Post in CivicEvolution - pushing information up to the meta teams

Feb 16 10:53 UTC

To readers of this thread, I'm a member of a research project team that will
involve 150 citizens from around Australia. As Brian knows, we are very
positive about applying CE. I thought I'd jump in with some comments,
interleaved below.

[I tried to post this yesterday, but I think Do-wire forum crashed and has had
to be restored with a few msgs missing...]

<blockquote>There are a few scenarios that will need to be tested.

<snip>
</blockquote>

My reading is that the two scenarios that Brian proposes differ in important
ways. First, when can the aggregation by manipulated, and also can it be
handled directly or only through lowest-level activity?

IMO, a simpler sequential approach is to wait until the lower-level group has
finished their activity. At that time endorsed key points get promoted to the
metagroup. (Is the metagroup created and downlinked by a process designer or by
the participants?) I would suggest that the foreperson, to use Brian's term,
either gets nominated through personal endorsement (just like content) or the
system can recommend a foreman based on both endorsed contributions and
generous endorsement activity. The metagroup starts up as a separate
deliberative flow once it receives a certain threshold of subgroup promotions.
(Not sure what to do with later promotions, though).

On the other hand, the promotion could occur dynamically as key points receive
sufficient endorsement. Attention to the metalevel occurs live, in parallel.
Content activity remains at the bottom group level. I see this as problematic
as I doubt that the automated result can be a coherent, synthesised
aggregation. If a group of forepeople are nominated in the end to wordsmith
whatever bubbles up, you are no further ahead than the sequential method.

So I'd recommend combining the two. CE could provide a read-only metalevel view
of well-endorsed points, thus promoting cross-pollination of ideas across all
lower levels. But the process should be sequential, in that each subgroup
should finish its deliberation, finalise its points and then promote both the
points and a foreperson to the next level. The metalevel stops being read-only
and begins to allow editing when it has enough promotions. The whole process
could be symmetric all the way up the structure, but of course at higher levels
it will tend to be fine tuning.

<blockquote>Once the key points have been agreed to, there can be a process of
editing it into a coherent document by a nominated team.  The editing
process would be transparent so endorsed comments would arise to
influence the editing process as necessary.  Finally, the document would
then be deliberated by the teams and put to a vote by the constituent
team members.  If there is a strong minority opinion, they similarly
create a minority opinion document.</blockquote>

A deliberative process is designed to get past the majoritarianism that
produces winners and losers.

I wonder whether key point voting is necessary. After all, you have the
endorsements that took them to the top. Surely a polarised situation would
become evident early and key points on each side would bubble up as they
should. I think a single output document can hold multiple views. However,
through the aggregation process, common ground between them could be
identified. For example, each point could be qualified to apply only to certain
situations. I don't think there should be an expectation that every question
taken up through CE is going to lead to consensus.

I believe the whole membership should simply be asked to endorse the final
document as a whole.

<blockquote>In the end we have not only a document(s), but a complete record of
the
process through which the ideas and document evolved, clear statements
of minority views, and the record of endorsements for the underlying
principles as well as the final document.</blockquote>

I think this is one of the clear benefits of having a structured aggregation
method. I big criticism of processes like AmericaSpeaks or even World Cafes is
that the work of a "theme team" to aggregate is not transparent and might not
even follow qualitative research practice. That the aggregation would in fact
be done by participants rather than process experts is very, very appealing.

What do you think?