Post in I would like to introduce CivicEvolution

Feb 12 17:21 UTC

In relation to this discussion about Building Consensus on line I would
like to introduce this group to CivicEvolution, an online tool that
helps citizens collaborate in teams to brainstorm, develop and recommend
policy. Western Australia is using CivicEvolution to elicit citizen
proposals to address climate change and sustainability. It is premised
on the idea that the best way to influence policy is to develop and
promote a detailed proposal.

(You can view a 4 minute video about CivicEvolution at
http://civicevolution.org)

Anyone with a good idea posts it, and this becomes the team sign up page
so community members can join in. When five people sign up for a
proposal idea, a team is launched in a private proposal development
workspace.

The workspace leads the team through the development proposal process.
There are five steps: Agree on the idea, Articulate the goals, Develop a
plan, Consider the impacts, and suggest steps to Move the plan forward.
Each step is based on team dialogue and deliberation that takes place in
a dedicated worksheet.

Throughout the dialogue members are encouraged to capture important
ideas and submit them as key points. Members endorse the key points they
like. Team members can edit any key point to help improve it. The
proposal is automatically generated as the endorsed key points from each
section are created.

The teams are self-managed by the team members who commit to specific
roles. The roles include Moderator, Summarizer, Editor, `Motivator and
Researcher. This division of responsibility spreads the "burden" of
managing the team while increasing transparency and accountability.

An email report of activity is sent each day and an RSS feed is
available for updates throughout the day.

Teams have at least 5 members but no more than 25 members to ensure
there are enough voices to deliberate the proposal while letting members
know, respect, and listen to each other.

The framework is extremely flexible and can be easily configured to
support different processes. In addition I can incorporate other
elements that will act like key points but could serve specific purposes
such as value statements, or even term definitions that would be worked
out early in a process (eg: what is consensus?).

Finally and most exciting, the teams can be arrayed in a pyramid. The
base consists of teams of 20 real people. The next level consists of
virtual teams, each virtual team is “populated” with the endorsed
contributions of 20 teams below it. In essence the virtual teams become
the representatives of the lower teams. Teams push content up to the
next level: someone posts a key point (or value...) and if half the team
endorses it, the key point will be pushed up into the next virtual team.
Team participants would have a view of, and posting rights in their
actual team, and a view of, and voting rights in each virtual team above
their actual team. Team arrays are currently in development.

You can view a 4 minute video about CivicEvolution at
http://civicevolution.org

I have posted a team where we can discuss this issue of online consensus
and experience the tool. If you would like to participate, please send
an email to info at civicevolution dot org.

CivicEvolution supports grassroots civic engagement as a free and
non-partisan public service. It supports top down consultation, such as
the WA climate change initiative on a fee basis. I am very interested to
hear your feedback about CivicEvolution and discuss applications.

Cheers,

Brian Sullivan

PS: I spoke to Steven a few years back in San Francisco when this
project was called Public Dialog.