tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8189099384341232732024-03-14T05:26:11.062-07:00hawkettphilosophy | technology | knowledge management | open governmentColin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-21231287708866943922011-06-06T05:26:00.000-07:002011-06-06T07:43:49.989-07:00Revolutionise the way we govern ourselves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i>'If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.' - </i><a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aristotle" style="color: #996611; text-decoration: none;">Aristotle</a></span><br />
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Things are screwed up. There's a process called democracy that is supposed to give everyone the opportunity to participate in government. To hold those in power to account. To influence what happens. Most people are a very long way from the policy making process, while the path to move closer is... obscure. It's no accident.<br />
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No matter which part of the machine you look at, corporate interest trumps everything else. The corporate tentacles are everywhere - keeping the public interest as far from the mechanics of government as possible. Money talks.<br />
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And we can't blame the corporations for that. They are finely tuned machines designed for one thing, and one thing only - making money. They are operating precisely as designed. There is no self-regulation beyond this design. There is no 'ethics'. It is the job of government to apply ethics and other non-money-making concerns - to legislate and implement policy constraining the behaviour of the capitalist machine in the public interest, to make it work effectively for society.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Corporate Government</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">simplified model</span></td></tr>
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So we can understand why corporations have their tentacles in every office, guiding each political party, lobbying every policy decision, every department head, and working to keep a sedated and compliant public at bay. They are relentless, and should they fail will try again, and again, and again. It is just a high stakes game, the process of business. A corporation would be negligent not to leverage everything at its disposal. The apparent choice our political system presents us with is an illusion.<br />
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Thus we find ourselves in a position where corporate interest eventually trumps everything else. This happens because the public are so removed from the process, because the process lacks transparency, because the process is so inaccessible. We don't stand a chance.<br />
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Our democracy is dysfunctional.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A new hope, however, is coming into view - our new connectivity, the steady <a href="http://www.hawkett.com/2010/08/wiring-global-brain.html">wiring of the global brain</a> - is an uncomfortable landscape on which to keep the public compliant. People making and choosing their own media, operating person to person, removing the middle-men, expecting transparency - all make things much more difficult for the corporation. Only true, of course, if we don't get caught in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s">filter bubbles</a>. As Eli Pariser notes in that TED talk -</div><blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>'You can't have a functioning democracy if citizens don't get a good flow of information'.</i></div></blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It's a significant reason why we don't have a functioning democracy. Corporations are not only regulating themselves, but they are doing it behind closed doors.</div><br />
And so we direct our rage against the corporate machine (how dare they!?). But it's a red herring. All that energy just gets funnelled into the various marketing departments, feeding the beast. The only way to really make a difference is to wrest back control of our government, of policy making, so that we can apply constraints beyond money making to corporate behaviour. Constraints like ethics, transparency, compassion, sustainability, community, diversity and aesthetics.<br />
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Lucky then that we have, and have always had, total power to do just that. The reins are right there.<br />
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<b>A New Hope</b><br />
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So how can we leverage the internet to resolve our little conundrum? Simple - provide the tools of policy making to the public.<br />
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The tools of policy making are collaboration, process, experience, expertise, and knowledge. The public already possess the latter three in vast quantity, while the former are ripe for implementation on the emerging social fabric of the web. It's not a new perspective - in 2009 the UK conservative party had this to say -<br />
<blockquote><i>There are currently no technological platforms that enable in-depth online collaboration on the scale required by government...</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>It is crazy ... you've got lots and lots of retired health professionals, retired policemen, people in the teaching profession, who have huge knowledge and expertise and had they been able to contribute better to the policymaking process we could have avoided some of these problems. [<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/30/tories-prize-voters-website">guardian.co.uk</a>]</i></blockquote><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Public Government</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">simplified model</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">Let's take that concept a little further - such a platform would enable the public to produce policy without the requirement of government involvement - to form their own think tanks, their own advocacy groups, working with different processes, yet integrating with each other - able to produce actionable policy.<br />
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Take this concept further again and these public groups have the opportunity to be directly involved in actual policy implementation. They would, in fact, be better qualified for such a role than just about any other cross section of society.<br />
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We should also use 'policy' in its broadest sense here - the outputs might be environment policy, a set of ethical axioms, guidance, recommendations or protocols. Even further - outputs might be new or modified processes and procedures for policy making. A system able to keep itself fresh. The social mechanics of reputation and rating driving an open environment for policy competition. Competition that isn't for money.<br />
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Fine grained public participation in government - a global collaborative social structure with the ability to model the policy making process would be transformational.</div><br />
There is no expectation on the magnitude of public participation. Many people would be happy not to spend time in this way. What is important is that the processes can be clearly seen, and that people can choose to be involved as little or as much as they desire, with the ability to focus their energy on the things that matter to them - the things they are passionate about. In good times the rate of participation would probably be lower, while in bad times it might be expected to increase.<br />
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Four key questions need answering:<br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px;">1. Why would a political party choose to outsource all or part of its platform to public policy forums?</span></i><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Public policy forums transcend election cycles. Over time the quality and depth of their output will far exceed that produced in reaction to short election cycles. One can imagine a future where a policy group has existed for many generations. The transparency on the process of policy construction will also be very high - evident in the history of the social exchanges of the policy group. The consistency of the public policy forum is very high. The lure of a free, quality policy position, backed by research, experts, and public support will be very high for a polictical party seeking office.</li>
<li>A political party <i>is</i> a public policy group. Another perspective is that a public collaboration platform of this sort is a tool tailored specifically for the function of a political party, giving them greater efficiencies, greater reach and better capabilities for public engagement.</li>
<li>Public policy forums have access to a far greater diversity and quality of input than government managed processes. Quality policy is dependent upon the quality, diversity and freshness of the input. It's a dynamic system with low barriers for involvement - fluid participation in groups on the internet, versus a rigid system with high threshold for involvement - job interviews, employment contracts, and significant time commitments. Lowering barriers to participation means getting passionate, skilled people to the right places when they want to be there.</li>
<li>Production of policy is a very expensive undertaking for existing government - focus groups and quangos, research and public outreach, publishing and marketing - you name it. All if this activity is transferred to the public policy forum. The public purse becomes utilised for implementation. More government money for greater public benefit is good for everyone, and allows the party to offer more to the electorate during the election cycle.</li>
<li>The public vote for politicians. Choosing quality policy produced by the public is a very easy sell to the public. It would be difficult to compete in an election without also offering this.</li>
<li>High profile public figures who are active in policy forums can use their influence to promote the public policy being produced in those forums. Swaying public opinion towards the use of public policy in policy platforms only enhances the previous point.</li>
<li>The parties themselves can form their own groups in the same system - indeed they may choose to provide their policy platform in this manner, aggregating some or all of it from the public pool. Being able to offer this kind of transparency to the public would be an easy sell. "<i>Come see what we're doing, get involved, and vote for us</i>" - a hard pitch to compete against.</li>
</ul><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px;">2. Why would doing so have any impact on corporate influence of government policy?</span></i><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>When policy is sourced publicly, the public have an increased interest in watching the path of that policy into action. Making part of the mechanism transparent significantly increases pressure on the remainder.</li>
<li>Corporations will be forced to influence policy via the public forums - this will increase transparency on their behaviour. This will occur because the policy group is the 'master copy' of the policy, and variance after the fact through covert, non-transparent influence is a much more direct assault on the will of the public. A party sourcing public policy and failing to implement it raises questions that are far more difficult to answer than when the policy creation process was hidden behind closed doors.</li>
<li>Elements of society affected by corporate influence will have the capacity to react by joining debate on associated policy areas, or by forming specific policy groups which highlight the behaviour. When those policy options have actual potential to be taken up, rather than just voices raised against the wind, their power is much greater.</li>
<li>Debate about the nature of policy will move out of academia, out of the halls of government and into public forums. It is expected that a quality policy group will contain a wide ranging debate on the constituents of the policy they produce. This will increase public awareness of the broader spectrum of the debate, countering filter bubbles - it will be difficult to join the debate and not be exposed to a full cross section of opinion.</li>
<li>Access to the public policy pool makes it incredibly easy to construct a high quality policy platform. This significantly lowers the barriers to new parties and candidates. Candidates can run on ideas, as leaders, as inspirational figures - rather than the size of the wallets, rather than their affiliations to the status quo. Moving away from the 2 party system significantly undermines corporate control of government - you can no longer donate to everyone. Corporations like homogenous environments, not heterogenous ones.</li>
</ul><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px;">3. Are there any additional benefits?</span></i><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Actual involvement in the execution of government will necessarily eventuate for those public policy groups which were used to source the elected government platform. They could fulfil a variety of roles - supporting the policy, monitoring of implementation, advice, reporting. It would even make sense in many situations for group members to take roles in government or government departments to support the policy implementation. Remember that the group is likely formed of people skilled specifically in areas related to that policy, and more importantly people who are passionate enough about that policy to give their own time. A huge increase in the amount and quality of energy applied in every policy area could be expected, and would transform the effectiveness of our government.</li>
<li>Diversity. Elected government function moves from policy definition to administration functions - it is a narrowing of responsibility, and thus makes the job easier, the outcomes better, and suitable for a wider range of people.</li>
<li>People can see their output being implemented, having an effect. This has tremendous feedback benefits, and is a driver for increased participation in government. No longer does one have to rely on their vote making a difference - they now have the ability to contribute directly to policy.</li>
<li>Better informed public opinion. Like the wikipedia of <i>why</i> we are doing what we are doing and <i>how</i> we are doing it.</li>
<li>Every policy forum is like an actively operating opposition. Whether they belong to the chosen policy platform or not, these policy groups continue to present their output, continue to make their case. Greater diversity of opinion enhances the debate.</li>
<li>Measurement of government performance focusses much more on the quality of policy implementation.</li>
</ul><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px;">4. What are the issues?</span></i></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Corporations aren't going to like it. That could get... messy. Loss of power rarely goes down well with the powerful.</li>
<li>Existing political parties won't like it - they too have a vested interest in the status quo. One might argue this is the same as the first point.</li>
<li>As noted by the UK conservatives above, there isn't any software capable of doing this.</li>
<li>The public might get ahead of themselves - a wacky candidate promising the world and using the most generous of policy platforms might win an election. That's democracy for you :)</li>
<li>It could be argued that policy creation and maintenance is not a task for the public - there are reasons that we delegate this task to our representatives. It would seem though that the internet gives us new opportunities to scale, opportunities that didn't exist when the current representative system was designed. We are no longer constrained by distance, or by the physical dimensions of a town-hall.</li>
<li>Perhaps it is not possible to build software that can model such a complex and changeable adaptive system. Perhaps Facebook is the pinacle of social collaborative systems on the web.</li>
</ul></div>Perhaps one could argue that the chaos of the internet <i>is</i> our model, and we need only watch the future unfold before our eyes. Perhaps, yet we can sense that it is not enough, that it is not sufficiently cohesive to realise the vision. The emerging points of control are corporate in nature - our lives are becoming more ruled by corporate concerns, not less. The collaborative operating system remains absent. The global brain lacks the wiring we need - a fabric that can drive quality of thought, quality of action, and most of all a restore some humanity to the way we collectively operate.<br />
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I'm really hoping to have ongoing discussions with people to try and punch holes in this approach. There's also bound to be a great many benefits that haven't been articulated. Hopefully we can reach a point where the need for a system of mass participation is taken for granted, and the only problems are those of implementation - how can you build this system, how do you solve problem XYZ? This is the discussion that we need to have.<br />
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It's time to wrest back control, time to revolutionise the way we govern ourselves.</div></div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-49931745978618583302011-01-08T11:27:00.000-08:002011-07-07T20:51:43.560-07:007 Belated New Year PredictionsHere's my view on what will be important this year. It's all pretty much '<a href="http://www.knowtspace.net/2010/08/wiring-global-brain.html">global brain</a>' type stuff, and in no particular order. No doubt most of it will have been said more eloquently by others.<br />
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<b>Crowdfunding</b> - (e.g. kickstarter) will really take off. Getting funded without giving up equity is huge. Success to fail rate doesn't matter any more, because the investor gives up so little. All a crowdfunder's investments can fail and they won't even notice. This is no flash-in-the-pan, and has plenty of evolution left in it to give more and better outcomes.<br />
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<b>Ubiquity</b> - realising that Tim O'Reilly's small pieces loosely joined upon the DNS, HTTP, HTML/JS/CSS platform needs some help. <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/the-war-for-the-web.html">One Ring to Rule them all</a> is where the network effect takes us - points of control are an emergence of this phenomenon, and we will realise the need to pull this stuff into a standard platform that has a completely different and dynamic governance model. The fabric of the web hasn't finished evolving yet.<br />
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<b>Diversity</b> - the realisation that this standard platform will deliver truly thriving diversity and competition - enabling the 'small pieces loosely joined' model. This platform is not the raw web we see today. We will realise that the only way to maintain healthy competition on the web in the face of the network effect is to consume points of control for the common good.<br />
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<b>Incumbent business fighting the future</b> - the old chestnut. Points of control being subsumed for the common good, to deliver real competition? Yep, they're gonna like that a lot. Not. The thing is, the future is coming so fast now that the thinking behind these old warhorses will no longer sustain new businesses. The lifecycle of a business will begin to shorten. Google has begun its boring incumbency, and Facebook isn't far away. It's easy to overtake a stationary target. It's already happening, and we'll start to realise it. <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-fast.html">Agile business models</a> that embrace change will become the new black.<br />
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<b>Process is data</b> - the realisation that our obsession with data hasn't done a great job of including process. Gov 2.0 is flailing because inert data is an end, not a means - what about the processes behind that data? That's where government is.<br />
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<b>Facebook loses lustre</b> - People will realise Facebook is not so great, and see the benefits of a better model of the social graph. It will only be a whisper during the year, but will be surprising how quickly it becomes a roar. Facebook knows this, but can't change due to the inertia of incumbency and public expectation. Douglas Rushkoff <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/07/rushkoff.facebook.myspace/index.html?hpt=T2">covers</a> it much better and from more angles. I agree with him.<br />
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<b>Social reward</b> - using achievements to drive people's behaviour in a social context will really gather steam. Social recognition and reward based feedback loops are the agents of change that the world needs.Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-11529021779196205892010-11-20T07:26:00.000-08:002010-11-26T07:11:33.008-08:00RebootThe current technological landscape is obsessed with data. Open data, data API's, walled gardens, data silos, data stores, the semantic web - the list is endless. Gov 2.0 is all about getting access to government data: the US has data.gov, the UK assigned Tim Berners-Lee to kick off data.gov.uk, and similar efforts are underway elsewhere. Data, data, data. Indeed, Tim O'Reilly <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/timoreilly/open-source-in-the-cloud-computing-era">says</a> the internet OS is a data OS. In reality, all operating systems are data operating systems, and the internet OS is no different.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Data or Process?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>So what's wrong? Well, we seem to be confused: we seem to be separating data from the processes which operate on that data. Open data and open software are separate topics right now. Inert data as the next internet frontier is being heralded as a profound observation, and that's a mistake. Sometimes boiling things down so that they're simple and concise shows a superior grasp of both the subject matter and the communication medium. Sometimes it just means you've missed something important.<br />
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The processes which operate on data <i>are</i> data. If you look at the bits and bytes of your hard drive, it is impossible to distinguish between Photoshop the application and the Photoshop files. They're just data. Look at it another way - when a developer saves a code file, the code is data to the development environment. And the code for the development environment is data to whatever was used to develop it. Even more philosophically - which came first - data or process? A simple demonstration of how much easier this makes things: transparency in government - we don't just want census 'data' to be made available, we also want the <i>process</i> of census taking to be open. In fact, the latter has significantly greater implications for our ability to participate in the government machine.<br />
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From this perspective, the internet OS is just like any other - a magical structure that bootstraps itself from a singularity and delivers a universe of complexity and beauty. How we managed to use the term <i>operating</i> system and forget process is a mystery. We can observe the damage that is caused quite plainly - what would an OS that didn't appreciate process look like? All the applications would be completely different, they would each require separate logins, have different controls, non-standard interfaces, install differently, fail differently, report differently, vary significantly in quality, fail to integrate in most cases, or in ad-hoc manner in a few - we'd have silo's and lack of transparency, lack of trust, poor resource usage, lock-in... what a nightmare! Oh wait... that's the internet - an OS that's <i>way</i> too focussed on a concept of inert data. We are starting to see the open data discussion extend to things like - 'who should maintain this data?', 'how should this data be analysed?', 'what means were used to collect this data?' - Oops! Did we forget something? Time to apply our understanding of how an OS really works. Time to reboot with a new kernel version that better understands process.Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-57988643017919111842010-11-19T05:45:00.000-08:002011-01-09T10:48:04.014-08:00UbiquityA recent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635704575604993311538482.html">article</a> in the Wall Street Journal highlights the emergence of new internet monopolies around <a href="http://map.web2summit.com/">points of control</a>. Strangely, they aren't emerging due to clever positioning, supplier agreements, partnerships or high market entry costs. They are emerging because monopoly is the most effective configuration for delivering user benefit. A connective system delivers the greatest convenience and perceived benefit when it is universal. For <a href="http://cdixon.org/2010/11/10/the-interoperability-of-social-networks/">example</a>, the bigger and more connected the social graph, the more powerful it is. Ubiquity is inevitable. The internet operating system is emerging, not as loosely connected competing components, but as ubiquitous infrastructure.<br />
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Our power infrastructure is ubiquitous, our roads, the internet itself - all of them connective systems. There is no competition for the internet - what use would an alternative be? Its unconnected value is too low - no matter how brilliant its engineering. If we look at roads: sure, private companies build roads - but they don’t get to choose what side we drive on, what a stop sign looks like, or what the national speed limit is. The universal nature of the road infrastructure is what drives the incredible competition in the auto industry, and the user benefit is enormous. When such platforms are freely available, we reap the greatest benefit from competition. Ubiquitous infrastructure shouldn’t be what we compete <i>for</i>, but what we compete <i>on</i>. Of course, this doesn't stop companies trying to own the platform, and many succeed in doing so for long periods of time. However, without exception, the greater benefit is derived when the platform is the arena for competition, not the subject of it.<br />
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There’s an interesting conclusion to be drawn here - Facebook cannot own the social graph any more than Ford can own the road infrastructure. If Ford could control Toyota's access to the road infrastructure, you would expect a situation similar to that between <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/google-points-finger-at-facebook-hypocrisy-blocks-gmail-import.ars">Google and Facebook</a>. Competition would be severely restricted. Facebook has 'won', but only something that will slip inevitably from its grasp. The social graph must be a platform for competition, not the target of it. Anti-competition litigation seems inevitable.<br />
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Facebook losing control of the social graph also highlights the ethereal and necessary companion of ubiquitous infrastructure - benevolent governance. Who should administer the social graph for the good of all? It's not something you're likely to get from a corporate monopoly, but something that is going to become increasingly necessary. Terry Jones observes the following when <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/getting-closer-to-the-web-20-a.html">responding</a> to Tim O’Reilly's question ‘Where is the Web 2.0 address book?’:<br />
<blockquote>‘<i>Relief does not lie in the direction of more applications behind more API’s. It lies instead in allowing related data to co-exist in the same place</i>.’</blockquote>A call for ubiquitous infrastructure, and the question of governance arises in the article's first comment -<br />
<blockquote><i>‘But who owns and runs the central datastore? Why should they be trusted? Who foots the bill and how?’</i></blockquote>A common shared database would make our lives easier - one might argue, in fact, that the social graph is simply a subset of this.<br />
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What we are seeing here is the emergence of new components that belong in the fabric of the web - things that should join HTTP and DNS and perhaps learn lessons from their governance. The social graph and the common database are just the beginning - we are witnessing the formation of the internet operating system - not as a loosely connected set of competing technologies (for that is just the chaotic state prior to equilibrium), but as an emergent, ubiquitous internet infrastructure upon which real competition can thrive. This is not a process that ends - new candidates for inclusion will appear continuously, and it may be the case that the natural emergence of monopolies highlights these candidates for us. The sooner this infrastructure is delivered as an open and level playing field, the sooner we will reap the true rewards of competition in this new age of connectivity.Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-49407699487440327532010-08-08T16:11:00.000-07:002011-02-08T10:13:37.607-08:00Wiring the Global Brain<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">We've been building a <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/the-web-we-weave/">global</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_brain">brain</a> for a good while now. From the moment we could grunt at each other, from the moment we could connect the global brain's neurons, we have been looking for ways of increasing and improving those connections. We consume connective opportunity like voracious beasts: cave art, semaphore, music, literature, mail, carrier pigeons, morse code, telegraph, telephone, internet. And now, we are all connected. This is the reality we face: we have formed the largest possible global brain, and strange things are afoot. No longer does it get better by getting bigger. Now it must get better by getting smarter, by getting wiser.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nd.edu/~networks/Image%20Gallery/Large%20Images/Opte%20Project_lg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.nd.edu/~networks/Image%20Gallery/Large%20Images/Opte%20Project_lg.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nd.edu/~networks/Image%20Gallery/gallery_old.htm">Internet Connectivity Map</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Perhaps if we knew what we were trying to achieve - why we consume connectivity like a junkie consumes heroin - we might be able to help, or hinder, depending on our determination. What is the goal of a brain? Perhaps it is as mundane as maximising the survival chances of the host organism. Perhaps not. One thing is clear: the most awe inspiring elements of our humanity transcend the function of a single human brain. Culture. Morality. Knowledge. Each of these somewhat indistinguishable from the other, a constantly evolving result of endless feedback and filtering over time. What we hold today in our minds is a refinement of that which was held in countless minds before us - minds that have long since turned to dust. Each of us a unique component of a collective that delivers something far greater than the sum of the parts. Perhaps we consume connectivity because we know this inherently: that each connection delivers more than the sum of the end points, and more connections delivers more than the sum of those connections.<br />
<br />
Unlike our brains, the global brain transcends time, at least as we know it. The cells of 100 years ago aren't present today, yet there are more cells than ever before, each shaped by those that came before. Perhaps this is why we consume connectivity with so much passion: immortality. The insignificant speck of our existence has meaning in the immortal knowledge of the global brain. What drives us is exactly what the global brain needs. Or is it the other way round?<br />
<br />
A human, we are told, will have the greatest number of brain cells at age 3. After that, they die faster than they are created. With human population growth clearly still skyrocketing, perhaps we could say the global brain, in human terms is less than 3 years old. This may not be a silly as it sounds - when we look at the nature of our global brain, the page does seem blank: the connections transient, firing off half-cocked; barely recognising right from wrong; trying to understand the nature of the environment in which they exist; trying to undertand their own nature - trying to build an <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/state-of-internet-operating-system.html">operating system</a>. Revelation is the norm, and certainty non-existent. Surely Farmville is not the pinacle of global neurological evolution. There is no doubt that as youths, there is the external perception of a blank page, that we could be anything. Yet, as time goes on, the story is written, and the possibilities diminish. Our global brain is a young, unformed child - yet, for the first time, fully connected. What will be its story? It might be said that our global brain has reached a stage where it needs to start using its wiring more effectively, and unless we plan to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/internet-kill-switch-woul_n_615923.html">switch off the internet</a>, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give it a hand, to deliver a few revelations, a few Eureka moments that will stand it in good stead for the future.<br />
<br />
Easier said than done. Perhaps we can start by asking whether our global brain is the only one around. Are we the constituents of a one-off freak? Where should we look for others? Cats? Dogs? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Mice">Mice</a>? Trees? Dolphins, whales, cephalopods? Maybe all of those places, but let's take whales and dolphins. Perhaps they have a sonar internet - a distributed, wireless communication system. Cool stuff, but different to ours - it's not directed - dedicated links to specific individuals over long distances are not possible. It's a broadcast system, and anyone can listen in. They've had theirs for much longer than us, and seem to be pretty settled as far technological advancement goes. Perhaps their global brain is more mature. We can look elsewhere: how about about birds or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0ruKhhbISc&feature=related">fish</a>? They're all pretty bizarre, but there's no doubt ours is uniquely human.<br />
<br />
<object height="205" style="float: right; padding-left: 1em;" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XH-groCeKbE&hl=en_US&fs=1&start=210?rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XH-groCeKbE&hl=en_US&fs=1&start=210?rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="205"></embed></object>The next thing to consider: what's the point? What does our global brain want to be when it grows up? At this age? Probably a fireman, a doctor, or a ballerina. Certainly not a mechanical engineer, abstract sculptor or neurosurgeon. It's young: looking for some support, some guidance, some nurturing. Sadly, our brain is on its own - it must look to itself for guidance. That's us. And if we are to fill this role, then, as always, we must find the balance between authority, and freedom for the brain to experiment and forge its own path, to make its own mistakes. Man that's weird - a brain being brought up by its own cells. Which are themselves brains. Stranger things there may be, but I wouldn't bet on it.<br />
<br />
So then, let's take a stab at it. The global brain is designed for the creation, filtering and preservation of knowledge. The end-goal no clearer than our own. We know how to <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.pulseblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/creativity.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pulseblog.nl/&usg=__TxemOEw1KM6Bvn1HQeOtDBPruYk=&h=428&w=504&sz=77&hl=en&start=7&tbnid=dqFmftnRAOTI6M:&tbnh=110&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcreativity%2Bimage%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1432%26bih%3D783%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&ei=frVeTMDUGoi6jAfkqeHxAw">create</a>, and we know how to <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/15/googles-chiller-less-data-center/">preserve</a> - do we know how to filter? What passes through, what is rejected, what is distilled, and to what end?<br />
<br />
The strangest thing is that the filter itself is constructed entirely from that which it preserves - the filter for knowledge is knowledge. An endless feedback loop - its job: to build a better filter. We don't know why - we just know how to apply the filter. The brain seeks enlightenment; perfect knowledge; truth. It has no idea what that actually means, for it seeks not only the answer, but also the question. Luckily we have an <a href="http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Earth">apparatus designed to solve the problem</a> - a global brain. As Sherlock Holmes said - <i>'...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' </i>The perfect filter delivers perfect knowledge, but when the filter itself <i>is</i> knowledge, how do you get the perfect filter? Very zen.<br />
<br />
To this point we have seen us humans as neurons in the global brain, zealously forming connections with each other - some weak, some strong, always changing. When looking at our own brains, we have discovered the existence of neural ensembles - collections of neurons which work together:<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"></span><br />
<blockquote><i>Neuronal ensembles encode information in a way somewhat similar to the principle of </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial;" title="Wikipedia"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><i>Wikipedia</i></span></a><i> operation - multiple edits by many participants. </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscientist" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial;" title="Neuroscientist"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><i>Neuroscientists</i></span></a><i> have discovered that individual neurons are very noisy. For example, by examining the activity of only a single neuron in the </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial;" title="Visual cortex"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><i>visual cortex</i></span></a><i>, it is very difficult to reconstruct the visual scene that the owner of the brain is looking at. Like a single Wikipedia participant, an individual neuron does not 'know' everything and is likely to make mistakes. This problem is solved by the brain having billions of neurons. Information processing by the brain is population processing, and it is also distributed - in many cases each neuron knows a little bit about everything, and the more neurons participate in a job, the more precise the information encoding. In the distributed processing scheme, individual neurons may exhibit </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuronal_noise" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial;" title="Neuronal noise"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><i>neuronal noise</i></span></a><i>, but the population as a whole averages this noise out.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>An alternative to the ensemble hypothesis is the theory that there exist highly specialized neurons that serve as the mechanism of neuronal encoding. In the visual system, such cells are often referred to as </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_cell" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial;" title="Grandmother cell"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><i>grandmother cells</i></span></a><i> because they would respond in very specific circumstances--such as when a person gazes at a photo of their grandmother. Neuroscientists have indeed found that some neurons provide better information than the others, and a population of such expert neurons has an improved signal to noise ratio. However, the basic principle of ensemble encoding holds: large neuronal populations do better than single neurons. </i>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_ensemble">Wikpedia</a>]</blockquote><br />
As neurons in the global brain, it would seem that our myriad social groups fill such a role - indeed, the aptness of the analogy is a little disconcerting. We form groups to improve the signal to noise ratio, and groups of experts do an even better job. Here we see another reason why we are so ardent in our connective consumption: improving the quality of the filtering process. From this we might deduce that the filter of our global brain is in fact a mass of more specific filters acting together to deliver the whole. At the finest detail, an individual neuron is a filter, and at the coarsest the entire connected mass is a filter. A brain is a fractal knowledge filter.<br />
<br />
Better groups is a better filter, and a better filter is a better brain. If we look at our presence online, we see a huge number of groups of all shapes and sizes, constantly strengthening and weakening their connections. It seems that if we want to help out our global brain, then improving its capacity to form groups of neurons to achieve specific goals would be high on our list, and if we could organise those groups such that they consisted of experts, the results would be significantly better. If we could organise those groups such that they worked in concert, then we're heading for the jackpot. No wonder that <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/">stack overflow</a> works so well, and no wonder those guys are developing a process for <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/">replicating that success</a>. The global brain likes. There's something else happening here: most of these neurons - us humans - belong to many groups, and in many cases are specialists in multiple fields and groups. In fact, we're pretty free to espouse our expertise wherever we see fit.<br />
<br />
So the global brain is a knowledge management machine endlessly filtering its own output to produce a better process for endlessly filtering its own output. Etcetera. If we want to improve the wiring of the global brain, then we need to facilitate better groups. Which is, of course, what we have been doing since we first grunted at the next guy.</div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-57471104960294735642010-01-17T03:37:00.000-08:002010-01-18T06:36:01.247-08:00Who are you today?Our current model of identity online is a poor representation of how we manage identity in the real world. As mass participation becomes ubiquitous, and the web becomes one of our primary social and political environments, we need to do better. Multiple identities, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonymity">pseudonymity</a>, anonymity and credibility are necessary aspects - a fundamental part of how we should be managing identity on the web. Most importantly, public participation in government <i>needs</i> a unified mechanism for managing these things. I'll propose the basis for a mechanism that supports this - one that reconciles the desire for multiple identities with the hassle of multiple logins.<br />
<br />
Before starting, it's necessary to highlight a <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/online-identity1.html">series of blogs</a> about online identity by Andy Oram. He does an excellent job of assessing the landscape - the coverage is extensive and well researched. One key observation he makes is that our online identity is becoming more unified rather than fragmented. This is true, but it is happening because we are <a href="http://openid.net/">engineering identity management</a> to achieve this - not because this unification is a natural expression of our human nature.<br />
<div><ul></ul><div><b>Why is maintaining separate identities worthwhile?</b><br />
<br />
Andy Oram <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/online-identity5.html">pointed to some research</a> that highlights a main argument for maintaining multiple identities -<br />
</div><blockquote><i>[Sherry Turkle] claims that we do maintain multiple online identities, and that this is no simple game but reflects a growing tendency for us to have multiple selves. The fragmentary and divided presentation of self online reflects the truth about ourselves, more than we usually acknowledge.</i><br />
</blockquote></div><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Venn_diagram_cmyk.svg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Venn_diagram_cmyk.svg" style="float: left; margin: 6px;" width="200" /></a><br />
It's not a strange multiple personality disorder that we're all afflicted with - it's simple human nature. We can think of our society as a complex multi-dimensional venn diagram, where each person's perception of their identity is represented by a single circular region, and intersections between these regions represent groups. We see this all the time in our personal relationships - there are obvious differences between how our partner, family, friends and colleagues understand us, and what information we are prepared to offer them. We maintain all of these relationships - we keep information from some people while providing it to others, and people sometimes make stuff up. It's not some nefarious deceit - it's just a fundamental part of the way humans manage relationships.<br />
<br />
We see regular evidence of this human behaviour online. We attempt to keep professional and social associations separate on Linked-in and Facebook. We experience discomfort when 'friended' on Facebook by people we don't consider friends. Obviously the boundaries vary greatly for each person and within each group, but that's part of the point - everybody is different, everybody creates boundaries where they are comfortable, and not everybody is a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVoCJJFuS60">friend</a>. The push to make us all singularly open creates weird <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/11/01/my_profile_myself/">fantasy lands</a> - just what you would expect in the real world if we were only able to expose a single identity - the minimum intersection that is comfortable in every context.<br />
<br />
An unfortunate aspect of this is that our uniqueness, our creativity, our gravitas even, is often best represented by the parts of us that intersect the least. This is regularly the best expression of who we really are, what drives us, and what makes us unique individuals. We have many real world identities - subsets, intersections and mutual exclusions - all of them constantly moving. It seems utterly counter-intuitive to me that we should be engineering our online world to bring all the regional intersections of our social venn diagram into alignment. Unless we are trying to model something different to real-world identity, then <i>we're doing it wrong</i>.<br />
<br />
Tim O'Reilly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oRF1gBNakU">noted</a> that '<i>It's not a matter of perfect intelligence and perfect stupidity, its a matter of a mixture of intelligence and stupidity, of brilliance and idiocy all in the same brain, of failures of will, failures of virtue, failures of goodness, at the same time as enormous heroism, enormous accomplishment - all these things are going to be true of internet applications, just as it is true of individuals</i>'. We need to embrace our humanity, and recognise that the quest for our one true, homogenous and palatable internet identity is just an insidious endeavour in global <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink">groupthink</a>.<br />
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Multiple identities online give us new opportunities for self expression as well - providing the capability to publicly explore elements of our psyche that we would otherwise keep private. Some of that will be roughly hewn rubbish, it's true, but the key here is that the internet provides new opportunities to be comfortable with being wrong. If we are anonymous, we need not fear rejection. This is important, because the idea of '<a href="http://lauraparkin.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/fail-early-fail-fast/">fail fast</a>' is one that we know to reap rewards. Allowing multiple identities gives us new opportunities to fail fast as individuals, and, on rare occasions, to succeed fast. Either way it's a win-win situation. It's not just the identity owner who benefits - if we enable more fail-fast behaviour, for individuals and groups, then society as a whole benefits enormously.<br />
<br />
<b>How can we engineer support for multiple identities?</b><br />
<br />
Whether or not you agree with the argument for multiple identities, a mechanism for achieving it is reasonably obvious. If we see the <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/timoreilly/state-of-the-internet-operating-system">internet operating system</a> emerging, then we should need to log in once with an identity provider, and have the opportunity to switch profiles at will. Each application in the operating system sees a profile as an identity, and only the identity provider maintains the information that associates profiles. It's up to me whether I want one or many profiles. It's my responsibility to take as little or as much care as I like to keep these worlds logically separate from each other. I get to define how much information about my true identity is revealed in a particular profile. If I only want one profile, then usage would be identical to our current experience. It's fairly simple, and it's a better match for the reality of how we manage identity in the real world.<br />
<br />
It's understandable that we don't have this today<sup>1</sup> - but we shouldn't kid ourselves that what we do have is a good representation of how we manage identity in the real world. Sometimes we seem to be working on the assumption that human nature should be changed rather than modelled [<a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php">Mark Zuckerberg</a>][<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/184446/googles_schmidt_roasted_for_privacy_comments.html">Eric Schmidt</a>]. Looking at the <a href="http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGDesignProcess/XHIGDesignProcess.html">Apple Human Interface Guidelines</a> for some perspective on this is quite helpful -<br />
<blockquote><i>To help you discover the mental models people associate with your product’s tasks, look at how they perform similar tasks without a computer... Design your product to reflect these things, but don’t insist on replicating each step a user might take when performing the task without a computer. Take advantage of the inherent strengths of the computing environment to make the whole process easier or more streamlined.</i><br />
</blockquote>Obvious stuff, and it not only highlights that we should be modelling the way people do things in the real world, but that we should be seeking improved facilitation of this behaviour.<br />
<br />
<b>Additional considerations with this approach</b><br />
<br />
It might be argued that people maintaining multiple identities is a hassle for the authorities. However like most things, regulation and control is a better solution for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition">something that people will undertake regardless of the authorities' position</a>. A key element of the above solution is that an identity provider maintains the relationship between profiles, and can correlate this to a single login. A profile can be provided to an application with data that only the identity provider can use to perform this correlation. It's easier to regulate and control. I'm not suggesting people would cease to create multiple logins, but we would observe some separation between those who manage multiple identities for reasons of self expression, and those who do so for nefarious purposes. Of course there are many legitimate reasons why someone might not want any linking information to be stored, and I'll explore that scenario below when looking at 'true anonymity'.<br />
<br />
The risk of <a href="http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/?full=yes">unauthorised access at the identity provider</a> is real, as is <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8458150.stm">hacker activity</a>. These represent the greatest risk to identity management in general, but especially maintenance of separate identities. It seems clear to me, however, that as identity provision becomes standardised, and its importance better understood, the need for <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8463516.stm">security</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8462889.stm">enforcement</a> against such breaches will become more obvious and more regulated. The role of identity provider will increasingly become one which carries significant responsibility and users will choose an identity provider on the basis of how they perceive the security they offer. As we enter the world of public participation in government, many aspects of identity management will become increasingly necessary - the need for regulation, trust, verifiability and credibility will all see an increase in importance.<br />
<br />
<b>Credibility</b><br />
<br />
Credibility is something that we know is necessary for <a href="http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/scores-reputation.html">online activities that require trust</a>. No one likes a zero star seller. With the identity management solution outlined above, we get new opportunities for managing credibility - especially if this is something maintained by the identity provider. For example, e-bay could specify that their reputation is transferable between user identities - so that no matter which profile we enter e-bay with, we retain a common reputation score. Conversely, a forum might specify that reputation is not transferrable. This leads to yet another interesting possibility - the capacity to merge profiles. If you have been posting on a forum with multiple profiles, you might choose to combine them, and with such a merger deliver increased (or decreased) reputation to the new identity.<br />
<br />
One of the arguments against multiple identities is that it generates a lot of noise - people being antagonistic, offensive or just spouting rubbish with no requirement to own up to these contributions. Using a credibility mechanism provides an excellent tool for managing this problem. A profile with low credibility (such as one that is newly created, or often marked down) can be easily distinguished from one with high credibility. It would generally be in the user's interest to improve the credibility of the profiles that they use. Credibility metrics are a critical example of how we can achieve additional benefits in online identity management. <br />
<br />
Verifiability is a part of credibility, but it has some interesting additional aspects. An identity provider could offer the means for you to verify that you are you. If you provided your passport or driver's licence, then the identity provider could indicate this increased confidence in each of your profiles by increasing your credibility. In something like participation in government - the fact that you have this kind of credibility could be a requirement for participation in some forums. Something similar could be achieved for qualifications. This mechanism would also provide significant protection against online identity theft. I'm not proposing that this should be a requirement for having an online identity, but would represent a legitimate option for improving credibility.<br />
<br />
Plenty of other credibility management opportunities exist, particularly around endorsement by others - but the basic argument is that delivery of a mechanism for managing credibility - one that can span the entire user or individual profiles and apply both in individual applications and universally - is a basic and necessary part of participation on the web.<br />
<br />
<b>What about Gov 2.0?</b><br />
<br />
Gadi Ben-Yahuda provided <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gadi-benyehuda/privacy-vs-power-in-gov-2_b_312359.html">some good analysis</a> of the role of anonymity in Gov 2.0, observing that there are pro's and con's. He concluded that we <i>do</i> need to reveal our true identity to contribute to online government, and constructed a useful scale of escalating disclosure on the basis that the more influence you have, the less private you should be. He concluded that participation in Gov 2.0 required scrutiny a little greater than we would expect when speaking at a town-hall. However, it's a one-size-fits-all observation - Gov 2.0 should enable us to participate at all the levels he identified and more in between. With the ability to maintain multiple online identities, we can achieve this relatively easily, providing the user with the means to reveal only what is required by the particular forum. This is a great application of the human interface guidelines - we can deliver a better outcome by taking advantage of the strengths of the computer environment.<br />
<br />
His main argument in support of anonymity is that it allows the speaker to be completely truthful - they don't need to fear personal repercussions for saying what they really think. It's important to observe that this is the primary reason why we vote anonymously. Not only that, but it's considered rude to expect someone to tell you how they voted. It's a critical example of the need for anonymity in real world government processes.<br />
<br />
<b>True Anonymity</b><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-weight: normal;">The Electronic Frontier Foundation <a href="http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity">makes a number of good points on the role of anonymity</a>, especially in relation to government and politics. The statement highlights the fact that we need <i>secure</i> anonymity. They argue that you will only say what you think if you feel confident that your anonymity can be preserved. Clearly if an identity provider maintains the relationship between your profiles, and provides trackable information to an application (even though the application itself cannot use it), then there is no such guarantee.</span></b><br />
</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><span style="font-weight: normal;">For true anonymity to work, the identity provider must deliver an anonymous profile to the application - one that does not contain information to link back to the user id at the identity provider. You might maintain many anonymous profiles, and provide as much or as little information as you liked - your credibility, your country of residence, even your postcode - the key is that the application isn't given the specific identifying information needed to trace back to your account at the identity provider. Obviously if you gave up too much information in your anonymous profile, then deduction might be sufficient to identify you - but that is a risk for the user to manage. Also, there would be no way for credibility to be affected by contributions made anonymously, but providing your base credibility with the anonymous profile might be considered useful in some contexts. It is important to recognise that we can achieve 'true anonymity' while still providing information that is trustable, and might be required in a particular forum.</span></b><br />
<br />
Another consideration is that delivering true anonymity would need to be reconciled with the authorities' desire to track internet usage against real identities - a battle which the EFF and governments are fighting on a daily basis. It's not necessary to open this can of worms here - just to observe that there is no technical reason why true anonymity cannot be supported. Even more importantly, if we want to realise all the benefits that Gov 2.0 can offer, then we need to support it.<br />
</div><br />
<b>Conclusions</b><br />
<br />
Andrea di Maio <a href="http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2010/01/11/the-future-of-facebook-vs-the-future-of-privacy-and-what-they-mean-to-gov-2-0/">said</a> we need to balance the desire of government to get closer to citizens while respecting their desire and right to privacy. It's worth highlighting that the converse is also true - we need to balance the desire of citizens to get closer to government while respecting their desire and right to privacy. Citizens shouldn't be required to reveal more than is necessary - precisely because the most important thing is knowing what people really think. Effectively managing multiple identities and anonymity is a major facilitator in lowering the barriers to participation in government.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">We are correct to strive for a one-to-one relationship between our physical self and our internet login, but mistaken to extend that to the relationship between our login and our online presence. I've offered a rough outline for a solution, and looked at some of the opportunities and risks. It's true that our current software infrastructure would struggle to realise this vision, but it's a simple argument - if people are creating multiple identities online and will continue to do so, and if the benefits are clear, then why aren't we modelling this behaviour properly with online identity? The social web must enable us, not constrain us.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 18/01/10</b>: It seems I missed the <a href="http://informationcard.net/blog/open-identity-initiative-2009-09-09">Open Identity For Government</a> initiative while researching this post. I'm not sure how I managed that, but there it is. The initiative is high profile, wide ranging, and highly relevant to this discussion. It's based around OpenID & Information Cards, and provides many of the technical elements of my suggested solution - specifically: true anonymity with verifiability, pseudonyms, limiting personal information depending on the forum, centralised management at a trusted identity provider and strong regulation at the identity provider. The system also offers the ability to maintain multiple identities, although aspects such as identity merging & portable credibility do not seem to be supported. The initiative is, however, a great basis on which to build these elements, as it represents an ideal subset of my proposal. From another perspective this post represents an independent thought stream that reached the same conclusions, and provides plenty of meat for going beyond their proposal. In any case, apologies for the research gap - at least I found it before someone pointed it out to me :) I'm really excited by the direction that the Open Identity Initiative is taking. It looks like we're doing it right after all!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 0.7em;">1. There is some recognition of this concept in OpenID, with a 'personas' feature allowing you to maintain different sets of information with a single OpenID. It's heading in the right direction, but it's an optional registration extension, and only implemented by a few identity providers (e.g. <a href="https://www.myopenid.com/tutorial?page=2">myOpenID</a>). It is only utilised when registering with a service provider (application), and certainly not something the service provider needs to be aware of. The OpenID specification itself has very few references to the concept - simply <a href="http://openid.net/specs/openid-attribute-exchange-1_0.html">describing the feature</a> as<br />
<blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>'A subset of the user's identity data. A user can have multiple personas as part of their identity. For example, a user might have a work persona and a home persona.'</i><br />
</div></blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It's ineffective for maintaining multiple identities in the manner I have described for a number of reasons, but primarily because each persona is a subset of the same data set, and secondly because there is no mechanism or requirement for the service provider to recognise separate personas. One reason for this is that it would be considered too big a job to add this support to all of the applications on the internet. However I think if you saw a few major providers - Google, Facebook etc. - doing so, smaller players would begin to support it as well. Another reason might be the added complexity to users - 'I know about username and password - what's this new persona thing'? However it would be simple to hide the persona features using a default persona, and making that the standard behaviour - the usage flow would remain unchanged for those that don't use the feature. A user need not even be aware the feature exists.<br />
</div></span></span><br />
</div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-12378940881162064712010-01-06T15:53:00.000-08:002011-05-26T06:45:08.711-07:00Policy Management is Knowledge Management<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Dennis Howlett recently <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=1228">posted</a> a scathing put-down of <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=130">Enterprise 2.0</a> - declaring that Web 2.0 for the enterprise only makes sense in knowledge based businesses, and that even then the use cases are hard to come by. It prompted Dave Briggs to ask the question '<a href="http://davepress.net/2009/12/24/is-government-a-knowledge-business/">Is government a knowledge business?</a>'. I'd like to propose two things: that all business is knowledge business, and that absolutely yes, government is a knowledge business. I'll back up both, beginning with an analysis of policy making.<br />
<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I provided <a href="http://www.hawkett.com/2009/12/what-is-gov-20.html">my rough definition of government</a> in a previous post when picking up on Tim O'Reilly's <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/what-does-government-20-mean-to-you.html">vending machine analogy</a>. The main observation is that government represents the policy management process for our society. What then is a policy management process? The UK Government Cabinet Office took a stab at it in their Better Policy Making [<a href="http://www.nationalschool.gov.uk/policyhub/docs/betterpolicymaking.pdf">pdf</a>] report, and outlined 9 features of modern policy making (summary taken from <a href="http://www.nationalschool.gov.uk/policyhub/better_policy_making/">homepage</a>) -</div></div></div></div><blockquote><ul><li><b><i>Forward Looking</i></b><i> </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>- Defining policy outcomes and taking a long term view</i></span></li>
<li><b><i>Outward Looking</i></b><i> - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>Taking account of the national, European and international situation; learning from the experience of other countries; recognising regional variations.</i></span></li>
<li><b><i>Innovative, Flexible & Creative - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Questioning established ways of dealing with things, encouraging new and creative ideas, identifying and managing risk.</i></span></b></li>
<li><b><i>Evidence Based - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Basing policy decisions and advice upon the best available evidence from a wide range of sources; ensuring that evidence is available in an accessible and meaningful form.</i></span></b></span></i></span></b></li>
<li><b><i>Inclusive - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Consulting those responsible for implementation and those affected by the policy; carrying out an impact assessment</i></span></b></li>
<li><b><i>Joined Up - <span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Looking beyond institutional boundaries; setting cross-cutting objectives; defining and communicating joint working arrangements across departments; ensuring that implementation is part of the policy process.</i></span></b></span></i></b></li>
<li><b><i>Review - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of policy is built into the policy making process.</i></span></b></li>
<li><b><i>Evaluation - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Existing/established policy is constantly reviewed to ensure it is really dealing with problems it was designed to solve.</i></span></b></li>
<li><b><i>Learns Lessons - </i><span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Learning from experience of what works and what does not.</i></span></b></li>
</ul></blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It is an interesting list, and if we look at some keywords from each definition - defining, learning, experience, questioning, advice, evidence, consulting, communicating, evaluation, review, design - it sounds pretty 'knowledge' oriented. Interesting too, that even human resources are framed in knowledge management terms.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I'd like to go a little further. Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy">describes policy</a> (selected sentences):</div><blockquote><i>A policy is typically described as a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome(s). However, the term may also be used to denote what is actually done, even though it is unplanned.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>The term may apply to government, private sector organizations and groups, and individuals. </i></blockquote><blockquote><i>Policies can be understood as political, management, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals.</i></blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It's hard to avoid seeing this as a concise description of what business is up to. Going further - do we, humans, do anything but policy management? Perhaps a more palatable question is 'Do we, humans, do anything but knowledge management'?<br />
<br />
Wikipedia has this to offer on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management">knowledge management</a> (selected sentences):<br />
<blockquote><i>Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of practices used in an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organisational processes or practice.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>KM efforts typically focus on organisational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, and continuous improvement of the organisation.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>In terms of the enterprise, early collections of case studies recognized the importance of knowledge management dimensions of strategy, process, and measurement. Key lessons learned included: people, and the cultures that influence their behaviors, are the single most critical resource for successful knowledge creation, dissemination, and application; cognitive, social, and organizational learning processes are essential to the success of a knowledge management strategy; and measurement, benchmarking, and incentives are essential to accelerate the learning process and to drive cultural change. In short, knowledge management programs can yield impressive benefits to individuals and organizations if they are purposeful, concrete, and action-oriented.</i></blockquote>We're talking about the same thing here. Policy Management <i>is</i> Knowledge Management. This is what humans do, as individuals and as organisations - it's all we do - create and implement policy through a process of knowledge management. This is what government does right now, and it is from this perspective that Gov 2.0 will be realised.<br />
<br />
The UK conservative party recently <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/30/tories-prize-voters-website">touched on this</a>:<br />
<blockquote><i>There are currently no technological platforms that enable in-depth online collaboration on the scale required by government...</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>It is crazy that these things have gone wrong when you've got lots and lots of retired health professionals, retired policemen, people in the teaching profession, who have huge knowledge and expertise and had they been able to contribute better to the policymaking process we could have avoided some of these problems.</i></blockquote>So, is every business a knowledge business? Too right it is - as a collection of humans, there's no alternative. And to answer Dave Brigg's question - 'Is Government a Knowledge Business'? You bet - all our organisations - right down to our solitary selves - are just policy processes in specific contexts. We are - individually and collectively - knowledge management machines.<br />
<br />
When looking at government as a platform, our single, axiomatic goal is to open up, improve and oil the knowledge management process that is government. If we do this, we get a <a href="http://www.hawkett.com/2009/12/building-better-vending-machine.html">better vending machine</a>.</div></div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-38539552599374556592010-01-05T16:33:00.000-08:002010-01-06T15:42:21.892-08:00The Incumbent and the ChallengerFor a startup business, there's nothing more necessary than heterogeneity - your niche, your market opportunity, that little difference that gives you the edge. You stick your wedge in and start hammering - differentiating. If things pan out right, if the risks pay off, you'll carve yourself a space. You'll convince as many people as you can that it's better 'over here'. You'll compete, you'll make your space sweet and attractive, you'll advertise and persuade. How excellent it would be if <i>everyone </i>came 'over here'. Consolidate. And in time, with success, your niche becomes a chasm, and the last thing you need is some upstart calling everyone to somewhere else. You are now the incumbent.<br />
<br />
Life as the incumbent is a different world. It's go steady, be loyal to your customers, stay on message, don't take risks, react. The world as a homogenous market for your product is the holy grail, and you yourself are proof that you can neither attain nor retain it. Rising <a href="http://www.knowtspace.net/2010/01/political-entropy.html">entropy</a> is just what you need.<br />
<br />
It's not just business - its <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/its-hard-to-become-a-champion-and-even-harder-to-stay-one-20090905-fbma.html">anything you care to name</a>:<br />
<blockquote><i>Opponents tend to bet more aggressively against you and make risky plays in the hope of scoring big against the champ. So you need to play more conservatively and protect your chips.</i><br />
</blockquote>In politics, the incumbent talks of security, while the challenger calls for change. In sport, the tactics and strategy of the most successful are mimicked - but it is the challenger that plays differently who succeeds in toppling the champion. When you are young, you take risks - everything is new - you are the startup business. As you get old you homogenise - your perspective is much the same as it was five, ten, twenty years ago. You play it safe - there's more at stake.<br />
<br />
An interesting example of incumbent homogeneity being challenged is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation">genetic mutation</a> - very useful stuff. Evolution <i>is</i> the process of choosing the successful challenger - biological, cultural, political, technological and more. The challenger is the wellspring of diversity and the only means we have to reduce entropy - but it is a never-ending battle, for the successful challenger's destiny is to become the incumbent.<br />
<br />
In the process of cultural evolution, a new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">meme</a> is at first both strange and wondrous - but it begins to homogenise in our cultural consciousness as soon as it is born. It's a pattern observed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle">many places</a>, and as we <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/skinner-box-theres-an-app-for.html">become the borg</a>, the patterns of our cultural evolution will become less diverse - we will begin to evolve as one. Resistance is futile.Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-59645351947770733782010-01-02T17:38:00.000-08:002010-01-05T16:35:03.633-08:00Political Entropy<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_entropy">Entropy</a> is a strange word. If we look at some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(disambiguation)">definitions</a>, the strangeness becomes apparent through a list of synonyms: chaos, uncertainty, equilibrium, stasis, homogeneity. I'm going to use it to show that <a href="http://www.knowtspace.net/2009/11/ppp.html">public participation in the policy process</a> is inevitable. Unavoidable. A sure thing. We need to get ready for it.<br />
<br />
In thermodynamics, where it all <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_entropy">started</a>, entropy is a measure of the uniformity of energy distribution within a system - higher entropy means more uniform distribution. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann">John von Neumann</a> is <a href="http://www.eoht.info/page/information+theory">reckoned</a> to have told <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon">Claude Shannon</a> to name his measure of uncertainty in information theory 'entropy' because (among other things) <i>'nobody really knows what entropy is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage'</i>.<br />
<br />
Wikipedia offers:<br />
<blockquote><i>'An everyday example of entropy can be seen in mixing salt and pepper in a bag. Separate clusters of salt and pepper will tend to progress to a mixture if the bag is shaken. Furthermore, this process is thermodynamically irreversible. The separation of the mixture into separate salt and pepper clusters via the random process of shaking is statistically improbable and practically impossible because the mixture has higher entropy.' </i> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy">Wikipedia</a><br />
</blockquote>This highlights another key part to our understanding of entropy - a closed system will increase in entropy both inevitably and irreversibly. We can see this in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#Entropy_and_cosmology">cosmological entropy</a>, which argues that our universe is a closed system, and will thus reach a state of maximum entropy where all energy is evenly distributed and (consequently) all parts of the universe will be the same temperature. It's a theory that doesn't bode well for us in the (very) long run.<br />
<br />
For me, when I hear the word entropy, I don't perceive a unit of measure - I perceive the irrevocable march toward homogeneity. Keeping heterogeneous things that are in contact from becoming homogenous takes a lot of effort. We see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entropy">global systems become more alike</a> as they come into contact, <a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/171/loss-of-biodiversity-and-extinctions">loss of biodiversity,</a> <a href="http://www.subzeroblue.com/archives/2007/01/globalization_vs_cul.html">loss of cultural diversity</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#20th_century">loss of political diversity</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_globalization">loss of economic diversity</a>, and <a href="http://www.american.com/archive/2009/april-2009/globalization-pandemics-and-preparation">loss of the protections</a> that <a href="http://volensafrica.org/Loss-of-Crop-Diversity-Threatens.html?lang=en">come with diversity</a>. There's not much to be done about it either - as we go global, as our culture becomes a single closed system, rising entropy is inevitable. We see our <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4172085.stm">attempts to keep our heterogeneity alive</a> taking a lot of energy, and generally failing.<br />
<br />
In light of this, we might observe three options:<br />
<ol><li>Get some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy">negative entropy</a> - find some <a href="http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/features/documentaries/article/3854.html">new cultures</a></li>
<li>Start <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations">embracing entropy</a> - hooray for <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">homogenisation</a>!</li>
<li>Create <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sufficiency">closed systems</a> - <a href="http://about.ning.com/product.php">don't put salt and pepper in the same bag</a></li>
</ol><div>Point 1 only delays the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets">inevitable</a>. It is highly interesting that elements of both point 2 and point 3 are generally championed as solutions to the problems we face today. Is retaining some heterogeneity while allowing some homogenisation the right approach? Can it be possible to maintain both heterogenous and homogenous elements in a closed system? What is the right combination and how do we control it? According to the laws of entropy, it would appear that we can neither stop nor reverse homogenisation. Of course seeing our world as a closed system is short sighted: it is part of our solar system, which is itself part of our galaxy, and our universe. We get energy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exogeny">exogenously</a> from the sun, and all life ultimately uses this source of energy to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous">endogenously</a> maintain diversity - to swim against the relentless tide of rising entropy. From this perspective we apparently have great potential to choose between homogeneity and heterogeneity. The trap, however, is that whenever our attention wavers, the tide sweeps us a little further toward homogeneity, and the way back may never appear. We must fight perpetually for heterogeneity if we want it. <b>Once we perceive diversity, it is at permanent risk of fading away.</b><br />
</div><br />
The term '<a href="http://www.eoht.info/page/Political+entropy">political entropy</a>' is interesting:<br />
<blockquote><i>“The <b>entropy</b> measurement gives the average social uncertainty about what will happen for event sets in the social system. An entropy value for a unitary social system is analogous to a temperature reading for thermodynamic system, such as a volume of gas . In a state of temperature equilibrium one temperature measurement describes the whole volume of any part of it. If a social system is in an entropy equilibrium, a single entropy measurement describes the state of the system or any subsystem. For a system in partial equilibrium, the entropy values of its subsystems must be known.“ - </i><a href="http://www.eoht.info/page/Stephen+Coleman">Stephen Coleman</a><br />
</blockquote>Coleman is saying that when we reach maximum political entropy, we will have maximum uncertainty over what is happening - in a democratic system this might mean many candidates with similar popular support - calling the result is very difficult. <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PVQjplus7qgC&lpg=PA83&ots=5iSpHm_P7q&dq=stephen%20coleman%20entropy&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q=&f=false">Further research</a> supports this interpretation: Coleman felt that the lowest entropy system was one where the certainty of the political outcome approached 100% - e.g. a one party democracy. He also understood voting patterns as a means to measure political entropy - at minimum entropy any vote sample will identify the outcome, while at maximum entropy we must sample the entire vote to reach a conclusion.<br />
<br />
One key aspect of the thermodynamic system is the inevitable tendency toward homogeneity, and Coleman <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">identifies</a> this is in his discussion of political entropy - we will head towards political systems with less certain outcomes. Also highlighted is the role of heterogeneity - the presence of subsystems, each of which must also be undergoing changes in entropy, and which influence each other to reach an eventual state of entropy equilibrium. This subsystem relationship must also be recursive, with subsystems containing subsystems to an undefined degree of complexity. The conclusion here, then, is that at maximum entropy a democratic political system is homogeneous - every citizen is a candidate with the explicit support of themselves alone.<br />
<br />
Of course, we don't have the mechanics to support such a homogenous system - it is not possible for political entropy to reach that equilibrium. It doesn't make sense at many levels - what are the means of election? what are the means of governing? In fact, a maximum entropy democracy sounds a lot like anarchy. That's ok though - it's a theoretical maximum, an ideal - it serves as a bookend in the entropy discussion. We can observe, however, that public participation in policy making provides a pressure to increase political entropy - more people, more involved, more often. And therein lies a small paradox - our quest for transparency, for involvement, to have a say in our own government will actually deliver <i>less</i> certainty.<br />
<br />
Less certainty? We don't want that do we? One might assume such at first glance, but if we look at some recent history of certainty [<a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16590">Iraq War</a>][<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8426835.stm">Copenhagen</a>][<a href="http://newsflavor.com/politics/world-politics/the-people-who-benefited-from-the-iraq-war/">Business deals</a>][<a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/09/imf-oneinfour-chance.html">Credit Crunch</a>][<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/13/iran-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-riots-tehran-election">Iran election</a>] we may see that it is in fact our our ignorance and impotence that drives calls for a more participatory and open government.<br />
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So now, with a little imagination, we can begin to see our political and cultural landscape through the lens of thermodynamics - as bubbles of gas inside each other, determined to coalesce into a single bubble of uniform temperature. On this landscape, humanity helps, hinders, increases, reduces and divides these bubbles - often unintentionally, and often without understanding the outcomes and implications. <br />
<br />
When we look at the future of government, something becomes clear in the context of this discussion - it is inevitable that citizen involvement will increase and, barring monumental upheaval, we can't stop it, and we can't go back. We're going to need better tools to manage our cultural and political entropy - because <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/timoreilly/government-as-platform">government as a platform</a> will deliver mechanisms that allow us to move ever closer to the theoretical maximum.Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-11611289710112701502009-12-27T09:52:00.000-08:002010-01-03T05:51:26.258-08:00Measuring Opportunity<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In a <a href="http://www.knowtspace.net/2009/12/compulsory-voting.html">recent post</a>, I discussed 'compulsory voting' as a powerful tool for measuring opportunity. It is important to note that 'compulsory voting' only mandates that you demonstrate your opportunity to vote, and does not compel you to vote.<br />
<br />
Some theorists suggest that democracy is not something that everyone should participate in :<br />
<blockquote><i>"The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups." </i>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington">Samuel P. Huntington</a><br />
</blockquote>There is a perception [<a href="http://www.chomsky.info/books/priorities01.htm">Noam Chomsky</a>][<a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/economics_and_v_1.html">Andrew Gelman</a>] that Huntington was proposing a ruling elite - a minority rule in which (as Chomsky puts it) '...<i> the peasants cease their clamor'. </i>From such a perspective it is hard to extract the idea that Huntington saw that everyone should be given the opportunity to participate. The observation on its own, however, could appear to be a pragmatic expression of the statement - '<i>One should not be compelled to participate, but one should have the opportunity to participate'</i>. To my mind, the latter holds more importance than the former, and thus we arrive at a middle ground ('compulsory voting'), where your participation is required only to the degree that your opportunity is reliably measurable. Alternate mechanisms of measuring opportunity may reduce this burden of compulsory participation.<br />
<br />
To this point we have been talking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy">representative</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_democracy">liberal</a> democracy - where an elected minority have the power to implement policy, under the assumption that they will do so in accordance with the policy platform on which they ran to obtain the mandate of the people. This mechanism is a solution to the scalability problems of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy">direct democracy</a> - i.e. not everyone can have a say on all things all of the time.<br />
<br />
Samuel Huntington might observe the solution to another perceived problem - not everyone <i>should</i> have a say on all things all of the time. He might argue that this is a positive side effect of our solution to the scalability problem. There are many reasons why we might want to solve the second problem - some decisions need to be made quickly, some decisions need to be made with expert advice, and some decisions have subtle implications that are not easily perceived without a detailed awareness of the problem.<br />
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Largely, in modern democracy, the people do not make policy decisions, for both scalability and pragmatic reasons. For example, an Australian citizen gets two opportunities to do so - voting in elections (Federal, State and Local), and voting in referendums. The opportunity to participate directly in policy decisions beyond this is very difficult to perceive [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence">media</a>][<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying">lobbying</a>][<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Business#Influence_over_government">big business</a>][<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism#Political">nepotism</a>][<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8271547.stm">etc.</a>] - and the transparency of those policy decisions is very often questionable.<br />
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It is in this space that Gov 2.0 provides new opportunities for our democracy - <a href="http://www.knowtspace.net/2009/11/ppp.html">public participation in policy</a>. It increases our opportunity to participate at a fine grained level in a far wider range of policy decisions. It offers us new opportunities to solve the scaling problem.<br />
<br />
Of course we also have the problem of pragmatism - who should be eligible to participate? Eligibility to vote is generally determined by citizenship, age and residential address. Becoming eligible to participate in policy at a finer level may not be so trivial - a formal qualification or previous experience might be required. <a href="http://expertlabs.org/">Expert labs</a> offers some insight in to this aspect of policy making. To reliably extend this participatory model to everyone, we must be able to measure the opportunity to obtain the necessary qualifications or experience. And here we see a key element of 'opportunity to participate' - measuring opportunity is hard, even when the rules are very simple, such as for voting. Measuring opportunity when the eligibility criteria are more complex will be even harder. <br />
<br />
Almost by stealth, we have begun to discuss two elements of opportunity -<br />
<ol><li>Opportunity to become eligible to participate - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage">women were denied this opportunity until recently</a></li>
<li>Opportunity to participate once you are eligible - <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/20/afghanistan-elections-taliban-attack-voters">afghani citizens were denied this opportunity under threat of violence</a></li>
</ol>One might observe that these are essentially the two elements of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage">suffrage</a>. However, suffrage applies only to the right and opportunity to vote, and not to more complex processes such as policy making. Point 2 is largely unchanged in both situations, however point 1 takes on a different meaning - eligibility might be earned, rather than an inviolable right, and we must now measure a group or individual's opportunity to become eligible - we can no longer wave the wand of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage">universal suffrage</a> to satisfy eligibility.<br />
<br />
<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Of course policy making doesn't happen once every four years - it happens in real time, all the time - which is why Web 2.0 is such a great fit. Surely we can't show that everybody had all their opportunity, all the time - in fact we can largely guarantee that they didn't. With government as a platform - a system available on the internet, in the cloud - we have the potential for a new means of 'turning up', of proving your opportunity: log in periodically. This mechanism is a little strange - and highlights vividly the difference between turning up to the polling station on the one hand, and submitting your vote on the other - the former demonstrates that opportunity, while the latter exercises that opportunity. It is a convenient coincidence that they are one-to-one. By logging in to the government platform you could demonstrate your opportunity to do many things - everything the platform offers - a one-to-many scenario.<br />
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This also highlights the converse situation - the reason why people are opposed to 'compulsory voting'. Requiring every citizen to log on to a government system periodically is an extreme version of turning up to the polling station - and feels much more restrictive - or does it? If, instead of turning up to the polling station on a designated day for each compulsory election, you could go to your local library, or sit at your desk at home - wouldn't that be easier?<br />
</div></div></div><div><br />
</div><div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">There are a great many additional considerations, especially related to identity [<a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/online-identity1.html">Andy Oram</a>][<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gadi-benyehuda/privacy-vs-power-in-gov-2_b_312359.html">Gadi Ben-Yahuda</a>], but one of the things we will need to consider is the opportunity to participate in Government as a Platform, and how we measure that opportunity - especially when the requirements for participation are more complex than how old you are and where you live.<br />
</div></div></div></div></div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-75640754412855015762009-12-23T03:15:00.000-08:002010-01-05T17:33:51.092-08:00'Compulsory Voting'This is a topic that I often have long discussions over. From my perspective the arguments for 'compulsory voting' are many, and those against are few, and weak. As an Australian citizen, I'm familiar with a 'compulsory voting' system, where eligible citizens are fined for failing to show up at the polling station.<br />
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Why the quotes around 'compulsory voting'? Well, because its not voting that is compulsory, but registering that you had the opportunity to vote. It is perfectly legal to turn up to the polling station, have your name crossed off, and deposit an unmarked ballot paper. 'Compulsory voting' suffers badly from a poor name that not only fails to convey what it represents, but also conveys something that it does not represent.<br />
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Arguments for 'compulsory voting':<br />
<ol><li><b>Demonstrating opportunity to vote</b> - a democratic system where some eligible citizens are denied the opportunity to vote is not functioning correctly. In a voluntary voting system, how do you tell the difference between someone who chose not to vote and someone who was unable to vote? We see <a href="http://www.michaelparenti.org/stolenelections.html">examples</a> in US elections of some voter segments being unable to vote due to lack of electoral resources, or worse, strategic removal of resources to commit fraud. Whether this is fact or fiction is beside the point - we can't tell the difference between those who did not get the opportunity to vote, and those who got the opportunity, but chose not to exercise it. Assuming you are correctly registered, a 'compulsory voting' system will ask you to explain why you didn't attend a polling station, and fine you if you cannot do so.</li>
<li><b>Undermining intimidation</b> - it may be the case that opportunity to vote exists, however third parties place an eligible citizen under pressure not to vote. We <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/20/afghanistan-elections-taliban-attack-voters">see this in Afghanistan</a> where the Taliban threaten physical harm to those who vote. It is also the case that some elements of society are put under pressure not to vote for religious or cultural reasons. While 'compulsory voting' will never remove intimidation, it provides a powerful weapon against its effectiveness.</li>
<li><b>Accurate Representation</b> - Society places huge demands on our time, and for some people, those demands are much greater than for others. It seems incredibly idealistic to assume that in a voluntary election the people who vote are those who wanted to, and the people who don't vote are those who didn't want to. In a voluntary election, it seems obvious that the proportion of people who vote will be skewed towards those who find it easier. People working two jobs, single parents, handicapped and disabled, people very distant from a polling station, people with large families, with sick children (the list goes on) may find it difficult to vote. None of these groups are by definition any more 'apathetic' than any other group, but I'd put money on them being less represented. These groups often only have time for things which are compulsory. This argument essentially says that with 'compulsory voting', the less able and less well-off are more effectively represented.</li>
<li><b>Separating apathy and laziness</b> - Surely those are synonyms, right? In some contexts, perhaps, but to me, apathy means 'I don't care', while laziness means 'I can't be bothered'. I'm going to approach this discussion from personal experience. I have spent a lot of my adult life in the UK, where I am also a citizen with the right to vote, and where voting is voluntary. I've had many political conversations, on numerous occasions with people who are well aware of the political landscape and what is going on. These discussions are often deep and heated, with a very broad range of well constructed analyses. These people are keenly interested in politics. It is extraordinary how many of them don't vote. Since I'm talking from personal experience, I should point out that I have only voted in one UK election, despite being eligible since 1996, and living here for roughly half that time. So, anecdotes about others aside - I have the opportunity to vote, I'm not politically apathetic, but I don't vote. What's going on? Well, I'd say a bit of point 3, a bit of laziness and a bit of point 5. It's amazing how much you can find to do on a Saturday instead of going to the polling booths. I wonder how many people reading this haven't voted at every opportunity, yet do not consider themselves politically apathetic?</li>
<li><b>Fighting the perception that one vote doesn't make a difference</b> - every sensible person knows that democratic elections are won by tallying all the votes and determining the winner - sometimes according to a ludicrously complex representational system - but the basic principle is there. It is plainly obvious that your vote counts (assuming no fraud - <a href="http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3449691?headline=Diebold~to~Settle~with~California">1</a>, <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/fears-over-us-electronic-voting-machine-fraud-474105">2</a>, <a href="http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html">3</a>), yet you just can't fight that feeling, on election day, that it won't make a difference whether you turn up or not. The polls say 'Candidate A' by 2.5% - that's like a gazillion votes - if I don't turn up it will be a gazillion minus one. It is so easy to justify not turning up - our brains just can't cope with the logic of operating in a group of that size. We see the same psychology with conservation efforts - nobody wants the world to frizzle or choke, but drawing any relationship between switching a light off and an effect on the larger environment is just about too much for our brains to cope with. We have to work hard to apply the logic, even though we know it must be true. </li>
</ol><div>Arguments against compulsory voting:<br />
</div><div><ol><li><b>Voting is a Civil Right, not a Civil Duty</b> - I'm happy with that definition - you shouldn't be forced to vote. Handy, then, that 'compulsory voting' doesn't force you to vote. What is a necessity, however, is knowing that everyone who was eligible, and wanted to vote had an opportunity to do so. Right now, our best chance to achieve that is making it compulsory to demonstrate your opportunity. If we could find a solution that didn't require you to physically turn up on election day, that would be great, but for now its the best we have. 'Compulsory voting' delivers on all of the above arguments, while still offering your civil right to (or not to) vote. This argument is saying that you shouldn't have to do stuff if you don't want to. Well, you have to pay taxes, you have to drive on the correct side of the road, you have to avoid the urge to hit people. Saying 'Hey, I could have voted if I wanted to', doesn't seem much, and arguing against it seems a touch pedantic, especially looking at all the benefits.</li>
<li><b>It isn't easy to deliver, or enforce</b> - This is very true. In Australia, compulsory voting relies on the accuracy of the electoral roll - this ensures that your name is on the list when you turn up to the polling station. You also need to be able to prove who you are, and where you live. If you don't turn up you get fined - but the fine notice is sent to the address on the electoral roll. Keeping the electoral roll up to date requires constant maintenance, and something that can never be done completely. If you never enrol, then you'll never be fined for not turning up - but of course you can't vote unless you're on the roll. A lot of effort is made by the government to keep the roll up to date, and the process is fairly simple. That's in Australia - and in the global context, life ain't hard in Australia (for most people). Apart from a protracted effort to destroy the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians">culture that first occupied Australia</a>, the most civil unrest Australia has experienced appears to be a couple of small riots (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Stockade">1</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots">2</a>). Implementing 'compulsory voting' in places where things aren't so stable could be a real challenge. This argument is, however, a falsehood. If we ran our society on the basis that we should only do what is easy, and not what is right, then we'd have, well, hmmm... something like what we have now. We've <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/20/leader-copenhagen-accord">just seen in Copenhagen</a> how doing hard things can be tough - even when <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/the_bottom_line.php">they are right</a>. We need to do hard things, and we shouldn't avoid them because they are hard. This argument says we shouldn't do 'compulsory voting' because it is too hard, and that's not a sufficient, especially when we begin to reap the benefits even when the implementation is not perfect.</li>
<li><b>Uninformed, ignorant, or apathetic people shouldn't be deciding our government</b> - 'people like X shouldn't be voting' - sounds pretty bad - just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement">having a list</a> is a <a href="http://www.afn.org/~iguana/archives/2001_09/20010909.html">recipe for real problems</a>. I'd first say that using failure to vote as a discriminator for anything is useless. As discussed above, the people who don't vote when voting is voluntary fail to do so for many reasons, and can not be identified as fitting into any specific category other than 'those who didn't vote'. Lets look at it from another angle though - would our world be better if everything were decided by a benevolent, altruistic genius - the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship">benevolent dictator</a>, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_absolutism">enlightened despot</a>? Perhaps all our efforts should be put into finding benevolent dictators. What would be the process for finding such a person? Would everyone get a say, or just some people? Perhaps the despot could choose their successor, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalai_Lama#Searching_for_the_reincarnation">some other mechanism</a> might be used? When looking at these options, we realise that all our political systems, in one way or another, represent a search for the enlightened despot. Our Leader. Of course most systems have worked out by now that we have to limit the powers of our enlightened despot, in case we get it wrong and he turns out to be just a despot, or even worse - a malevolent despot. In the US, the president may only serve 2 terms, and many people are currently very thankful for that limitation. So how does all this relate to the argument that some people shouldn't vote - that representation of ignorance is bad for the political process? Only that one man's ignorance is another's enlightenment - and that everyone is affected by the government that is elected - 'ignorant' or 'informed'. This argument boils down to <i><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/think-like-me-agree-with-me.html">'I only want people to participate if they are likely to agree with me'</a>, </i>or worse '<i>I know better than you do what's best for us'. </i>It's a false argument.</li>
</ol><div>It is important to note that there are a great many arguments against being forced to vote - 'don't like the candidates', 'can't trust the media', 'nothing ever gets done', etc. These are not arguments against demonstrating your opportunity to vote, and therefore not arguments against 'compulsory voting'. '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting">Compulsory voting</a>' does not compel you to vote.<br />
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In the end, it all boils down to how we measure opportunity to participate. We need to start talking about measuring opportunity, not 'compulsory voting' or voluntary voting. Finding new, less intrusive and more powerful means to measure our capacity to participate must be a goal for an evolving democratic process.<br />
</div></div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-27875007552496993932009-12-10T04:11:00.000-08:002011-05-26T06:46:20.337-07:00What is Gov 2.0?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">To answer this question, we must first ask 'What is Gov 1.0'? Our initial reaction might be to talk about service provision - Health, Education, Infrastructure, Treasury, Law, Security etc. However all these things are just side effects of the policy process -</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">- Agenda Setting</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">- Assessment of Alternatives</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">- Policy Making</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">- Policy Delivery</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">- Measurement<br />
- Refinement</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It is these that we are influencing when we <a href="http://www.hawkett.com/2009/12/building-better-vending-machine.html">shake the vending machine</a> - be it 1.0, 2.0 or squared, be it socialist, communist, a democracy, monarchy or autocracy. Thus, with Gov 2.0, a core goal <i>must be</i> to improve the quality of, and capacity for public participation at this level. It is here that transparency and involvement are most critical.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">With that background, how would services like this appear?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Gadi Ben Yahuda recently wrote '<i><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gadi-benyehuda/the-future-of-gov-20-law_b_292895.html">The Future of Gov 2.0: Law By Wiki?</a></i>'. It touches on a part of Gov 2.0 that seems to be missing in many discussions, and which I highlighted in a <a href="http://www.hawkett.com/2009/11/ppp.html">previous post</a> - public participation in the policy process. It's not about contacting your local member through facebook, or subscribing to their tweets - it's about having the facility to actually make direct contributions as an individual.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Seeing a wiki as a tool for policy creation is an excellent first step, because it makes an absolutely crucial observation - <b>policy management is knowledge management</b>.<br />
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Perhaps this vision of public participation in the policy process lies beyond Gov 2.0 - <a href="http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194">Gov Squared</a>? Andrea DiMaio listed <a href="http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/05/29/the-four-facets-of-web-20-in-government/">four facets of Web 2.0 in government</a> and certainly explicit means for public participation in the policy process are absent. Perhaps it is implicit - deliver these facets, and we achieve improved public participation in the policy process. To me though, it's the Web 2.0 version of the government we already have, and true involvement in the actual policy process is only fractionally closer. We remain firmly rooted in representative government as our only means - something largely driven by past technical constraints on a scalability problem - a problem that is dissolving before our eyes.<br />
<blockquote><i>'It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried' - </i><a href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/364.html">Winston Churchill</a></blockquote>On the horizon is a world where we can form ad-hoc representative structures, even choosing to represent ourselves.<br />
<blockquote><i>'If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.' - </i><a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aristotle">Aristotle</a></blockquote>Perhaps it is time not only for technological advancement, but to consider the emerging potential for evolution of democracy itself.</div></div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-2128972701396000002009-12-10T03:03:00.000-08:002009-12-27T04:59:51.898-08:00Building a Better Vending MachineWhile positing the question '<a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/what-does-government-20-mean-to-you.html"><i>What does Gov 2.0 mean to you?</i></a>', Tim O'Reilly asks<br />
<blockquote><i>'How do we get beyond the idea that participation means "public input" (shaking the vending machine to get more or better services out of it), and over to the idea that it means government building frameworks that enable people to build new services of their own?'</i><br />
</blockquote>He's pointing toward <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/timoreilly/government-as-platform">Government as a platform</a>. We are always going to be shaking the vending machine - it's the citizen:government relationship. To my mind, 'Government as a platform' is about building a vending machine that provides greater diversity in the ways it can be shaken, and responds more effectively when it is shaken - adding capabilities organically so that we don't always need to shake it to get what we want. In a world of seemingly infinite collaborative possibilities, we need to take public input to the next level - to create a government that is inherently participative, transparent and responsive.<br />
<br />
Here's an interesting conundrum - What proportion of our government can be delivered through 'Government as a platform'? Are there services for which it is not suited? If 'Government as a platform' is a government service, can this service be delivered through the platform? Can we build a platform that enables the delivery and maintenance of all government services, including the platform itself? Now that would be a pretty cool vending machine - where citizen and government are one, and shaking the machine means shaking ourselves.Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-818909938434123273.post-41333547252409113662009-11-20T05:35:00.000-08:002010-01-04T07:02:48.318-08:00Public Participation in Policy - PPP<div>For this year's Web 2.0 Summit, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle produced a <a href="http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194">white paper</a> defining 'Web Squared' - their next evolutionary step beyond Web 2.0. It's about the opportunities for harnessing our collective intelligence. Data in context, in real-time. It's about seeing the web as a conduit for making real things happen in the real world, in ways that couldn't possibly occur without it.<br />
<br />
</div><div>This is the first example of web squared from the above white paper:<br />
</div><blockquote><div><i>'The election of Barack Obama has demonstrated how the Internet can be used to transform politics. Now, his administration is committed to exploring how it might be used to transform the actual practice of governing.</i> <br />
</div></blockquote><blockquote><div><i>The US Federal government has made a major commitment to transparency and open data. Data.gov now hosts more than 100,000 data feeds from US government sources, and the White House blog is <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Principles" style="color: #2222ce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">considering a commitment</a> to the <a href="http://resource.org/8_principles.html" style="color: #2222ce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">8 Open Data Principles</a> articulated by a group of open data activists in late 2007. There’s a celebration of the successes that many are now calling "Government 2.0." We’d love to hear about Government 2.0 success stories from around the world.</i> <br />
</div></blockquote><blockquote><div><i>But in his advice on the direction of the <a href="http://gov2summit.com/" style="color: #2222ce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Government 2.0 Summit</a> Federal <span style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">CTO</span> Aneesh Chopra has urged us not to focus on the successes of Web 2.0 in government, but rather on the unsolved problems. How can the technology community help with such problems as <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5932/1273?ijkey=7UaWPZ1JQcBJ6&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" style="color: #2222ce; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">tracking the progress of the economic stimulus package in creating new jobs</a>? How can it speed our progress towards energy independence and a reduction in <span style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">CO2</span> emissions? How can it help us remake our education system to produce a more competitive workforce? How can it help us reduce the ballooning costs of healthcare?'</i><br />
</div><i></i><br />
</blockquote><div>There are a number of points to take from this -<br />
<ol><li>The provision of data in context, with semantic meaning, is the main achievement to date e.g. <a href="http://data.gov/">data.gov</a> . This delivers transparency on what's already happened, and to a lesser degree on what's happening. </li>
<li>We are now looking at how we can go further than simple data provision, to solve problems - to act on this information. Not only transparency, but application.<br />
</li>
<li>We are looking at application in terms of achieving actual policy outcomes.</li>
<li>If you read between the lines - we need to create the means to crowdsource involvement in the policy process - discussion, definition, implementation, communication, review and measurement. Transparency not only on what's happening, but on <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> and <i>why </i>things happen. </li>
</ol></div><div>Provision of government data and services is really just the tip of an iceberg - the real value will come when we can provide the capacity for transparency of, and participation in the entire policy process. The complexity of the policy process is immense - it makes sense to start with data and services, but the vision for Gov 2.0 will inevitably be PPP. There is no doubt that Tim O'Reilly is heading in the right direction when he talks about <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/globespotting/archives/2009/12/the_power_of_go.html">government as a platform</a>.<br />
<br />
It is no surprise that we currently use a representational system to manage our democracy - fine grained public participation in the policy process is a deeply complex vision. It is a whole new paradigm for our democracy - the ultimate crowdsourcing endeavour, and one that is only now becoming feasible as we enter the world of 'Web Squared'.<br />
</div>Colin Hawketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11210142396828492838noreply@blogger.com0