slide 1
Sunflower Revolution 2014
In 2014 students in Taiwan took over the offices of the government until it agreed to their demand to instill a more participatory democracy. Three years later, Taiwan, a country of 24 million, has fully embraced experimentation as it strives to build a cyber democracy — vTaiwan.
slide 2
g0v 2012
vTaiwan used as it's backbone the g0v movement which started in 2012.
g0v is a decentralized and open source community guided by principles of freedom of speech, information transparency,fostering positive change, liquid democracy.
slide 3
How does the vTaiwan process work?
vTaiwan uses the ORID method to guide their cyber democracy process. This method is used for structuring discussions around complex issues — helping highlight key areas and converge view points. First phase is objective this is where vTaiwan gather facts by having citizens and stakeholders send in information.
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The second phase is reflective phase and this is where vTaiwan uses pol.is, an AI facilitated surveying platform. The survey is structures using info from the objective phase. Citizens can agree/disagree/pass on a statement or add their own statement. Machine learning algorithms are then used to analyze opinion patterns.
slide 5 Next phase is Interpretive:
The results from Pol.is survey are then debated widely and publically via media platform Talk to Taiwan. This is followed by broadcasting in-person stakeholder with remote participation via chat and soon via VR
Finally, in the Decisional phase, Government either follows the consensus or explains why it can't.
slide 6 The success of this experiment has led to changes in the Taiwan Ministry — they have a Digital Minister, Audrey Tang. Her division oversees vTaiwan. They act as facillitators of the ORID process. They document and publish all information to increase governance transperancy. They are working continuously to improve and innovate on methods and tools.
slide 7 We are all here because the current structures are not working. The will of the people has been lost. Taiwan serves as a living example of a viable, large scale participatory model.
Darshana and I operate at the intersection of technology, behavioral sciences, and society.
slide 8 Our first project, vNYC, is our attempt to bring a working participatory model to city politics. We will source citizen input on issues to inform the city decisions and election processes and, connect organizations and districts around similar issues to solve them in a more effective way.
slide 9 This is a good time to launch the vNYC experiment. 2017 is a paramount election year. Every municipal office in New York City is up for grabs this fall.
We have chosen to focus on the district level because it is the conduit for bringing citizen voices to the administeration.
vNYC is a test for set up self regulating viable systems, capable of incorporating feedback.
slide 10 We define viable systems based on cybernetic science. A viable system is one that deals affectively with variety.
For example: In order to function an administration needs to deal with citizen variety. For this to be achieved in a regulated manner, there needs to be a balance between the top-down and bottom-up processes.
slide 11 If the administration is heavy handed citizen variety is decimated (e.g. Stalin's Soviet Union). If citizen variety is not negotiated effectively with the organizational structure, goals are not accomplished (e.g. OWS). vNYC is set up to balance top-down and bottom-up processes for viability.
Now let's look through the plan of the vNYC project.
slide 12 We use Lean, Agile/Scrum methodologies as the process backbone of vNYC.
- Our users are citizens and we will actively include them and their feedback in the proces
- adjusting and adpating our assumptions with information
- clearly defined objectives, goals, and roles allow us to scale and
- focus on delivering high value needs first
slide 13 Impact mapping is a strategic planning technique. It aids in clearlycommunicating assumption, aligning objectives, and can help you make better roadmap decisions. Impact maps visualise the dynamic relationship between the project goal and the environment around it.
Starting with an impact map helped us focus our strategy:
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- Launch pol.is survey around citizen concerns
- Host hackathons to help train facilitators and work with the data
- Organize host first primary debates for city council
slide 15 In the ethos of gov zero movement, everything that we do will be shared and available in our Github organization repo. We are using Gitbook to host our documentation guides because it offers search and translation capabilities.
If you are interested in helping out, you can find things to do in the hub repo.
slide 16 one of our immediate tasks is to modify the core platform — Pol.is
The biggest modification to the platform will be to tag users by zip code and partition the user input by district. This will highlight issues for district level officials (e.g the community board) and will allow vNYC to unite districts and organizations around issues. Increasing clout for pushing change.
slide 17 NYC is a different environment from Taiwan. It is diverse; many diffierent langauges and dilects are spoken here; cultural differences in perspectives, values and objectives. One of our goals for the first phase is to surface these challenges and test solutions.
slide 18 In the longer term, we hope that vNYC becomes a permanent part of New York city government, as well as other cities.
slide 19 Taiwan has provided us with inspiration and a wealth of information. We are so thankful for their experimentation and transparency.
These people imagined and invented new futures and we must do the same!
slide 20 Buckminster Fuller quote You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.