Round table: Tech per se Framer: Indra de Lanerolle, University of Witswatersrand/MAVC Chair: Linda Raftree (independent) Panellists: Declan Ottaro, Ushahidi – MAVC; Erica Hagen, Groundtruth; Lina Dencik, University of Cardiff; Tony Roberts, IDS
Technologies create enormous opportunities for generating and using data and amplifying and connecting voices — including those of marginalised citizens.
Scaling and replication is a complex process. Disruption may be the wrong approach.
The sector needs to follow more adaptive processes that take account of the affordance and roles of the specific technologies.
Technology cannot be understood outside of the cultural and social framework where it was designed and where it will be applied.
What roles can play technology?
Erica Hagen: distribute information and, most especially, the outcomes of applying this information.
Tony Roberts: availability, affordability, awareness, ability, accessibility. These are the five “levels of access/exclusion” of technology appropriation, to make sense of technology. Most of the time, more than doing “new” things with technology, we have to address these 4A.
Lina Dencik: the challenges of using technological platforms where people already are is that one can’t control how info travels, allows surveillance. We have also to be aware of the core processes of activism and how data can enhance them — not replace them with “data porn”.
Declan Ottaro: we have to remove the stigma that technology does not work for people. Sometimes “projects have to fail”, as this is the nature of innovation: essay and error, fail fast… and correct faster. But after that, we have to be sure that technology is useful for people. And the biggest incentive for citizens to use technology is getting a response from their government.
Erica Hagen: one of the things that technology can do well is unlocking the black box of decision-making and participation, making some processes more visible and understandable, especially in what concerns people relationships.
Tony Roberts: we have to begin with people and not technology, and especially with movements, with actions that can be enhanced with the application of technology.
Declan Ottaro: we have to prepare for change, to be flexible and adapt to always changing people needs.
Tony Robert: technology is not neutral and tends to reproduce patterns of domination and exclusion.
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Making All Voics Count: Appropriating Technology for Accountability (2017)
What roles do and don’t technologies play in citizen voice and transparency for achieving accountable and responsive governance? Dr Rosie McGee, Making All Voices Count, IDS
Not everyone is online. Obvious as this is, planning for e-participation or any kind of online activities to improve democracy have to take this into account. For people to be empowered by ICTs they have to, at least, have access to such technologies.
Making All Voices Count is addressing quite a big set of problems that deal with the quality of democracy, as it is shown in the program’s theory of change.
What roles can technologies play in generating information or data that can be used for accountability and responsiveness purposes?
The problem is that transparency or information are never sufficient. If they were, most problems could be solved by ICTs providing access to information and data. But reality is much more complex. Why would we expect that technology could ever transform governance issues that are fundamentally about power?
Citizens have to engage with information. Information has not only to be public, but accessible, manageable, reusable, etc.
Citizens not only need access to information, but also need to have a voice in public issues. That is, they need to be listened to, they have to have feedback pathways. These pathways usually include intermediaries that link citizens with governments and vice-versa.
Political will to address a problem. Transparency itself will not change government attitudes itself. There have to be activist initiatives to increase the cost of governments of not acting.
Deliberation is indispensable. And deliberation, debate, is quite a leap forward from transparency. Transparency should, thus, be complemented with spaces, platforms, etc. that promote dialogue, based on trust.
These deliberative spaces have to take into account the different profiles of people participating in them: minorities, people excluded from deliberation or from society as a whole, different recognition of others’ voices, etc.
The new institutional environment emerging requires new skills too. Both citizens and representatives need a new set of skills to be able to make the best of technology for democracy. These skills are not only about technology, but about civic participation and democracy at large. If these skill needs are not met, technologies can actually eclipse citizens’ voices and undermine or obstruct accountability and responsiveness.
Discussion
Q: What are the realistic timelines for impact? Rosie McGee: This is indeed a good question. It depends heavily on the context, but as this is a transformation and not just a minor improvement, we should be realistic about the time span that deep changes will require.
Q: There are two important issues in civic participation online. First, fear of being labelled politically and attacked because of your ideology; second, political online propaganda and even online harassment of people that support some given ideologies.
Q: We speak a lot about “technological poverty”, but very little on “time poverty” and the cost of participation in terms of dedication, time, etc. Rosie McGee: a first step to this is that new ways of doing things does not imply a huge change for people. The challenge is how to let people do things as always but improve the outcomes of this traditional way of participating.
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Making All Voics Count: Appropriating Technology for Accountability (2017)
What is democracy today? Is democracy always about being represented and some third parties making decisions in the name of the citizen? The concept of democracy has certainly shifted towards representative democracy. This specific understanding of democracy has been accompanied by laws that strengthen the idea of representative democracy and the emergence of a number of institutions to accommodate this way of working.
Initially there were three main actors — citizens, representatives and institutions — plus political parties to articulate the relationship between citizens and representatives. With the evolution of political parties, specially towards the cartel model, parties have taken the place of representatives and even embedded themselves into institutions.
Political Representation today is a legal relationship, non-disposable by the citizen, low binding for the citizen, and mediated (and conditioned) by political parties.
How is the Internet challenging this status quo? There have been many initiatives of many kinds (Decidim Barcelona, Appgree, Quorum, Qué Hacen los diputados, etc.) that are challenging the idea of representation.
Pitkin lists five characteristics of political representation that are necessarily changing with the digital revolution and the reasons behind the emergence of social movements in the XXIst century, especially after the Arab Spring and, for the case of Spain, the 15M Indignados Movement:
Autorization
Accountability
Representativeness
Symbolic representation
Receptivity
e.g. autorization changes meaning when people can for instance vote in primaries, or perform some degree of direct democracy within an e-participation initiative.
The potential of these tools majorly depends on usage, especially how representatives use them or allow their use by citizens.
Discussion
Sebastián Martín Martín: how are this shifts affecting the definition of the people, the demos? Are we just looking at citizens as individuals only and forgetting that, since Rousseau, the people is something else, is the individuals but also the collective?
Sebastián Martín Martín: what if representative democracy is no more what it used to be, and embedding technopolitics in it is not feasible just because the assumption that there is such a represented sovereignty is not true? What if sovereignty resides not in the people but elsewhere (e.g. the European Commission) and thus cannot be devolved?
Sebastián Martín Martín: what if digital agoras are not Habermasian agoras, but places of polarization, hate speech, misinformation, etc.? What has happened elsewhere (e.g. Iceland)?
Joaquim Brugué Torruella: can we generalize these initiatives? Isn’t it too early to propose a new comprehensive model for digital democracy?
Joaquim Brugué Torruella: are we talking about Internet? Or are we talking about a new trend towards direct democracy? Is it true that “there is no way back” because of the Internet, or are there other reasons for a dire change in democracy and society? Do we need to improve representation, or intermediation, with independence of the existence of the Internet?
Joaquim Brugué Torruella: is the Internet just a new aggregator of wills, or is it something else? Do we know how many people actually want to be represented? How many people are actually disenchanted by representation and why? Is it a crisis of inefficacy of politicians, or a crisis of inability to deliver of politics?
Joan Font Fabregas: is this a research on the impact of representation, or about the possibilities or potentials of the Internet to improve democracy? Is it the same thing?
Joan Font Fabregas: it is arguable that digital tools have a huge potential for transformation, but can we tell which ones work better than other ones? What are the drawbacks? Will all of them work in the same direction, or can they produce different (even opposing) conclusions?
Francisco Jurado:
It is true that the Internet will neither solve “everything” nor will the results be independent on the specific usage given to digital tools.
It is also true that it is difficult to make some statements about the potential of the Internet in politics. Will it deliver? Will it be revolutionary? We honestly do not know… yet. The research can only point at gates that seem to be opening and peek inside to see how a probable future would be like. But it seems obvious that if something as basic as communication has so deeply changed, it is to be expected that everything that is built upon commnication — as politics — will necessarily change and quite deeply.
Notes from the conclusions of the conference cycle Constitutional processes in the world, organized by the Catalan Government, and held in Barcelona, Spain, on 15 June 2017.
Chairs: Raül Romeva, ministry of global affairs, institutional relationships and transparency, Government of Catalonia
Jaume López, Univesitat Pompeu Fabra
Jefferson said that the values of the past should align with the projects of the future: every generation should write their own constitution.
Representative democracy, deliberative/participatory democracy and direct democracy as three methodologies that complement each other. Democracy is about choosing the best tools to make decisions, but also to overcome the most dangerous hazards. Best results usually rely on best designs. That’s why the importance of the democratic design. Participation is a good tool to open constitutional processes to the citizenry.
What is to be expected in a constitutional process?
A constitutional text of the maximum quality, representing an actual understanding of democracy, acknowledged by most.
An exercise of citizen of empowerment and emancipation, that legitimates the new political system, combining the virtues of direct, deliberative and representative democracy. Deliberation has to be of the most quality and widely participated by everyone.
The probability of success depends on the acknowledged need for a change and the coincidence in the methodology to perform that change.
There is a global trend that democracy is becoming more direct and participated. And there hardly is a chance for turning back to strictly representative politics. The results, though, vary: participation does not necessarily lead to quality. Design matters.
Six examples in the world: Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile.
Ireland
Ireland used a mixed commission on constitutional reforms: citizens chosen at random and some politicians.
The process of deliberation delivered great outputs. It smoothed the opposing points of view and contributed to the creation of a consensus on complicated issues. The combination of proposals of constitutional reforms plus a confirming referendum proved to be a good design.
Bolivia
There was a constitutional assembly but, before that, there was a pre-constitutional referendum that was binding for the constitutional assembly plus a post-constitutional referendum. The latter was on purpose so that the issue at stake did not block the rest of the reforms, arguably easier to debate and vote.
The assembly had to decide not only content, but also methodology, and it ended up being blocked. It would have been a good idea that the methodology had already been set for the assembly to use it for deliberation on content.
Of course, the existence of the assembly and the parliament presented a major problem of legitimacy.
The need that both chambers of the parliament had to approve the final text implied negotiations between the party in office and the opposition, and somewhat denaturalized the whole “citizen” process, which became much less participated.
Ecuador
A little bit more than 1% of the total population contributed with proposals to the constitutional reform. And this happened without a precise participatory methodology, which made it difficult to advance in the process. This fact was used by the presidency to have a major role in the whole process, again denaturalizing the constitutional participatory process.
Iceland
There was a national citizen forum, chosen by lot, and there was a reporting commission chosen at the elections. But if only citizens, as individuals, write the constitutions, the resulting text is weak and lacks legitimacy. Now the text is seen as a reference document, but cannot be directly put into practice and has thus been set aside.
Chile
The government appointed a Monitoring Citizen Council. The Self-Scheduled Local Meetings were a decentralitzed way to contribute to the constitutional process, to which 1% of the population participated with their deliberations and debates in up to 8,000 meetings.
The resulting proposals were sent to the presidency as the Citizen Basis for the New Constitution.
The participative process still has no clear definition on the later stages. So, the process has been initiated without knowing how it will end.
Scotland
Most of the deliberation went around democracy itself.
There was no constitutional process, because it was due after the referendum of independence and in case Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom. But there was a document written by the Scottish government defining a constitutional convention with a participatory and inclusive citizen process.
Conclusions
It is good that a constitutional process has different stages and each one has different designs/logic. Each stage underlines a specific aspect of democracy.
The connection between stages is very important. The outputs of a given stage have to feed the following one. There cannot be steps backward in terms of rights or of things learned or even in decisions made.
Initial participation somehow sets the pace and scope of the whole process. It will be different to begin with a small set of “experts” rather that with a massive grassroots participation.
Choosing members of commissions at random is generally a good thing for the sake of plurality.
Commissions can be mixed (citizens and politicians) or not (only citizens, only politicians). In any case, plurality within the commission is a must. Among other things, it contributes to establish links between stages.
There is no need to begin with the draft of a constitution. It can be done thus, but there is no need. Supporting documents (reports, etc.) can be handy.
Not even constitutional elections themselves are needed. There is not even the need to stop all legislative activity during the constitutional process. But the final text of the constitution is usually written at the parliament, in an official commission/assembly (although it can be made up by citizens too or even only citizens).
Discussion
Jordi Rich: can citizens not only participate, but lead the constitutional process? Can citizens have a say in what topics are to be debated in constitutional processes? How to guarantee that the results are binding?
Teresa Forcades: how can constitutional processes be initiated when the momentum for change is unclear? What happens when there is no consensus on the need for a constitutional reform?
A visualization of the network of decidim.barcelona, courtesy of decidim.barcelona
In September 2015, Madrid — the capital of Spain — initiated a participatory democracy project, Decide Madrid (Madrid decides), to enable participatory strategic planning for the municipality. Less than half a year after, in February 2016, Barcelona — the second largest city in Spain and capital of Catalonia — issued their own participatory democracy project: decidim.barcelona (Barcelona we decide). Both cities use the same free software platform as a base, and are guided by the same political vision.
The success of the initiatives and the strong political vision behind them have caused an outburst of other initiatives around the whole state – and most especially in Catalonia – that are working to emulate the two big cities. They are sharing their free-software-based technology, their procedures and protocols, their reflections both on open events as in formal official meetings. What began as seemingly a one-time project, has spread both in length and width. In length, because it will not only stay but grow over time. In width, because there are serious plans to expand its adoption both at the regional level, led by the Barcelona County Council, and at the Spanish State level, being replicated by other municipalities.
Of course, the big question is whether this has had any positive impact in the quality of democracy, the very intention behind the participatory initiative in Barcelona.
Available open documentation suggests that decidim.barcelona has increased the information access of the citizens, has gathered more citizens around key issues. There has been an increase of participation, with citizen created proposals that have been widely supported and legitimated and finally accepted to be part of the municipality strategic plan. As pluralism has been enhanced without damaging the existing social capital, we can only think that the increase of participation has led to an improvement of democratic processes, especially in bolstering legitimacy around decision making.
This can be summarized in four key points:
Deliberation becomes the new democracy standard.
Openness as the pre-requisite for deliberation.
Accountability and legislative footprint as an important by-product to achieve legitimacy.
Participation leads to more pluralism and stronger social capital, which fosters deliberation, thus closing the (virtuous) circle of deliberative democracy.
Although the scheme may be simple, we believe that it already features most of the components of a new democratic participation in the digital age. What remains to be measured and analyzed is the strength and stability of the new relationships of power and how exactly these will challenge the preceding systemic structures and lead to newer ones.
Although some aspects have been identified in what relates to new relationships between citizens and organizations and institutions, and in what relates to the creation of new tacit communities, para-organizations relational spaces, the real trend and hypothetical final scenario will only become clear after several iterations of the same project evolve in a continuum of participation, radically different from existing, discrete participatory structures.
What has already been measured is the impact both at the quantitative level and on the culture of the organization of the City Council.
The culture of participation was scarce and mainly dealt with managing the support of the citizen in top-down type initiatives. Changing the mindset implied turning upside-down, many of the departments and processes of the City Council: new coordination structures, new balances between the central administration and the districts’, need to speed up the slow tempos of the Administration, manage public-private partnerships (that had to be coordinated too), enable private-private coordination and, in general, increase the workload.
Although the platform and the project in general changed the way of working, and changed it for good by contributing to visualize the work of the public servants, one of the main conclusions reinforces the old saying — democracy is not cheap.
Notes from the Metadecidim workshop, within the decidim.barcelona participatory programme, and held in Barcelona, Spain, on 25-26 November 2016. More notes on this event: metadecidim.
Silvia Luque, Fundació Ferrer i Guardia The participatory experience of the Municipality Action Plan through the decidim.barcelona platform
One of the biggest challenges in a hybrid online-offline participatory process is, precisely, how to balance participation in both spaces, virtual and face-to-face.
The oneline platform has been the amplifier of what was going on in the offline arena. It also gathered all the information and contributed to trace the participation footprint.
Of course, the digital platform itself held lots of debates and collected proposals directly online.
Mobile points — ad-hoc kiosks on the streets — provided offline feedback from what was happening online.
The online platform was both a participatory platform and a work platform: everyone worked within the platform. Both citizens and managers used the platform for all the tasks and procedures related to the participatory process.
There was a good balance between online and offline participation, though in the online platform there was slightly more participation. The platform, though, affected the topic: in wellbeing, there were more proposals offline, while in the topic of environment more proposals came online. This sure has to do with the profile of people that participate online or offline. On the other hand, face-to-face events were mostly organized by the city council, who did not organize the same amount of events for each and every topic of the Municipality Action Plan. Participation and proposals, also, not necessarily go hand in hand: one can find topics highly participated that produced relatively few proposals, and lowly participated topics that notwithstanding produced lots of proposals. The topic and the nature of the participation sure explain the differences.
The nature of participation was also diverse: make proposals, comment on the proposals, support others’ proposals, vote proposals, attend events, interact with a mobile point, comments on online debates.
New tools require new literacies and new working logics. And also taking into account the possibility that there is a digital divide. As online and offline behaved differently, the most promising approach is a hybrid one that enables both logics of participation.
