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Building consensus online From: Aldon Hynes Date: Feb 01 22:49 UTC Short link
I've been very interested in following this discussion, in light of other
things going on for me personally. I just got press credentials (as a blogger)
to cover the American Group Psychotherapy Association annual meeting in
Washington DC later this month.
Groups are powerful things. They can be used therapeutically. They can be
used to find concensus, They can be used to make disover things that
individuals might not be able to ferret out. The goals of the group, together
with the size and cohesion of the group are all important factors of what
groups can accomplish.
The online component is simply one additional factor, which depending on the
other factors may be very significant, or very insignificant.
Enough rambling thoughts for right now.
Aldon
P.S. To Miles, I don't think I'll end up making it up to Boston tomorrow after
all.
-----Original Message----- From: Pedro Prieto-Martin [mailto:] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 2:27 PM To: Subject: Re: [Consult] Building consensus online 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! :( Member profile for Pedro Prieto-Martin: http://groups.dowire.org/contacts/pedroprietomartn ----------------------------------------- Group home for Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/consult Replies go to members of Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation with all posts on this topic here: http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/5zz5ZchTgPg3wMPnuz67rc For digest version or to leave Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation, email with "digest on" or "unsubscribe" in the *subject*. Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation is hosted by Democracies Online - http://dowire.org.
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