Need brainstorming help with the design of a collaborative non-profit website that lets people participate in government

[jorg11]

Good to see this site. There aren't many active Politics related forums that I could find. I'm working on a non-profit website that would help people work on problems related to government and leadership and also products and services. Just like how anyone can create a Reddit community for any topic, this website would allow anyone to create a Task-management type tool for any project or topic but it would be much more than just a discussion forum. For example anyone could initiate an open-source community-owned Taxi app project where people could give Ideas, submit Issues, set long term Objectives and complete Tasks to achieve progress in all those other 3 components (see design mock-up here: https://postimg.cc/75zq0SYD). People who contribute the most to the project would be kept track of and recognized. This same platform would be used for all the work that our governments are supposed to do for example improve human rights, education, crime, protect the environment, maintain international relations and work on laws and bills etc. People would develop a track record of their activity that shows others what they're most passionate and skilled about and do all this in a non-partisan cooperative way (that's the theory at least). This would let us see who would be a good candidate to become an effective political leader or who our best-performing leaders are. Of course every system has its weaknesses and the website needs to have more complex functionality than what I've described here but it will be a work-in-progress and its an initial attempt to create a system where people's past activity in an area is used to judge how good a leader they are instead of promises made or the party they belong to. Its the equivalent of going to a good car mechanic because of all the good reviews they've had in the past.

That mockup I linked before is a reasonable attempt for the design of a platform that would work for products and services but I'm not completely sure about how a government/leadership platform would work so I'm coming here for feedback about the functionality of such a website. Lets pick a topic, say Education. We would definitely have Issues, Ideas, Objectives and Tasks (call them IIOT) which could all be wiki-editable (anyone can edit them). We would also have a dedicated wiki for documentation and a Discussion forum as well but the IIOT components would be the core components of the website. We would also have Bills (for laws) and Treaties (for international relations) and these two components would also be wiki editable. There would be a process for approving and finalizing these things and then they would be ready for politicians to take action on and get implemented in official form. This is where I need feedback. Suppose there's a website where people work together to solve problems relating to government. Wat would you like to see in such a website? How do you envision it would work? What features would it have in addition to the above? Glad to answer any questions to help you understand what I'm thinking of. Thanks all.

[TheVat]

14 hours ago, jorg11 said:

There would be a process for approving and finalizing these things and then they would be ready for politicians to take action on and get implemented in official form. This is where I need feedback. Suppose there's a website where people work together to solve problems relating to government. Wat would you like to see in such a website? How do you envision it would work? What features would it have in addition to the above? Glad to answer any questions to help you understand what I'm thinking of. Thanks all.

Not sure how you would bridge the gap between some people on the web crafting legislation and inducing any politicians (i.e. legislators) to use that as a model for actual bill proposals.  We don't really have direct democracy here in the USA, and politicians tend to listen to big money donors and lobbyists because they know where their bread is buttered in our rather plutocratic system.  You might get farther with, instead, promoting public awareness and GOTV (Get Out The Vote) on particular issues.  For example, reproductive rights people organized pretty well and helped stymie the "Red Wave" that was originally predicted to flip over forty seats in the US House of Representatives, and several seats in the Senate.  Most people don't think about legislation so much as they do "hot button" issues that they are emotionally engaged with.  

[jorg11]

@TheVat thanks for reading my post! You're right, it would be hard to get our existing politicians to take anything like this seriously. The primary and immediate goal of the website is not to design something that would cause our existing politicians to take it seriously (we know that is very hard to achieve, especially for a new website anyway) but to think of the final outcome, the final vision of what a new system should work like say 100 years from now (in a perfect world), think of the various possibilities and then work backwards from there and see what small steps we citizens can take today and in the near future towards achieving that final vision. That system can also try to resolve the problems of today's systems for example reward people of opposing political views for working together on shared problems and this way we reduce partisanship (redirect our politicians' energies from fighting against each other all the time to solving our problems). Reducing partisanship is just one aspect of a good political system (I believe it can be done). There are many others.

So the vision I'm thinking of is where people have carefully worked on the bills they'd like to see passed and assign priorities to each of them and new politicians or the ones trying to enter the system would maybe take a look at what people have worked on and promise to get those bills passed. Another way of looking at this is, if someone in the civilian population has worked on the website and developed a history of activity on the website, they would be a good candidate to become an elected leader. Or I'm thinking of a future where everyone including citizens and leaders use this website in the way we want.

Its clear to be that creating bills collaboratively is a function that should be on the website (but its not just that; there would be many complex controls on the website that would make sure such a function would work successfully; I have not yet defined that whole system but I know the general idea of creating bills collaboratively is worthy of looking into). I made this post to see if anyone had any ideas on what else other than Bills and Treaties and the IIOT objects I mentioned could be handled on such a website. I'm out of ideas at the moment (I do have another component I want to add, a Decision Making tool which will also be collaborative but things like that is what I'm trying to think of).

So basically yea this is like looking a 100 years into the future, imagining we have new government systems that are far more efficient and have a lot of good intentioned, dedicated, skilled, experienced people in our governments and how the public would interact with such a system and what features it would have. Also this system wouldn't be designed for the US, it would or should work for any country. Maybe there would be some location specific variables that definitely have to be added. What this system would be in the beginning might not be perfect and work for every situation but people would give suggestions on how to improve it.

Edited February 10, 2023 by jorg11