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
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