Re:Imagining Democracy

What are the best online platforms hosting citizen engagement success stories? Let’s compare the four main ones:

1. CitizENGAGE
2. Participedia
3. Innovation in politics
4. Citizens Lab

Quick summary of the main conclusions

If a citizen or an organization wants to share their own success story, CitizENGAGE provides the easiest way to do so. The drawback: only some select cases are shown on the main page, and it is not likely that every submission gets published.

From the perspective of someone doing research in participatory democracy, Participedia – collecting information on 836 different cases – is the best resource for citizen engagement best practices, some of the older entries going back to 2011. Similarly, if the intention of a citizen or an organization goes beyond just sharing the story, Participedia is the best option – one can describe each case very thoroughly.  Nevertheless, the number of cases mages navigating the database difficult.

CitizENGAGE

CitizENGAGE is a platform developed by the Open Government Partnership. It hosts best practice stories from OGP member countries, along with news feeds, videos and photo essays.

An average of 60 success stories are divided between the following regions: Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Main topics incorporated in the site are, besides citizen participation, anti-corruption, civic space, education, gender, health, marginalized communities, and natural resources.

Submitting an impact story appears to be fairly simple: via email, Facebook post, or Twitter. There is no information regarding what percentage of those submissions are published in the main site.

Clear selection options provide an easy navigation and exploration of the database. Precise selection criteria allow to search by region or topic. Most of cases only provide a brief contextualization of the situation or problem, and how open government or citizen engagement managed to deliver a solution. Some examples provide links to sites with concrete data about the project (methodology, statistics, number of people involved, duration, among others). This additional information can be offered by OGP, by the ones responsible of leading the project, or by a third party (media).

Participedia

Participedia functions as a depository of examples of participatory democracy in different regions of the world. Mainly supported by international universities, it is also backed by research councils and NGOs.

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This site includes 836 cases, dating back to 2011. Given the numerous amount of case examples available in Participedia, it is difficult to identify a single main topic. However, database is divided in two categories:

General Issues (Urban Planning, Community Development, Budgeting, Political Institutions,  Environment, Economic Development, Health, Education and Schools, Human Rights, Identity and Diversity, Poverty Reduction, etc.)

Specific Topics:  (Municipal Participatory Budget and Planning, Civic Education, Sustainable Development, Government Decentralization, Democratic Innovation, and Urban Redevelopment, etc.)

In order to submit a new case (or add or edit them), or to participate in post discussions, one needs to create and account and be a registered member of the site. While it can feel saturated, and scrolling through 836 cases might seem overwhelming, a keyword search allows for specific case identification. Similarly, searches can be defined by content language, country, geographical scope, completeness of the project, type of organization, source of funding, targeted audience, among others.

Participedia has a thorough template for each case submission, which includes: Summary, Problems and purpose, History (context), Originating Entities and Funding, Participant Recruitment and Selection, Methods and Tools Used, Deliberation, Decisions, and Public Interaction, Influence, Outcomes, and Effects, Analysis and Criticism, Secondary Sources, External Links, and Notes. While some examples fill out every category, providing extensive information about the case, it is not compulsory to do so. Some examples only provide minimum information about their projects. An example of a thoroughly detailed case can be found here.

Innovation in politics 

Innovation in politics functions as a non-partisan consulting agency for politicians and political institutions. Apart from their services, they also provide a space for submission of projects and compete for the “Innovation in Politics” award (for “groundbreaking and innovative political projects”). The winners are selected by a jury of hundreds of volunteer jurors from Innovation in politics member countries.

While it is not its main objective, Innovation for Politics does have a catalogue of 80 past submissions, divided between 8 categories: Civilization, Democracy, Human rights, Community, Ecology, Prosperity, Jobs, and Quality of life. Topics are varied: digital literacy in schools, usage of a centralized, local currency (the “Bristol pound”), organization of Citizen Cafes (roundtables), refugee integration programs, “Towards zero waste” plans, and video sign-language translation, among others.

The submissions made to this site are not presented as a database, but they are eligible to the “Innovation in Politics.” Submissions are exclusive: the “project owner” must be an individual or political body with a position or political mandate. There is also a template for submissions: it must include a title, a short description, and must fall within one of the following categories:

• Civilization (arts, education, science and European society)
• Ecology (agriculture, environmental protection, energy)
• Democracy (participation, transparency, self-determination)
• Human rights (women’s affairs, equality, minority rights)
• Prosperity (business environment, technology, finance)
• Jobs (labor market)
• Quality of Life (health care, social security, housing, mobility)
• Community (empowerment, civic involvement)

Also, information about participation, trust-building, and sustainability must be included. Additional information about the project can be added. This year’s deadline was 15 July.

The site mostly focuses on presenting the organization and describing the services they provide. The database is not accessible as a whole, and only after finding past project submissions, they can be identified by categories.

Some cases include an introduction, a short video with an introduction, official web site link, pictures, and a downloadable PDF information leaflet in the project’s language. While some cases only provide a summary, it is worth noticing that Innovation in Politics stipulates that votes for choosing winning projects will be made based on available information.

Citizens Lab

This organization is a European network that links multidisciplinary professionals and activists that created workshops and projects that emphasize citizen engagement and “new approaches on decision-making.” Those workshops, or labs, are “experimental spaces” where prototype approaches are tested on a local level, and if successful, will be extended via Citizens Lab’s network.[1]

Citizens Lab has 23 success stories and initiatives, along with detailed results of member’s network meetings. Principal topics are Urban transformation, Network creation, Community engagement, Democracy, Education, Inclusion, Culture and Arts. Some concrete examples include: transformation of derelict areas into shared public spaces, conferences and meetups to promote similarities between the UK and Hungary (aimed at reducing prejudice), translocal promotion of participatory budgeting, and effective dialogue workshops that seek to “harness collective wisdom and self-organizing capacity of groups.”[2]

Citizens Lab allocates a section of the site to share success stories. But the link appears to be broken (September 2018). No further information is provided about sharing stories via email or social media. Visually, this website is very well done. Navigation-wise, the actual cases are easy to find, and can be filtered by the main topics described above.

Each case description contains a very detailed, experience-based narrative. Some of the methodologies are mentioned but casually, as part of the whole description. There is not a unified template for initiative description. While the free-form description is refreshing, it also complicates finding precise information (method, funding, intended audience, objectives, outcomes, etc.), about the case being shared.

[1] Retrieved from: https://www.citizenslab.eu/labs/

[2] Retrieved from: http://www.artofhosting.org/what-is-aoh/

Written by Luis Roberto Vera,

intern at the Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS

A short review of an app that was used to brainstorm ideas during OGP Summit in Paris

Links: Toguna for Android;  Toguna for Iphone

Benefits:

1. If your audience has smartphones and access to quality wifi, then installing + learning to use Toguna would take around 1 minute. Toguna is easy to install and its usability is quite intuitive.
2. Toguna it useful if you need to receive some general feedback from your audience over  certain idea/issue/problem – it is very easy for everyone to share their feedback and vote (like/dislike) on the ideas of others. You would also get a general sense on what might be potential solutions to some problem.
3. It’s a good way to engage your audience if your event does not allow for much time for audience to ask questions/participate in discussion

Limits:

1. As an idea crowdsourcing too it is simplistic – the design of the app provileges shorter ideas over those that require more text;
2. Even though theoretically people can comment on each idea, in reality this option is not being used (again: because of design of the app which privileges sharing ever-new ideas and voting of ideas on others);
3. In none of the three Toguna discussions( that took place during OGP Summit) the idea that was voted to be the most popular had been particularly innovative or enlightening.

Overall, Toguna a decent app but it encounters the same issues as other crowd brainstorming platforms that I’m aware of: 1) form dominates over considerations of quality content (simplicity for the sake of simplicity); 2) assumption that crowd-voting (rather than epertise) is a good way of discerning between good and bad ideas.

Some of the most unorthodox, soul searching ideas heard during the second day of the OGP summit in Paris:

1) Some approaches to public sector accountability might be incompatible with trust in government. For this reason, Sweden is currently trying to move away from its previous governmental philosophy that was based on the principles of the New Public Management (treating State as a result-oriented company that needs to please its clients) in order to experiment with approaches that are less based on the need to control (or to hold someone accountable) and to encourage more trust both within public service and between citizens and the public service.

2) We are used to treating openness as if it were a value in itself, but … is it? Is there anything of value that would be lost if openness were to be perceived only as a means to some more tangible social goal (such as quality education, quality healthcare, quality government, etc?)

3) Concept of open-washing or openness as a double-edged sword. Openness and transparency might be and sometimes are used as tools on behalf of some state entity for dubious purposes – for example, in order to justify some bad policy decisions (say, at least they were taken in an open process!) or to denigrate political competition. Should one encourage openness in such cases as well (in order to strengthen the later plea for consistency – to ‘practice what one preaches’)? This refers back to the previous point: should openness be promoted for the sake of openness or only as a means to some social good?

4) Is there a way to prevent transparency being used as a political tool in hands of populists who gladly use public information for anti-establishment rhetoric but do not apply the same transparency standards to their own actions (remember Trump’s tax returns and dismal performance on Fact Check)?

5) Is there any good evidence that openness does more good than harm? Trust in EU has not visibly improved since the Union became more open a few years ago. Improved openness was not an argument in recent US election as well. It’s also unclear how much of an impact various openness promoting instruments (for example, lobbying regulations) have and how trustworthy are claims of various open-government champions in specific communities on having achieved a huge impact: has there been some neutral evaluations on whether specific claims have/have not been exaggerated in order to ‘sell’ their achievements?

6) Is the term ‘open government’ too abstract, distant and vague to mobilise people (especially in some cultures, such as in Francophone world)? Is there a need for a language change? What about ‘responsive government’?

Those are all open questions without clear answers. And yet I’d probably be less inclined (than before comming to this event) to believe that openness without quality public engagement and citizen education is necessarily a good in intself.

[Iveta]

[Part of a series of blogposts from Open Government Partnership Summit in Paris]

A green two-way street sign pointing to Liberal and Conservative, representing the two dominant political parties and ideologies in national and global politics

Yesterday I’ve noticed that there are three important issues where OGP activists/organizers tend to have differing ‘ideologies’:

Cleavage No 1. Is it benefitial to have as many as possible countries joining OGP even if it might be clear that some of them would not meet the basic standards of openness, citizen engagement, governmental accountability? On one hand, access to OGP process and best practice sharing could motivate transformations; on other hand – this might result in loss of credibility for OGP as a process.  Defining question: is Hungary withdrawing from OGP (link) a good or a bad sign for OGP? What about Morocco making an attempt to join?

Cleavage No 2 (probably inspired by post-Brexit referendum, post-US election worries). Should OGP strive to include as many civil society groups as possible or should it, instead, focus on strengthening and deepening engagement on part of those civil society groups that are directly interested in governance and citizen engagement issues so that they are able to sustain their engagement with the government beyond development of the national action plan? Even if one might wish to do both simultaneously, it is rarely feasible. Defining question:  if given a choice, should OGP activists attempt to extend their network to organisations that have not been interested in OGP agenda or should they try to deepen their existing engagement? In other words, should one go broader or should one go deeper?

Cleavage No 3 (related to No 2). How far OGP should stretch its original mission in order to accomodate the demands of those civic activists and governmental representatives who advocate for having a clear and tangible impact on people’s lives (which is not always easily visible in cases of  increased transparency)? Defining question – would you feel some discomfort if a governmental representative would name an improved digital service (for example, a new heathcare or education electronic system) as a national OGP achievement? On one hand, digital services have little to do with opennness, but, on the other hand, that’s where majority of people are likely to see clear impact on their lives.

[Iveta]

This morning I participated in a really good chat on extending OGP to sub-national level. Regional/municipal level governments do some interesting stuff on open government and citizen engagement, yet their work is not so well known due to traditional focus on national level institutions.  I’ve received some excellent tips on where to search for some international benchmarks standarts of urban good governance that will benefit my research (the key tip was helping me to locate research conducted by LSE Urban governance program). 

One problem that would be quite challenging to solve in order to come up with some universal standarts: unlike national level parliaments or governments in democracies, subnational level is extremelly diverse – ranging from huge regions that each has tens of millions of inhabitants and ending with local communes of less than 1000 people. Even more importantly, sub-national units’  competencies and institutional set-ups vary just as much. 

Yes, there might be a way around this by benchmarking open data, citizen engagement, new technology achievements (that would be assumed beneficial irrespective of differences in institutional set-ups), but would that not prohibit all meaningful attempts of best-practice sharing which, after all, rely very much on nuances and in-depth understanding of local specificities? Could there be a better alternative in not separating national/subnational level at all, but instead trying to especially promote those OGP commitmments whose implementation require collaboration between different levels of governance?

[iveta]

Today the opening session of Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit will be livstreamed online.  According to information shared on the event’ s website ‘The OGP summit will involve 3000 representatives from 70 countries: Heads of State and governments, ministers, public servants, members of parliament, local authorities, civil society representatives, start-ups and digital innovators, civic techs, developers, researchers, journalists will gather in Paris to share their experiences and push forward the open government agenda in light of the global challenges.’

We’ll publish the most interestig findings during the three days of the Summit on this website, but I’d like to share some very short preliminary observations on he main benefits and challenges of the OGP process.

Benefits:

1. the share scale of the initiative – it has been introduced in 70 countries; which allows for unprecedented best practice sharing regarding best methods to open  up government, combat corruption or engage people in decision-making.
2. it serves as a good opportunity for civil society activists to cooperate and form networks both among themselves and with the government to press for change.

Challenges:

1. Uncertainty about the relevance of OGP as a process -are there any good initiative that wouldn’t have been implemented had the OGP process not existed? Most countries tend to commit to activities that they would have engaged in anyway, whether OGP process existed or not.
2. Low level of ambition in commitmments from governments in context of OGP and lack of capacity for civic society organiations to offer a long-term (not ad hoc) collaboration and/or monitoring of OGP commitmment implementation. OGP in some countries is just one transparency-promoting process among many; and may at times even divert attention from exploring other options/processes to push for more rapid change.

[Iveta]

Image: sludgegulper

Kofi Annan has said: “Founded on the principles of private initiative, entrepreneurship and self-employment, underpinned by the values of democracy, equality and solidarity, the co-operative movement can help pave the way to a more just and inclusive economic order.” This quote outlines the opportunities for the co-operative movement as a source of empowerment for people as well as its underlying principles. The history of the cooperative dates back to 19^th century Europe, mainly Britain and France. It is not new, and it has a rich history as well as a variety of examples, with differing levels of participation. Cooperatives are attractive, because they are appealing – they bring the idea of participatory democracy to the workplace. They are a strong example of how a mainly economic enterprise can be tightly linked to a democratic practice. This article addresses the role and opportunities for the cooperative in the 21^st century.

An interesting research in this area was published in 2010 by The Community Inventors Lab, which is a part of MIT’s Department for Urban Studies and Planning, the name of it “Sustainable Economic Democracy: Worker Cooperatives for the 21^st Century”. The paper examines two examples of cooperative practices – Mondragon in Spain and Evergreen in the US. The central idea of the paper is the importance of economic democracy, meaning that “local economic institutions are democratically controlled”.[1] Economic institutions include such sectors as businesses, finance, research and development, as well as education.

The road to economic democracy can be achieved through cooperative ownership of the local economy by those who participate, which in turn helps to root the wealth in local communities and prevents resources from going somewhere else.[2]

There are different types of cooperatives and this article focuses on the idea of the worker cooperative. Workers’ cooperatives still operate for business interests and capital investment is still relevant, however workers’ are involved to a much higher degree and the focus is on cooperation among them. Even though the profit making motive does not leave the enterprise, the involvement of the workers allows for a balance, workers’ interests get taken into consideration. However the report does point out that the successes of cooperatives have been varied, but that does not mean we should not at least discuss their potential.[3] Also it is pointed out that worker cooperatives can operate in a larger network, rather than as separate entities that most probably will suffer in the competitive global market.

The two examples examined in the research provide valuable lessons for the future of the role of cooperatives in a 21^st century democracy. For example, Mondragon in Spain developed into a cooperative group, where different cooperatives were working closely together, it allowed for a sharing of a governance structure, pooling of profits and losses and allowed for the movement of worker-owners among different member firms of the group.[4]  The approach of Mondragon includes 4 elements to creating a cooperative group.

The elements are primary cooperatives, secondary cooperatives, spin off cooperatives and lastly the cooperative group. The primary cooperatives are created in the most important sectors, such as industry and retail. The secondary cooperatives along with the spin off ones are created to support the primary ones and expand the network. Lastly the creation of a cooperative group allows for risk and resource pooling, as well as increased mobility. In addition, it is important not to forget that these cooperatives were established in different sectors, such as industry, retail, finance and education.

This strategy of diversification allowed for Mondragon to remain competitive. The ability to move between different cooperatives allowed for flexibility and in a growingly competitive market, this is of importance – the ability to adjust and learn quickly. The amount of different cooperatives allowed for one to produce what the other ones could not and exchanging amongst themselves and thus eliminating the need for importing things. Of course, there are those, who argue that each case is unique and successes cannot be replicated one to one, but certain lessons do appear. For example, the necessity for an interconnected network and a diversified approach. One must also remember that the model of Mondragon was developed over decades and this kind of a strategy requires long term planning.

The Evergreen enterprise took the example of Mondragon, but adjusted it to their own specific circumstances, focusing on one central local institution and branched out from there. Different cooperatives are responsible for different aspects, the same as in Mondragon – one for finance, one for leading, another for funding and lastly one that is responsible for governing.  So it adjusts the model of cooperative networks for its own internal needs.

The report points out the main things that are useful for the future of cooperatives in the 21^st century[5]:

• A defined geographic area
• A local network known as the ecosystem
• Internally driven economic development, where imports are replaced by the cooperative network’s participants supporting each other

Lastly the research outlines the values that should guide this kind of an approach – a strong, but democratic leadership, values of local ownership and solidarity, education as a tool for expanding networks and lastly cooperatives as organizing entities that help to organize people according to common interest, transcending, for example, racial or ethnic divides.

There are millions of people working in cooperatives in the 21^st century, however, it is sometimes forgotten that they in effect are democratic entities. Maybe something can indeed be learned from these two examples. Because democracy is about people getting involved and where is it more appropriate than in the workplace, where many of us spend our daily hours? It is about having a stake and thus an interest into what happens to you in the workplace, as well as to your colleagues.

[1] Nicholas Iuviene, Amy Stitely, Lorlene Hoyt, „Sustainable Economic Democracy :  Worker Cooperatives for the 21st Century,”The Community Inventors Lab, October 2010, p 5.

[2] Ibid, p 5.

[3] Ibid, p 7.

[4] Ibid, p 8.

[5] Nicholas Iuviene, Amy Stitely, Lorlene Hoyt, „Sustainable Economic Democracy :  Worker Cooperatives for the 21st Century,”The Community Inventors Lab, October 2010, p 26.

[Alina]

The publication was performed in the framework of the project “PROVIDUS – a partner of state in policy planning and policy making process“.

Project is financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in framework of NGO Activity Support Measure.

NGO Activity Support Measure is financed with financial support from EEA Financial Mechanism and Republic of Latvia.

www.sif.lv

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