Open source governance

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Open source governance is a Wikipedia:political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open source (WP) and Wikipedia:open content movements to democratic (WP) principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki (WP) document. Wikipedia:Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry in this way, allowing Wikipedia:policy development to benefit from the collected wisdom of the people as a whole.

Theories on how to constrain, limit or enable this vary however as much as any other political philosophy or ideology. Accordingly there is no one dominant theory of how to go about authoring legislation in this way. However, numerous very different projects are collaborating under the umbrella of the Metagovernment project.

Applications of the principles

In practice, several applications have evolved and been used by actual democratic institutions in the developed world:

• Wikipedia:open government mechanisms including those for public participation and engagement, such as the use of Wikipedia:IdeaScale, Wikipedia:Google Moderator, Wikipedia:Semantic MediaWiki, and other software by actual ruling governments - these mechanisms are well developed especially in the UK and the USA
• Wikipedia:open politics forums, invariably wikis, where political issues and arguments can be debated, either within or between Wikipedia:political party constraints, taking three distinct forms:
  • Political party platform development, in which ideas are solicited from anyone or almost anyone and openly discussed to a point but the ranking and devotion of resources to developing ideas is reserved to party members or supporters. While almost all political parties use threaded forums, few give them formal status, and only one has ever run on a platform wholly developed in a wiki (see below), and that only once. A variant is the non-partisan think-tank or citizen advocacy group platform development as has become common on Canada, for example the Dominion Institute policywiki
  • Wikipedia:Citizen journalism forums obeying stricter rules to ensure Wikipedia:equal power relationships than is typically the case in Wikipedia:blogs, strictly designed to balance Wikipedia:libel and free speech (WP) laws for a local jurisdiction (following laws strictly is part of the open politics ideal). The best known of these is Wikipedia:Sourcewatch.
  • Open party mechanisms to actually govern and operate formal political parties without the usual insider politics and interest groups that historically have taken over such parties; these experiments have been limited and typically take the form of parties run by referenda or online - none of which have achieved any representation in any parliament anywhere in the democratic world.
• Hybrid mechanisms which attempt to provide journalistic coverage, political platform development, political transparency, strategic advice, and critique of a ruling government of the same party all at the same time. Wikipedia:Dkosopedia is the best known example of this.

Some models are significantly more sophisticated than a plain wiki, incorporating semantic tags, levels of control or scoring to mediate disputes - however this always risks empowering a clique of moderators more than would be the case given their trust position within the democratic entity - a parallel to the common wiki problem of Wikipedia:official vandalism by persons entrusted with power by owners or publishers (so-called "sysop vandalism" or "administrative censorship").

Geographic sensitivity

Some, usually those without much actual political experience, envision this form of governance as a post-national "Wikipedia:virtual state" governing structure, where policy-setting is decoupled from territorial management. A more common view is that of the open politics in force '(WP)' framework that "rootedness" is a desirable goal and that this implies geographic control and sensitivity but that this competes with other goals (legality, equal power of participants, accountability to those most affected by a decision, clarity so that new participants can join in) and should not necessarily be always the most over-arching goal of any given open source system.

Common and simultaneous policy

Advocates of these approaches often, by analogy to code, argue for a "central codebase" in the form of a set of policies that are maintained in a public registry and that are infinitely reproducible. "Distributions" of this policy-base are released (periodically or dynamically) for use in localities, which can apply "patches" to customize them for their own use. Localities are also able to cease subscribing to the central policy-base and "fork" it or adopt someone else's policy-base. In effect, the government stems from emergent cooperation and self-correction among members of a community. As the policies are put into practice in a number of localities, problems and issues are identified and solved, and where appropriate communicated back to the core. These goals for instance were cited often during the Wikipedia:Green Party of Canada's experiments with open political platform development. As one of over a hundred national Wikipedia:Green Party entities worldwide and the ability to co-ordinate policy among provincial and municipal equivalents within Canada, it was in a good position to maintain just such a central repository of policy, despite being legally separate from those other entities.

Because so much information must be gathered for the overall decision-making process to succeed, however, technology access becomes a pre-requisite to participation. General adoption of tools such as wikis provide important forces leading to the type of empowerment needed for participation in this kind of government, especially those technological tools that enable community narratives and correspond to the accretion of knowledge. Prior to the adoption of such tools, however, it's unlikely that the general public would accept their output and outcomes as fully representative of the public's will. Accordingly Wikipedia:representative democracy remains a mediator and moderator of the results, and most citizen-authored legislation remains advisory.

Open politics as a distinct theory

The open politics theory, a narrow application of open source governance, combines aspects of the free software (WP) and Wikipedia:open content movements, promoting Wikipedia:decision making methods claimed to be more open, less antagonistic, and more capable of determining what is in the Wikipedia:public interest with respect to Wikipedia:public policy issues. It takes special care for instance to deal with equity differences, geographic constraints, defamation versus free political speech, accountability to persons affected by decisions, and the actual standing law and institutions of a jurisdiction. There is also far more focus on compiling actual positions taken by real entities than developing theoretical "best" answers or "solutions". One example, DiscourseDB, simply lists articles pro and con a given position without organizing their argument or evidence in any way.

While some interpret it as an example of "Wikipedia:open source politics", open politics is not a top-down theory but a set of best practices from Wikipedia:citizen journalism, Wikipedia:participatory democracy and Wikipedia:deliberative democracy, informed by Wikipedia:e-democracy and Wikipedia:netroots experiments, applying Wikipedia:argumentation framework for Wikipedia:issue-based argument as they evolved in academic and military use through the 1980s to present. Some variants of it draw on the theory of Wikipedia:scientific method and Wikipedia:market methods, including Wikipedia:prediction markets and Wikipedia:anticipatory democracy.

Its advocates often engage in legal lobbying and advocacy to directly change laws in the way of the broader application of the technology, e.g. opposing Wikipedia:political libel cases in Canada, fighting Wikipedia:libel chill generally, and calling for clarification of privacy and human rights law especially as they relate to Wikipedia:citizen journalism. They are less focused on tools although the Wikipedia:semantic mediawiki and Wikipedia:tikiwiki platforms seem to be generally favored above all others.

Criteria

Open politics can be reduced to a list of criteria:

• anyone can participate, including anonymously. This is easily implemented by having a central registrar similar to DNS registrars that can ensure that nobody registers an alias more than once and black-listing their real name. Public key infrastructure already exists for this, however the open source community has not designated(or found) a central authority that can be trusted to sign keys and protect anonymity. Currently, a web of trust system is implemented wherein people sign the key of someone they trust and use the honor system which relies on individuals to revoke their own key if it gets compromised or they change names.
• all participants are equals, and resolve disputes via Wikipedia:equal power relationships. This is easily implemented by instituting Wikipedia:egalitarian principles and Wikipedia:consensus decision making. It would need to be written into the articles of inception.
• all actions are transparent, and no one has more power to review them than anyone else. This is easily implemented with a planner/manager policy similar to the one in B.F. Skinner's book "Wikipedia:Walden Two" and online/public publication of everything. It would need to be written into the articles of inception or membership agreement that members must work as a planner, manager, and worker on a rotating basis or as needed. There would also need to be a recall mechanism.
• all contributions are recorded and preserved, and these records cannot be altered. This is easily implemented with svn.
• all deliberation is structured, or can be put in structured form to resolve disputes. This is easily implemented with forums and moderators.
• all content is re/organized and Wikipedia:refactored by participants. This is easily implemented using svn, each community has their own fork/branch or else uses the trunk as a starting point and forks from there.
• partisan behavior is limited by the format, rules set by factions themselves, and laws extant in the society or community which will be affected by the political decision. This is easily implemented using svn.
• control of the forum can, at least in theory, pass to the most trusted users, not the ones who started the forum. This would need to be written into the articles of inception or membership agreement as a recall mechanism, voluntary self-nomination for control, and democratically(or by consensus) elected controllers/moderators.

Some experts apply strict criteria of democracy, rootedness, legality, equality of access, and even ecological integrity, so as to ensure that there are absolutely no rights lost in moving Wikipedia:polity into an online arena. In other words, they wish to expand participation to mobile and remote persons, including disadvantaged ones, and undo some of the inequities inherent in using electronic media. This can be accomplished by using open source software and having a browser interface compatible with GNU accessibility standards and mobile devices.

Underlying preferences and ideals

Underlying all such criteria in turn are ideals and preferences that resemble those of other democratic political movements:

• Wikipedia:decentralization of authority: giving the widest and most potent franchise to citizens is thought to minimize what economists call the Wikipedia:principal-agent problem, or the tendency for managers to abuse authority.
• centralization of information: the use of Wikipedia:information technology to facilitate communication challenges is key to the practicality of the process.
• Wikipedia:equality of opportunity: anyone can participate in deliberation, with the expectation that people themselves select to participate on issues in which they have the greatest stake, expertise or both. Open politics treats the expert and the citizen as equals, implying that the experts are obliged to convince the citizens directly, rather than using representatives as intermediaries/brokers of policy. This use of peer review (WP) is emphasized as the best method to determine what is true or good (with the understanding that this should change over time).
• encouraging diversity of thought, such that multiple positions and Wikipedia:arguments are created, refined and compared; usually the more the better, provided they are succinct.

Some theorists describe the ideals as similar to libertarian and Wikipedia:green politics with the emphasis on peer review and Wikipedia:scientific method within political science (WP). However, the idea that political science could apply Wikipedia:falsificationism is controversial, and despite an invitation to contradict and counter arguments, the rigorous application of scientific method is not part of every open politics service.

History

Open politics theory grew from earlier work in Wikipedia:online deliberation and Wikipedia:deliberative democracy, which in turn drew on research in Wikipedia:issue-based argument and early Wikipedia:hypertext and Wikipedia:computer-supported collaboration research of the early 1980s.

The "Imagine Halifax" project was designed to create a citizens' forum for elections in Halifax, Nova Scotia in fall 2004. Founded by the widow of the late Wikipedia:Tooker Gomberg, a notable advocate of combining direct action (WP) with open politics methods, IH brought a few dozen activists together to compile a platform (using live meetings and email and Wikipedia:seedwiki followup). When it became clear that candidates could not all endorse all elements of the platform, it was then turned into questions for candidates in the election. The best ideas from candidates were combined with the best from activists - the final scores reflected a combination of convergence and originality. In contrast to most such questionnaires, it was easier for candidates to excel by contributing original thought than by simply agreeing. One high scorer, Wikipedia:Andrew Younger, had not been involved with the project originally but was elected and appeared on TV with project leader Wikipedia:Martin Willison. The project had not only changed its original goal from a partisan platform to a citizen questionnaire, but it had recruited a previously uninvolved candidate to its cause during the election. A key output of this effort was a Wikipedia:glossary of about 100 keywords relevant to municipal laws.

The 2004–05 Wikipedia:Green Party of Canada Living Platform was a much more planned and designed effort at open politics. As it prepared itself for an electoral breakthrough in the 2004 federal election, the Wikipedia:Green Party of Canada began to compile citizen, member and expert opinions in preparation of its platform. During the election, it gathered input even from Internet trolls (WP) including supporters of other parties, with no major problems: anonymity (WP) was respected and comments remained intact if they were within the terms of use at all. Despite, or perhaps because of, its early success, it was derailed by Jim Harris, the party's leader, when he discovered that it was a threat to his status as a Wikipedia:party boss. The Wikipedia:Living Platform split off as another service entirely out of GPC control and eventually evolved into Wikipedia:openpolitics.ca and a service to promote wiki usage among citizens and political groups.

The Wikipedia:Liberal Party of Canada also attempted a deep policy renewal effort in conjunction with its leadership race in 2006. While candidates in that race, notably Wikipedia:Carolyn Bennett, Wikipedia:Stéphane Dion and Wikipedia:Michael Ignatieff, all made efforts to facilitate web-threaded policy-driven conversations between supporters, all failed to create lateral relationships and thus also failed to contribute much to the policy renewal effort.

See also

• Direct Democracy (WP)
• Panarchism (WP)

Wikipedia:Collaborative governance Wikipedia:Collaborative innovation network Wikipedia:E-democracy Wikipedia:e-government Wikipedia:E-participation

Wikipedia:Electronic voting-both casting and counting Wikipedia:Emerging Virtual Institutions Wikipedia:Government 2.0 Wikipedia:Collaborative e-democracy Wikipedia:Netroots

Wikipedia:Open content Wikipedia:Open Government Initiative Wikipedia:Open Voting Consortium Wikipedia:Polycentric law Wikipedia:Radical transparency

References

• Libre Culture: Meditations on Free Culture. Berry, D. M & Moss, G. (2008). Canada: Pygmalion Books. PDF
• Programming a direct-democracy, a 2007 article on Efficasync. A Method of Open-Source Self-Governance
• Wikipedia:Us Now - A film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet.
• Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff, 2004
• What's Wrong With Politics and Can Technology Do Anything To Fix It? by Mitchell Kapor, October 7, 2004
• Berry, D M.& Moss, Giles (2006). Free and Open-Source Software: Opening and Democratising e-Government's Black Box. Information Polity Volume 11. (1). pp. 21–34

External links

• Metagovernment — An umbrella group of numerous open source governance projects; now using the term collaborative governance
  • Related projects — An extensive list of projects around the world, most of which are building platforms of open source governance.
• Aktivdemokrati (Swedish) — Direct democratic party, running for the parliament of Sweden.
• DemocracyLab — A Portland Oregon based nonprofit organization seeking to connect the values people hold to their positions on issues and the policies they advocate. Currently partnering with the Oregon 150 Project to help high school students create a collaborative vision for Oregon's future.
• Open Politics, Spanish Open Politics
• Votorola — Software for building consensus and reaching decisions on local, national and global levels.
• White House 2 - Crowdsources the U.S. agenda, "imagining how the White House might work if it was run completely democratically by thousands of people on the internet."
• Wikicracy, developing a Mediawiki-based platform respecting most of Open politics criteria

Government initiatives

• Future Melbourne — A wiki-based collaborative environment for developing Melbourne's 10 year plan, which, during public consultation periods, enables the public to edit the plan with the same editing rights as city personnel and councilors.
• New Zealand Police Act Review — A wiki used to solicit public commentary during the public consultation period of the acts review.