Post in Building consensus online

Feb 01 19:24 UTC

Hi Miles, Steve and all,

I think Miles did a good point. Consensus, decissions, actions... are usually
better reached when there exists a core group of people which are determined to
attain them. Could a group of "strangers" who meet in a virtual space, reach a
consensus on a delicate subject? Probably not or, even if they do: what would
that consensus be worth? Could it lead to sustainable collective action by the
group members, or even the general citizenry?

As part of our FOSS project Kyosei-Polis, which aims to provide a virtual
environment for municipal civic participation, we have soon realized that no
single "technical gadget", even if it is a web4.0 wonder, will be able to do
the work.
Civic participation thrives when real human beings -composed of their very
human worries, interests and capabilities- stand behind it. And thus, for the
different phases involved in taking collective action (recognizing a problem,
bringing together a group of people that worry about it, imagine possible
actions, formulate a main plan of action, share it with other interested
parties, improve it, bring citizenry into the picture, improve it further,
involve public authorities, improve it further, launch it, etc.) need a
different amount of people to carry them out.
Using a voting mechanism (as proposed by D. R. Newman) that aggregates
individual preferences and proposes the optimal compromise, taking into account
second and third best choices of the 1000 participants, and allowing to have
discussions to improve and merge the best rated options... is a good approach.
But at the end: who would guarantee me, as a participant (or even as a
non-participant), that the 1000 people casting their preferences are the right
ones? Why should I believe that public authorities behind the initiative are
not unfairly influencing/manipulating the process (as is usually the case)?

At the end, you need to be able to generate legitimacy and credibility for the
whole process, which actually started much before the 1000 people got their
hands on it. For each of the increasingly crowded discussion phases described
earlier, you need not only to provide the tools for reaching consensus and
meaningful deliberation, but also to guarantee transparency and clear
accountability.
To guarantee transparency, technical tools can certainly help but are not
enough: you also need to consider the procedural framework and even the
institutional framework that surrounds the deliberative exercises.

For our project, we have reached the conclusion that our system shouldnt try to
provide tools that do the work for the users, but tools that help the users to
help themselves to do the work. Empower those who want and need to be
empowered, with tools, procedures and institutional arrangements that are
sustainable and help them to help themselves.

What does it means in concrete? It means that the system will enable all
participants to continuously appraise the quality and fairness of the process.
It means that public authorities will not have any monopoly on public
participation: anybody will be able to raise issues and start participatory
discussions around it. It means that there will be third party institutions
whose main responsibility is to guarantee the procedural correctness of the
collaborative exercises. These institutions would have to achieve a strong
credibility as neutral players through their compromise with fairness, and
would be continuously audited. They would appoint facilitators (which we call
serenos a word that in Spanish means both calm/cool-headed/self-possessed and
night watchman ;-)  and midwifes to honor Socrates maieutics). These
facilitators are also provided with tools to help the group to have inclusive
and goal-driven deliberations, which reach consensus and prepare for subsequent
actions and collaborative exercises.

For example: how would the consensus for 1000 people be reached, on a municipal
issue? Well, what would actually happen is that 1 or 2 people would first
recognize the issue, and find (with the help of our system) other nearby people
who share their concerns; they would start discussing about it, both in
cyberspace and later in meat-space too. They would draft a proposal, which they
would like to discuss with a broader set of interested parties, probably
including local authorities and Civil Society Organizations. Third party
facilitation would be called, to start a public discussion, which could combine
on-line and off-line activities, and which probably would ignite some other
independent parallel discussions. An agreement would be reached to handle the
results got so far to the scrutiny of the whole city inhabitants and the local
media. Interested citizens could, with not too much effort, provide their
perspective and criticize/improve the proposal.
If, by the time 1000 people get to discuss about the issue, you have already
had a lot of work done by smaller groups, which has been performed in a
transparent, honest and mostly unpartisan way... those 1000 people would
probably not need to go back to the basics, but concentrate on finishing off
the work and expressing their adherence to the proposal.

So... sorry for this long entry, which maybe lost track of the original threads
subject. My main message is: there is no one-shot magic bullet process for
reaching consensus. Consensus, compromise and collective action are reached
through a complex process of multi-level deliberation, where distinct people
and groups contribute with different degrees of effort and compromise.
If we want to facilitate broad citizen Consensus on relevant public issues,
using online-tools and systems... we certainly need to consider the procedural
aspects and even institutional aspects of e-Participation as much as we
consider technical aspects and consensus building gadgets. Thats why our
project will try to extend the participatory design approach of FOSS projects,
to also consider the procedural and institutional dimensions that would
surround our systems operation. For this, well try to involve representatives
of all interested municipal groups (politicians, civil servants, citizens,
CSOs, local media, etc.) in the design of the system. This is a very long term
effort, but we think itll be worth.

Best regards,
Pedro (Asociacin Ciudades Kyosei, www.ckyosei.org)
PS: Since our aim is to initially operate on the Latin-American area, our
projects working language is Spanish. Sorry for that! :(