The UK government can stop looking for someone to deliver their bill petitions platform, then.
I especially like the safeguards to move proposals towards quality. -t On 23/06/11 18:00, Francis Irving wrote: > I just met Kristofs Blaus, who spent a year researching petition / > online initiative projects across the world. i.e. things where > citizens propose and vote on new laws. > > He launched ManaBalss.lv (Eurosay.com) in Latvia two weeks ago. > > Already two laws are going into force entirely because of the site. > > > Six things you ought to know about it: > > 1. 2 days after launch, the president of Latvia promoted an initiative > on the site because 20,000 people had signed it. It is to open the > owners of offshore companies. Within 1 week of launch (i.e. last > week!) it was passed in to law. > http://eurosay.com/atveram-of-orus/show > You can watch for future ones being signed into law on this page: > http://eurosay.com/initiatives/signed > (What self respecting e-democracy site doesn't have a specific, > high profile page, just showing things it has got passed into law!) > > 2. Within 2 weeks, a second initiative got enough support that both > major groups in Parliament now support it (it'll become law after the > recess in September). It's a meta-law - it makes the platform itself > mandatory, so if any petition gets 10,000 authorised signatures, then > the creator gets 5 minutes in Parliament to present it. > http://eurosay.com/atveram-saeimu-/show > > 3. There is a workflow process for making sure the initiatives that > get through are sensible (rather than tabloidy stuff that tends to be > popular on the UK's no. 10 petition site) > > i. You write an original draft > ii. Comments by skilled volunteers tell you what is wrong with it. > iii. You can fix it up. > iv. Then you gather support. You get a URL. The initiative doesn't > appear in an index on the site, you have to promote it yourself. > v. When you get 100 people (they're going to up it to 1000 due > to popularity) > vi. Some real volunteer lawyers make it into a proper, viable > legal text in a PDF on the initiative page. > vii. It goes on the public site, where large numbers of people can back > it. > > 4. That process ensures that: > - It is a real proposal rather than aspirational > - It can regulated by legislation > - Technical details, such as if it requies a constitutional change it > is written in the right form > > 5. It's social. The GroupOn/PledgeBank nature of gathering support, > and then later the petition nature of getting people to back > finalised initiatives, both encourage spread. It links to your > Facebook/Twitter so the initiatives can have a montage > > 6. To ensure it can't be gamed, you authenticate yourself to the site > using your online bank account (via your social security numebr). It > launched (undemocratically!) with just one bank, but the others were > then deseparate to be added. > > 7. The site is now wildly popular. It trends all the time on Latvian > Twitter. Politicians fall over themselves to back it. The media love > it, as articles they publish about it get traffic from the site. > > > An article in English about it, but rare. Nobody has heard of this > thing yet. Except you for being smart enough to be on this list ;) > http://bnn-news.com/latvia%E2%80%99s-society-enormous-power-30587 > > Notably the two people who made it are businessmen rather than > programmers. The coding was done by staff at Kristofs's company. > > Kristofs Blaus - business strategy, inventing new products > Jānis Erts - marketing (he made this fake metorite > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8326483.stm) > > > Obviously, the above formulae is easy to critique in the UK. But I'm > not really interested in that kind of stop energy. > > What is extraordinary is that the right combination done in the right > way can be wildly successful. That is almost certainly true here. > > > If anyone on the list wants to help Kristofs do that, please email > me privately. > > Francis > > _______________________________________________ > developers-public mailing list > [email protected] > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > Unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/timothy.green%40gmail.com _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
