Open Source Governance

The fifth public session of Open Source Governance held at Showroom MAMA on 20 August 2017, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Intro music: Unanswered Questions by Kevin MacLeod. licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

The following text unfolds the session by a timely order.

Recap:

• Sense of Accountability
• Trust of people and citizens
• Pirate parties – Sweden and Iceland after the financial breakdown. Indian anti-corruption movement and Aam Admi (common man) Party reference
• The terminology and the Core Group
• Diverse models of Democracy
• Bottom-up hierarchy (network) – Regional > National > Global
• Core Action Groups who have equal power
• A minority-majority voting system that makes sure the majority does not dominate the minority
• Smart Contract – Using the idea to secure OSG legislative process
• How to pass a referendum so that people can vote without getting confused and how to break down the question to people to make them understand
• Jury Duty
• City Hall Meetings; even people who cannot be there in person can engage, plus people are more expressive and courageous behind the computer
• Sortition and Lottery system for voting
• Lobbying. Example: Gay rights movement lobby
• Transparency of open source
• Legislation and Implementation linked together to make everyone do their job properly without the need of any enforcing law
• Reward system to encourage participation
• Mahalleh – localization into the house, street, community (Mahalleh). Caring for the neighborhood and having a say in your neighbors’ matters.
• How big or small the scale of open source will be

Why Open Source Government (OSG) came into being:

Open source is when the information is there for everyone to access, examples are Blockchain and Wikipedia. The concept is to improve the 800-year old representative system of parliament, as it is now outdated and needs to be updated into a more direct democracy by everybody, not just confined to the representatives. OSG sessions took place at different places, discussing various disciplines, looking for members from diverse disciplines (sociology, law, eco, politics, etc.) as it is a vast project requiring immense knowledge.

Short-term Goal:

Prepare a proposal, blueprint or organizational chart for open source system/society. We can then apply it to a small institution, school, prison, refugee camp or some other place to see the outcomes.

Identifying our Resources and Objectives:

Initially, we need to have smaller more realistic goals instead of ambitious ones. The project shall be managed by a core group of people, the members, who have some project management skills. They will develop the blueprint, which will enlist; our resources, who we are and what are our goals and then later on all the information will be shared online.

Some doubts and questions by the present members:

It was suggested by one member that the idea of open source government is totally utopic. Open source itself originated in the virtual world, which contains layers that not everybody understands. Trying to solve everything virtually did not seem like a good idea. Questionably, what exactly are the issues that we are trying to solve? How to make sure everyone will participate and act responsibly? If we have an active group and an inactive group, then the decisions are again made by the active people who may again turn into the elite. The basic blueprint would clarify many such questions. Bitcoin, for example, was once a virtual currency, today more people are accepting it as a means of trade. But one member suggested that even if something gains enough popularity (like Bitcoin), people in power can easily shut it down by making it illegal. So how do we manage to make the transition in power happen.

Following this discussion, two of the members debated weather members of a society should feel responsible for the others or not. One argued that we are a community and responsible in the social environment, while the other said if there is a public duty, there should be enforcement, therefore open public involvement is a myth. However, the group agreed that education might overcome that.

Tools for OSG to be Applicable:

Decision-making is imperative. Whether if it is a project or simply open source sessions, everyone should put forward their suggestions. By far, the sessions are not very clear with their objectives, therefore we would need,

1. Clear definition of Politics
2. Define the project itself. For it to be operating, we must know what it is so that we have a direction. Members should note down the mission, outcome, goals, etc.
3.  The community of OSG should be distinct from the end-users. It is important to recognize who will be the members, and facilitate their collaboration for OSG to continue to flourish while focusing on community building aspects.
4. Allow communication
5. For every session, the members must do their homework to avoid time-waste for recaps

The group then took a break

Value notions and common questions within the group:

1. The minority should be able to speak for their rights
2. City of Rotterdam as a great example for practicing such ideas
3. Open Source “Government”, or “Governance”? It’s about governmentality
4. What is collective thinking? It is important that the questions are raise by the group and not a single person as the initiator
5. What is the “research question” of this project, in reflection to real life.
6. Apply the OSG structure more realistically on a smaller level
7. Managing tools – an Executive institution to see how the democracy works.
8. Find the right people in city hall to participate and maintain accountability to ensure responsibility for actions
9. Engage with the city-hall and then better on the ground in the neighbourhoods, to listen about the hot discussions to have more reach to real issues

Democracy and confusion:

If in OSG people will have a say in the decision-making but experts will make final decisions. How is this democratic? That is the thing about democracy, it is not clear, it is confusing.

Several examples were given about how to make it possible for the OSG to travel and find its way into the city hall of Rotterdam, while some members were more trying to find out what the corpus of the project has to offer.

Next Session:

• Discuss how to get people more involved in politics, with respect to neighbourhoods and the fact that Rotterdam consists of 60% of clusters of different minority ethnics, who do not usually partake in decision-making
• Does having people involve into voting process, solve the problem of democracy?
• Social media and its role in making people more politically aware
• Talk about already practicing open-source decision-making examples
• Zoom into the current OSG blueprint and see how can we add more functional detail to it

City of Rotterdam:

During the session, time after time members discussed the city of Rotterdam as an example. They suggested reaching out to the city hall to ask for assistance, as well as to see what problems are out there. Also it was mentioned several times that the majority of people (which are different clusters of minorities) do not engage in decision-making.

The fourth public session of Open Source Governance held at Showroom MAMA on 21 May 2017, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Intro music: Unanswered Questions by Kevin MacLeod. licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

The following text unfolds the session by a timely order.

1. Recap of the Previous Session:

We briefly discussed the following key concepts from the previous sessions:

1. Methods of direct legislation like jury duty or city hall debates
2.  Open Source Legislation
3. Morality of Collective Decisions
4. Good VS Bad
5. Blockchain and Bitcoin
6. Pirate parties
7. Regions, minorities, referendum, sortation
8. Citizen reward system
9. Aims and Objectives of Open Source Government (OSG)

•  Apply for Funds
• Website for OSG

2. About Blockchain:

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer system that shares information amongst users without the need for a central server. Every user has the same version of the database. And transactions need to be verified by a number of users in order to take place. Then the history of the transaction will be recorded on everyone’s database. The data from this system is hack-proof as every user has a copy of the database, making it the most secure system to date.

2.1.  How these systems work:

These systems do not store all your data but only the metadata, i.e. the encryptions of your data. Therefore, it is not an alternative for the data storage. For example you cannot store videos on blockchain, but you can encrypt the data of money transactions like bitcoin, and then store the metadata on the peer-to-peer database.

2.2.  Ethereum – ft. Smart Contracts:

Ethereum is an open source system of blockchain featuring Smart Contract, making transactions tremendously secure. If you own some bitcoins, everyone will know about it but nobody can take it away from you, as it is encrypted in the database with your name. You can put codes (conditions) into the blockchain server, and every time the deed takes place, the corresponding reaction will automatically occur. You’ve put a condition, for example, where you get $100 for 1000 visits, so at every 1000th visit, the system will add $100 to your account.  

3. Open Source Government System:

OSG, as the name suggests, would be open-source, where everybody will have access to the information but only verified users can make changes to it, like Wikipedia and Blockchain system. Taking ideas from the Blockchain system, we will make the voting system in OSG hack-proof. The voting system will take suggestions from people. For choosing representatives, we will use sortition aka the lottery system. We will also localize the processes taking place locally, instead of having to wait for the orders from the central government for every issue.

4. Parties:

Because there is more chance for the individuals to engage, there will be a lot of parties. Having too many parties would make it difficult for the corrupted to start lobbying. We can have educational, health, animal rights and all such parties for their respective functions (like what we have now in Holland for example). These parties can have separate tasks to perform but work in harmony. We can also have temporary movements instead of a few major parties which stay there for a long time. In case citizens face any issues, the representatives will know about the ongoing situation and resolve them.

5. Selection Criteria for Representatives:

Those who showed a certain amount of interest in OSG (preferably technicians) would be chosen for representation. 20 members specialized in their respective functions will represent the citizens. Those twenty members will then choose three members for the parliament, as higher officials, who will make final decisions for the citizens. One participant remarked, “This is intellectual lobbyism”.

5.1.  Decision making Criteria:

The citizens who are related to the subject can have a higher weightage in voting. For example in the construction of Mosque, Muslims, people living close to the location where it has to be built, shopkeepers next door, are all related to the subject and can get a higher say in voting. Everyone else can be involved with equal weightage in the decision making.

5.2.  Using GPS for Voting:

Using GPS for the benefit of OSG seems like a good idea as the citizens of age groups 18-25 barely use computers, they use mobiles for almost everything and we do not want them to be left out. Young people sometimes express that it’s ridiculous to go to the city hall and vote on a piece of paper.

6.      Citizen reward system:

The same information from the last session was given to the present participants. Then some new points were made:

6.1.  In relation to a bad example of citizen reward system, like the one from China where all the data goes into serving and empowering the central big brother, in a truly decentralized network of peers, the data and the participation can help everyone equally.

6.2.  People should be able to choose to not to participate and engage in decision-making, and still be valued equally as the active members. Even the one who decide to sit back and do nothing for no reason. The society is the sum of everyone.

7.      Pure selfishness vs. the greater good:

In relation to the whole open sourcing of the legislation, it might be valid to say that it does make sense to participate in the OSG with pure selfish intentions and still be beneficial to the whole society, as solving your own problem is solving somebody else’s as well. Where in today’s systems, you put yourself out there and participate in order to empower somebody else as a representative to be part something larger and beyond your reach, which does not directly affect you.

8.      Simplify the Legislation:

The legislation can be simplified by decentralizing the system and by reducing the hierarchy. But how will we do that? An example was given by one of the members, called Holacracy. Where every individual will have a role in an organization. The system is complex, but it is built to absorb the complexity for individuals to participate in governing.

8.1.  Decision-making scale:

At the moment the decision-making is based on shallow information and surface knowledge. Where the question and the information behind it is rather vague and directed. While in a community, the members do know what elements are behind the surface of a problem. The issues shall be debated and the members become educated in different matters.

9.      Decentralization through Technology Based Trust Systems:

At this point, this video was screened for the audience during the session:

The four pillars of a decentralized society | Johann Gevers | TEDxZug

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oeiOeDq_Nc&list=PL2OooMNtdHdBeeO0b62FS1xTwkkNp6kur&index=11

Technology is such a vast sphere that if used correctly it can let live in a decentralized system. How?

9.1.1.      Technology of Trust:

This works by three basic means;

i.     Decentralized Communication:

• Internet
• Cryptography

Collectively they give us freedom of speech and freedom of action so that we can freely express without the fear of privacy infringement.

ii.   Decentralized Law:

• Choice of Law
• Choice of Judge
• Choice of Enforcer
• 
  

Choice of law enables us to choose, the type of law to abide for our legal proceedings. Choice of judge lets us choose the judge who will make final judgments of our case, while choice of enforcer lets us decide who will enforce our contracts and other legal matters. This is not a new phenomenon, it was used for the past 10,000 years before this centralized system of legislation came into sight.

The two other pillars where skipped

Conclusion of the video:

1. Communicate what we want to do
2. Agree the terms of Corporation
3. Produce what we have agreed on
4. Trade what we have agreed to produce

10.  Trias Politica:

At this point, a video about the idea of three branches and checks and balances was screened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W8W3p9Ot7M&t=7s

The three branches of government, Executive, Judicial and Legislative, work in a way that each keeps a check on the other while maintaining accountability and deterring the misuse of power by each other.

11.  Short-term Goals of OSG – for 5th session:

1. Prepare a glossary or index of terms
2. Democracy for majority and minority
3. Research on Knowledge and Constitution
4. Involvement through communication
5. Reaching out with Project OSG (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Slack)

12.  Long-term Goals of OSG:

1. Design and develop a blueprint of OSG
2. Simulation of implementing the blueprint in a small scale
3. Seminar in 2018

The third public session of Open Source Governance held at Showroom MAMA on 12 March 2017, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Intro music: Unanswered Questions by Kevin MacLeod. licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

The following text unfolds the session by a timely order:

Transparent Lobbyism:

When we talk about Lobbyism and Pirate Parties, we mean the transparent form of lobbyism as currently what we are experiencing is a corrupt form of lobbyism where the Ministers, CEOs and all other well-off people have more say in politics.

For instance, when examining ‘Same-Sex Marriage and Gay Rights’, the gay CEO of a company can bribe a politician and ask them to favor gay rights. On the other hand, if a second class gay citizen requests the same thing, the politician is more likely to listen to the CEO.

Lobbyism in Daylight:

An example has been given that in the Netherlands there is an association called VOB, where you as a civilian can demand to learn about the meetings of the ministers and the timing of the meetings. For example you can see that the minister of finance had sixteen talks with the CEO of Shell. But you cannot see the content. This will have no real transparency and rather adds up to more speculations.

Exposing the Diplomats:

WIKILEAKS and Panama Papers expose the diplomats and mention their names openly, creating various controversies. This can be dangerous at times and brings forth the issue of privacy infringement, however pirate parties believe that this creates a sense of accountability and diplomats would not do inappropriate things due to the fear of being insulted in public. To be on the safer side, one can suggest to sensor the names and other personal information should be during such disclosures. But the whole issue is there because of the way the things function at the moment.

Maintain Transparency:

There is no transparency and no regulation in the current system. To make matters worse, the governments are not ready to accept variations. Open Source Government intends to maintain transparency by crowdsourcing, designing a clear blueprint, invoking interest by using the modern notions and presenting it smartly, so that people willingly engage in the government.

How to implement legislation?:

As discussed in the previous sessions, the law can be implemented in the following ways.

1. Jury duty
2. Higher weightage to experts (educated people) in voting
3. Town hall meetings
4. Sortition and Elections

Trust:

Trust of citizens in the law (sovereignty) and trust in the government is one of the main issues which comes back to our discussion.

Implementing legislation via Reward System:

An uncertain suggestion for implementing the law was the Reward System. This system would be based on the participation of citizens. An example of this is the citizen pointing system in China, where citizens get points or credits and if they do not have enough points, it results in a list of disadvantages. Alibaba for instance uses Sesame Credits for it users depending on their online activity and trustworthiness. Wikipedia, for another instance, has a standard, failing to which the user cannot add or edit the information available on their site. You need to contribute enough to be able to add or edit information regarding an important subject.

Reward system would also work like this, except that it would reward not through points or money but by providing services. If a person does not participate in legislation (for whatever reasons), they will not be deprived of the services. There will be a basic point system for everyone, considering the old, sick and needy ones.

Follow-up suggestion: Legislation combined with execution:

The legislation would be designed in such a way that people willingly participate in making and executing it. Everyone can participate in both, the process of legislation and the execution. There will not be money, only points. People will get points for participation, those points will be rewarded via services. Since people will be doing it all by themselves, there will not be a need for ministers.

Setting up a standard:

Not everyone from the society who is part of the government has the best intentions and when we involve everyone in legislation and execution, we need to have a standard. For increased reliability, we will establish a higher weightage for people with a political know-how, doctors, teachers, engineers, bureaucrats, PhDs and other experts. Natives will be preferred over outsiders. Minorities will be prior to others in decisions regarding minority issues. Or it could be that people get paid to educate themselves before they engage with the decision making process.

There can be no ministers, only CEOs which will be selected by the board members and the board members will be regular citizens plus experts. No parliamentary system, only people working independently. The meaning of money and free market will then be different. “But is this not what communism is?” one member remarked. Also for the reward system to work, it has to be universal. Say, for example, someone goes from Holland to China, all they would have are points and no money, so it has to be globalized. And that is not easy to do.

Some points discussed about open source legislation:

1. The open source government regulations is based on federal and local legislation. The federal one is more like the current example of the constitution and the local one is more like the state legislation.
2. The whole world’s way of doing things and its regulations is so built-up throughout the years that it takes a lot of time to implement such system. So let us focus on a local example.
3. A healthy democracy takes care of the minorities. Minorities would decide for themselves as to what laws they want and how much participative they want to be. The minorities should have ore chance in influencing the legislation related to their issues.
4.  Power should not remain in one place for a very long time. It results in corruption, otherwise. It will not be wrong to say that “being certain is the worst thing to do”, so it should keep moving.
5. Should open source legislation abide by international human rights? Or will it be automatically according to human rights, because it’s the people who are writing it?
6. For accountability, the system will build trust in members via (if applied) the reward system, which will hold them accountable.

Tolerance and minorities:

1. Tolerance should not put somebody in a higher position. You do not do a favor or lose privilege by being tolerant
2. What will define minority and majority in various cases? Everybody could be a minority for a different reason. For example a practicing Christian being bothered by shops being opened on a Sunday. Is the Christian the minority or the majority here?
3. How can we make sure to reserve the right of the minorities by promoting more tolerance in a society?

Simplify Matters, avoid complexity:

Ever since the evolution of mankind, more and more branches were added to the government and matters were only complicated, but open source intends to simplify things. They will simplify things via the use of current notions, everything complex is for the experts to take care of. The open source constitution, for example, will be presented in a way that is comprehensible for a common man. All the complexities would be automated by the web developers.

Conclusive Notes and ideas:

1. Nationalize Schooling
2. Globalization of Infrastructure (telecommunication, roads, etc.)
3. Blueprint of Open Source will need to grow bigger as it is practiced. First the neighborhood > region > party > country > regional union > global.

The second public session of Open Source Governance held at Showroom MAMA on 19 February 2017, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Intro music: Unanswered Questions by Kevin MacLeod. licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

The following text unfolds the session by a timely order.

The software

It should be a universal platform that should be presented with a basic list of must-read and must-watch to engage more people. Starting with small core groups to develop the software, then moving on to commitment-free annual events and lastly “peer-making” through the journey.

 Iceland bankruptcy case

–  Controversy of ICESAVE

Icesave got bankrupt to the point that there was no money left even for small ATM transactions. Amidst economic crisis, government usually supports the bank, but in this case, after a referendum, the government did not. The economy fell and GDP dropped to zero. To worsen the situation, the Prime Minister’s name was in the Panama Papers for having offshore bank accounts.

– Emergence of the Pirate Party:

During these hopeless times Pirate party came into the spotlight. They became the voice of the people, acting as alternative for increased access to democracy. The good part being that if they did not do well, they were easily replaceable.

–  Transition Town:

Iceland is dependent on Nature and Neighbours. The very little population relies on fishing, crops and farming. They had a liberal party and socialist groups, both of which demanded decentralisation of administrative authority. The only difference was that the socialist groups sought government support while the liberals did not.

Direct Democracy Lacks Respect for Minority Opinion:

When a majority of the people sign a Referendum, the government has to abide by the decision of the majority. But what about the minority? Who will protect and respect the rights of minority?

AAM ADMI Party in India:

The Aaam Aadmi (common man) Party bearing the electoral symbol of broom was established with the idea of sweeping away corruption from India. The characteristic that distinguished them from status quo was transparent funding. The founder of the party first captured the sentiments of Calcutta city while later becoming the Chief Minister of New Delhi.

Updating Blueprint of Representative System:

The blueprint of representative democracy shall be updated with all the contemporary features and notions of the date while making a better use of the internet.

FOSDEM – Free & Open Source Software Developers European Meeting:

Inclusive of about 8000 people, with free entrance, this meeting was based on:

1.       Technical Talks

2.       Privacy

3.       Control over Networking

4.       Diverse Issues in Technology

Domino Effect:

In India, when it comes to political representation, people trust a person from their own community or tribe more as compared to a foreign person. The foreign person is least likely to understand what they’re going through. It is all about “Capturing the Sentiment”. This helps us conclude that engagement and political influence works differently in Asian countries.

Referendums only Have Advisory Value:

Referendums usually fail. They have no legal binding, but are only of advisory value unless more than 80% of the people vote. Australians wanted to remove the Queen, for instance, but the question of the referendum was so manipulative that people could not vote for a “YES”. Also, they are a burdensome public expense.

Solution to a Complex Referendum:

The information in the referendum shall be coherent. There should be proper guidelines regarding when it is right to issue a referendum and who is liable to vote, as not everyone is politically aware.

Conducting Online Referendum:

Conducting the referendum and broadcasting related information online is also a good option. This would encourage youth to actively participate while cutting down the costs associated with traditional referendums.

David Van Reybrouk – Lottery:

The idea of elections came after the French Revolution via Lottery. It was done by the elites, for the elites, to make sure the elites remain in power, because there was fear of the non-elite (poor) getting control. Thus, Van Reybrouk advocates against elections as it is not just about votes, but the people’s voice.

SORTITION:

What is a Good system?

1.       Legislation in the form of Jury Duty or compulsory involvement.

2.       Parties act as delegates and not for individual interests

3.       City Hall Meetings. They bring forward the issues for everyone first-handed and in a more tangible and realistic manner. Also people restrict themselves from saying offensive things in person, compared to online debates.

Remain Unbiased on the Internet – Save the Internet movement:

There was free internet in India, but only six sites were accessible including Facebook. This caused a lot of political disturbance as people had access to the medium where they could talk about the politicians openly, giving rise to “Save the Internet Movement”. The government decided to remove Facebook from its list of free sites. To make sure that does not happen, Facebook used click baits with the title “Save India”. It was a masked vote for Facebook, on which majority clicked. This was a clear case of misrepresentation by a giant corporation. People should know their options clearly so that corporations do not manipulate them.

Final Round of discussion:

•  Copyright and Open Access
• Change is Inevitable
• End of Populism
• More Engagement
• Get sustainable

The first public session of Open Source Governance held at Showroom MAMA on January 10 2017, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Intro music: Unanswered Questions by Kevin MacLeod. licenced under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

The following text unfolds the session by a timely order:

First the initiator introduced the project and how it unfolded to its present status.

Public Involvement in Governing:

To allow for more engagement by the people in terms of how the country is run. The government should allow the people to vote on certain matters, where if the majority votes, the matters must be considered and resolved by the government.

Delivery of the Information through Conflict of Interest Free Sources:

For information, we rely on the media that hugely affects and influences how people think. It is found that the channels we get our daily news and information from, are usually funded by the entities that carry out lobbying such as CNN, FOX News, etc. Contradictory to this viewpoint, a member from the discussion pointed out that targeting the media industry is not a good idea, because then, where will we get our news from? To which, another member said, the smaller, more independent and reliable channels.

Add to the Government:

Another point made was that we should add to the government, not decompose or take away from it. With media considered as the fourth branch, we should add a fifth branch to it, where people have a say in how the government is run, via voting. It is a political practice in UK that if 10,000 people vote in support of an online petition, it has to be discussed in the parliament and government has to answer. And if it exceeds 100,000 then the parliament shall officially debate about it.

Organizational Chart:

The organization chart which has been designed so far, has removed the legislation branch from its core. The legislation and the constitution will be made by the users/members of that society. The user/member can affect the legislation in federal and regional scale directly and indirectly, depending on the issue being discussed. The federal issues will require inputs from all over the society, while the regional ones require direct involvement of the people from that region, or as well, indirect involvement of members from other regions. The regional legislation is affected by the federal one indirectly and upon its core principles.