms such as iPhone and OpenSocial.


On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:17 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> http://www.smartmobs.com/2009/03/26/13895/
>
> Hi Matt,
>
> I wonder if you could comment on this for our blog, contrasting it perhaps
> with your own approach, and your more general knowledge of similar
> initiatives?
>
> Michel
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>




-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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