Introduction

If this is the first time you are using a wiki site please read First-Time-Wiki page. You can go straight to proposal-draft.

My Society issued a call for proposals on 6th August. Deadline for applying is 15th September. This wiki is an attempt to collectively draft a proposal.

Most My Society projects are about citizens putting pressure on MPs and state employees, by opening the data about their activities (TheyWorkForYou, What Do They Know), and demanding something from them (WriteToThem, FixMyStreet, No 10 Petitions). Which is all fine, we need to do that as well. Open documents and data are pre-requisite for open process participation.

The key principles of software and networking communities which have created most of the Internet, the Web and their tools are:

  • volunteer driven
  • open processes - participation, discussions, and final results (source) are all open
  • diversity - multiple projects/solutions to the same problems
  • rough consensus decision making - voting only when necessary
  • implementation work - respect for skill and for contributing to tasks and not just talking about it

Although My Society is a great example of use of on-line tools for political participation, current generation of MySociety projects is focused only on some of the above principles.

This proposal is based on the premise that we can be more productive in furthering MySociety goals by renewing the approach, using the above, improved and extended, principles and methodology. I call it Open Process, or The Internet Model (first developed here).

In short, i believe that My Society tools could be more productive (and closer to the spirit of software and networking communities) in enabling citizen participation in state organizations, their tasks and projects, by refocusing on open-process collaboration/cooperation of citizens and state employees.

Hence, the name of this proposal: We-Work-Together. The call for participation will be issued in various forums inviting current state employees and software/networking hackers to work together on this proposal.

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