Who makes laws? In most of the democratic world, that’s the sole preserve of elected governments. But in Finland, technology is making democracy significantly more direct.

Earlier this year, the Finnish government enabled something called a “citizens’ initiative”, through which registered voters can come up with new laws – if they can get 50,000 of their fellow citizens to back them up within six months, then the Eduskunta (the Finnish parliament) is forced to vote on the proposal (adapted from an article by David Meyer).

The Open Ministry (Avoin ministeriö) is about crowdsourcing legislation, deliberative and participatory democracy and citizens initiatives. It is a non-profit organization based in Helsinki, Finland.

Open Ministry helps citizens and NGO's with national citizens' initiatives, EU citizens initiatives and developing the online services for collaborating, sharing and signing the initiatives.

See the Open Ministry website

A book is also available on this innovative approach:

January 1, 2013 - Program on Liberation Technology News

Crowdsourcing for Democracy: New Era in Policy-Making

By Tanja Aitamurto

 

Outside of the traditional organization, participatory, user-centric approaches are gaining prominence in solving problems. Among these approaches is the innovation Lab, or change Lab, a creative environment that employs proven and repeatable protocols to seek disruptive, potentially systems-tipping solutions. 

The Canadian organisation MaRs has looked upon why and how the “change Labs” are gaining prominence in solving wicked problems. MindLab is used as case in the report available here: http://www.mind-lab.dk/assets/718/Torjman_MaRSReport-Labs-designing-the-future_2012.pdf

MindLab http://www.mind-lab.dk/en
MindLab is a cross-ministerial innovation unit which involves citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society. We are also a physical space – a neutral zone for inspiring creativity, innovation and collaboration.

At heart, innovation labs are designed to foster collaboration. By this we mean they tend to be established as platforms where multiple stakeholders can engage in interaction, dialogue, and development activities. More "collaborative‟ or "joined-up‟ government has long been a mantra within public management thinking (Mulgan, 2009; Bason, 2010; Torfing and Sørensen, 2011). Indeed, few politicians run for election on a platform of not wanting to create more coherent and holistic services for citizens. However, how to enable more collaborative approaches to policy and service design within a politically governed, bureaucratic environment has often seemed elusive. Even novel e-government solutions have often been trapped in the silo mentality of public organisations, thus not harvesting their full potential. With innovation labs, the hope is that the establishment of dedicated, cross-cutting organisational structures can strike a blow at vested interests, power plays, and organisational infighting. Labs do so by being permanent structures with a mission to temporarily unfreeze organisational embedded practices.

In this paper (see link below), the history of MindLab – one of the world‟s first public sector innovation labs – is told as an example of how one might strengthen innovation in the public sector through interaction and mutual learning, and how the need for innovation support changes as experience and learning increases and relations are strengthened between the stakeholders. This is not a happy-end fairytale, although several of the ingredients are present: The urge to act and change the public sector, the hero who knows of innovation, the many opponents and barriers and few friendly helpers. Instead it might be a never-ending story… and it begins in the dawn of the new millennium.

The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal,
Volume 17(1), 2012, article 4.  http://t.co/vIUHwSWn 
Powering Collaborative Policy Innovation: Can Innovation Labs Help?
Helle Vibeke Carstensen & Christian Bason Helle Vibeke Carstensen Director of Innovation Ministry of Taxation
Nicolai Eigtveds Gade 28, DK-1402 Copenhagen Denmark
Christian Bason Director of Innovation MindLab Slotsholmsgade 12, DK-1216 Copenhagen Denmark

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Ted.com is an incredible online resource!  For example, you can view an entire series of presentations on The Rise of Collaboration.
Yochai Benkler dubs it 'the wealth of networks." Howard Rheingold's term is "smart mobs." It's the idea of technology-enabled collaboration … and it's making us all smarter.
The open-source movement embodies this spirit of collaboration. Jimmy Wales tells the story of perhaps the movement's most famous example, Wikipedia -- while Richard Baraniuk envisions a free global education system to which thousands of teachers could contribute. Charles Leadbeater gives examples of collaborative innovation that predate the Web. And 2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair wants to shelter the world -- by providing an online platform for open-source architecture.
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
Deborah Gordon shows us the inspiration for all this: the desert anthill.

This is the original, slightly longer version of my article in today's Times Colonist Newspaper on collaborative democracy.


When Democracy Falters Who You Gonna’ Call??
Public anger and resentment is growing worldwide against the political elite.  Politicians and corporate leaders have been unable to resolve global economic crises and spreading unemployment.  Hundreds of billions in public tax dollars continue to pour into private banks and corporate bailouts.  Billions more go into questionable military adventures with only minority public support.
Many people are questioning whether democracy as-we-know-it is up to dealing with these modern day challenges.  There’s a creeping malaise in Western liberal democracies. The hyper-partisan politics of today is creating a party-focused system with politicians consistently putting the interests of their parties ahead of the interests of their constituents and the public trust.
Consider the disrepute the BC Liberals have engineered for themselves with their shady HST tactics and BC rail cover-up.   Look at the recent shenanigans by the unelected Senate as they killed Bill C-311 in a surprise vote without debate; a move that many Canadians consider an affront to democracy.
Fortunately, wiser forms of democracy are beginning to emerge, providing citizens with meaningful opportunities to participate in political decision-making.  For example, the government of Iceland has initiated a constitutional assembly that is considering suggestions put forward by 1,000 randomly chosen citizens.  The expectation is that the assembly will radically alter the current contract between citizen and state.

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