The Great Experiment: Strengthening the Democratic Process
So – here goes – I’ve never done anything like this before, so I am a little bit nervous. This post is about a new idea that I have and I NEED your feedback, ideas, possibilities, and connections. I cannot do this without the support of others. So – please support me by posting your thoughts after you read this. I will post updates at least twice a week. Thanks in advance!
I am looking to start a new website. This website would house all local, state, and federal legislation. It would be easily searchable, contain legislative summaries, and give people the opportunity to organize around the legislation.
I believe there is a need for this because right now there is no one site that contains all of this information. This site also has the opportunity truly flatten of the democratic process. It will give people the opportunity to see all of the laws that exist and then it will provide context for those laws. The context is incredibly important here – people need to know what this legislation means to them in their daily lives. It’s true that some legislation, some of the time, means nothing in the lives of average people. There are other instances though where legislation does make a significant impact in the lives of ordinary folks. Sometimes a seemingly innocuous clause can effect the lives of millions.
I want to create a site where people can get this context, digest it, and then decide if they want to do something about it. I want to create a site that will allow ordinary people to mobilize around this information and create change. I want to create a site that brings the individuals who legislate to the same table as the people whose lives are impacted by the legislation. I want to create a dialogue that occurs both online and in person.
The assumption that underlies this entire concept is that people do not have easy access to the laws that impact their everyday existence. Beyond that – just because someone can find the legislation doesn’t mean that they will understand the way it’s written. Most people don’t understand the way in which the bills are written. Moving a step further, I believe that if legislation was easily accessible and understandable that many would be moved to action based upon what they saw; legislation is often loaded with pork projects, special kickbacks to big campaign donors, etc.
I believe that it’s time that people have this information. I also believe that it’s possible for people to have this information at their fingertips in real time. Armed with information I envision a central location where people can interact with one another, with advocacy organizations, with elected officials and their staff, and with other key stakeholders who help guide political process. I want to create a central platform where the process of democroacy occurs – in plain site – for everyone to see.
I’d like to call this project The Great Experiment because – like democracy – this process is a work in progress. It will never be complete and will always be open to the universe of possibilities. Like democracy this site will give efficacy to people – this site will give a voice to those who may have forgotten that they had one. This site is a testament to the idea that people do matter in our system – that we are stronger united than divided.
I implore you to provide me with feedback, suggestions, comments, concerns, connections, etc. I believe this information and interaction is necessary for the strengthening of our civic life and democracy.
I now officially give this process away to you – the reader. Please support this idea by acting as a guiding voice. Thank you!
I think this is a wonderful idea and a daunting task. The questions that first come to my mind are:
1) What exactly do you mean by context? How would you ensure that the context remained as close to the WIGO as possible so as to prevent any bias or partisanship from entering the conversation? (I’m assuming that you want this to serve as a non-partisan source of information)
2) Not all context to legislation (ie impacts of seemingly innocuous clauses, unintended consequences) is evident until months, years, even decades after the fact. How would you go about providing context for bills and legislation that have not yet had time for the impacts (intended or otherwise) to become known?
3) How do you define local? Would you go beyond state legislation to cover all policy and legislation in every county, city, town, village…?
4)Are there any legal implications? Lexis Nexis provides some of this for a fee, as does CQ and countless other state and local services. Could this infringe on their business in some way that may prevent you from doing it?
5) On that note, do these organizations charge a fee because of the costly nature of collecting and disseminating this material? What would the funding structure look like for this endeavor?
Just some food for thought. Love the idea and the concept and look forward to talking through it and developing it more.
I promise to attend more to this later. My first thoughts (the 30 second version): do you mean legislation for ALL localities in ALL states? Could you start with a smaller geographic region, then build? Who is going to update this? Is it a for-profit venture? If so, how will you make money? If not, how will you fund it?
I agree with the other two posters that this is a great idea for a website. It’s in the same vain as the google for government act, sponsered by then Sen. Obama to have a website that houses all federal spending. I think you could sell advertisement on the site to organizations and PACs that moblize people in opposition to certain pieces of legislation. KB has some good questions though. How will it be funded? Who is updating it? and I think the most important question, who is going to be translating the various government bills into every day language. A translator could just as easily put his/her own spin when giving a write up on a bill. You would have to assure your readers that personality won’t get in the way of fact. I would suggest having a progressive and a conservative writer each post a write up or have a link to a progressive thread and a conservative thread so people can see how the different movements digest the legislation. Finally, I like the title, The Great Experiment, but I think you should title it The Unfinished Experiment. Like the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill is unfinished, so is the idea of embarking on a more perfect union. Democracy, by definition, must always evolve.
Hey Ross,
Great idea. As the CEO of a web company, I would do the 8 Principles of Purpose from an organizational standpoint so that you are clear on what makes your site different from:
politics.com
freedomspeaks.com
createdebate.com
skewz.com
GrowVotes.org
ameritocracy.com
Here’s Google’s 8Ps in list form:
Where are we?
Principle: Do no evil, Perpetual beta
Passion: computer science, internet, organizing information
Problem: access to information and information explosion/overload
People & Place: the world
Where are we trying to go?
Picture: world’s largest search engine
Pioneer: Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc
Positioning: most accurate and fastest search engine
Possibility: organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible
and useful
Here it is in paragraph form:
Google’s purpose (which they call mission) is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (add footnote) has and has created significant value for the millions of people all over the world as they seek to solve the problem of information explosion. Built on the principle “Do no evil”, Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s passion for computer science led to a discovery at Stanford that allowed them to picture the possibility of the world’s largest search engine, even after pioneers like Yahoo and Alta Vista by positioning themselves as the most accurate and fastest search engine to date.
Once you’re clear on this, everything your actions will be aligned and you will create real value for people all over the world.
Thank you for being you.
I think this is a great idea in theory- I wonder about the practicality of implementing it on such a large scale, how useful a central hub of that nature would be to the general person and the implications of providing context to legislation. I would also challenge you to think about how you can translate the passive activity of gathering information into actions that people take on that information. It’s the active part that constitutes participating in a democracy, not just knowing.
A state example: The PA general assembly puts every bill online that goes through the house and senate in a way that’s searchable and trackable by the general public. YOu can look up a bill by topic, date or number and know exactly where it is in the legislative process and whether or not it’s been enacted. Here is the link to the search engine: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/session.cfm#
Something similar to this is my interpretation of your idea. Other states may have something similar that you could easily connect with one interface in order to build a massive search engine. However, if the states don’t, what could be your capacity to figure out how to make it happen 49 other times? And that’s only on the state level…
A local example: I’m doing a ton of research on education policies in PA and in Pittsburgh and I contacted the school board’s solicitor to find out where I could have access to either a hard copy or digital version of local school board policies, and he said that it didn’t exist in one place. Therefore, if local educaiton policy were to be added to a database, it would involve someone gathering all the information from the solicitor, organizing it, posting it in a way that’s digitally searchable and updating it regularly. That’s a lot of work and it’s only for one locality, there are 501 school districts in PA.
As someone who would want to take action on legislation, I only care about the policies on my city, state or federal level. I have no reason to generally search about state legislation in Iowa, for example, unless it was for research on a specific topic and in that case, I would be a law student or researcher that has access to the databases that cost money.
I think that providing context is really a person giving their interpretation of the legislation and I would have a hard time supporting that part of the idea. Each person’s interpretation of something is unique and there’d be no way to really have objective context.
Like I said, I love the idea, but it may make more sense to think about the scale in which you’d want to start. Also keep in mind the politics of transparency and how you would handle the pushback. PA operates under a Sunshine Law…maybe there’s a connection to be made to that.
wow…this ended up being long…but it’s actually something I’m dealing with right now in terms of involving communities in education policy, so I would definitely be willing to talk more with you about it if you’d like..now I’m going back to work….
My concerns and feedback relating to “The Great Experiment” have been covered.
Something provocative: you sent an email to me (and others) asking for input on your idea. Within minutes, you have the input and expertise from your ‘network’ that covers market analysis, feasibility, business planning, risk, replication, etc.
This is intriguing and something I’m interested in exploring…
Feel free to be in touch: keithsclark@gmail.com
Ross,
I have been sitting here thinking about what I can add to this conversation without repeating the great comments already here. One question I have is who does this most directly benefit? I know that you are looking to enhance the democratic process by giving access to the legislation which shapes parts of our lives, but I wonder who is looking at your site.
One possibility: The main user is the citizen. We as citizens can better understand what is happening in government and how it will affect our lives. We could perhaps lobby a representative to support or object to a bill. This conversation happens mostly after a bill is in play.
The other side: Legislators’ and there staffs are the primary users. Looking to the citizens to write legislation. Perhaps a message board exists for a certain congressional district where representative and citizen can converse on an issue. This is, I think, the chance to make democracy more interactive.
I certainly think that this is a great idea. I think that scale will be very important to consider. There are advantages to starting small and proving the value of a project like this. There are also advantages to starting large and really making a splash.
Don’t be afraid to change as you go. It’s important to listen to the signs of the world conspiring in your favor (as we learned in the Alchemist) to reach maximum impact.
I think that “The Great Experiment” is a good idea, but it also seems like it would require a somewhat large project in order to get it running.
First I suggest that you specify as much as possible what you want out of a site like this. You need to ask yourself how you will go about databasing and organizing the legislation. You mentioned that you want to include ‘all’ legislation, that is quite a bit of information and would require time and effort putting it together. You would either want to have a firm understanding of HTML code and website development or hire someone to do that for you, which will require money.
How would you want to go about organizing an online dialogue? There are several different organizational models for this. You could use something similar to this website with a comments section (which would be easier), or something a little more complex such as a forum model (ex. http://www.worldaffairsboard.com).
When planning this, make sure you cover the main knowledge areas (scope, quality, time, and cost) Have a definitive plan of what you want and get expert advise from someone who is familiar with web-site development. Rackspace Managed Hosting (www.rackspace.com) also specializes in website development, hosting, and consulting. It wouldn’t hurt to talk w/them to get an idea on what will be needed to develop something of this size, even if you don’t want to use them to develop it.
My main piece of advice is to identify your audience–and get some idea of what it’s hard edges are. It seems as though you want to build the ultimate democracy forum, and that your audience might be everyone. However, in order to get this started, I think that have to get a feel for the hard edges and texture of who will use the site.
Then find someone to build a really, really simplified beta for you and test the heck out of this idea with your identified audience. It’s possible to get very high-falutin’ in your aspirations before you build anything–”I want to create a central platform where the process of democroacy occurs – in plain site – for everyone to see”. You ought to get concrete as rapidly as possible and the best way to do that is to test with your audience.
Finally, I think that you ought to pitch this directly to OpenCongress and the Participatory Politics Foundation and see what they say. I see no tangible difference in mission and I wonder if they are already planning to do something along these lines (my hunch is no). But they have the capacity and they have a suite of products that line up nicely with this.
Good stuff!
Zach
Ross,
The idea is a great one. A lot of my thoughts were already addressed above but I did have two thoughts/questions.
1. Who is updating the site? Is it a few people in each state? Is it the legislator who wrote the bill? There are advantages and troubles with each but it is something to think about. Also, as Jonathan mentioned above, a concern (if you are not having the author of the bill update it) would be on bias. It is hard to manage that bias even if one is trying to be impartial. Two ways to potentially solve this problem. First, have the author or his/her staff write the summary thus the bias is clear and people will know that going in. Second would be to “flag” particular clauses in the legislation that are relevant to every day life. This works because than individuals don’t have to go all the way through a bill they can just skip to what is important to their everyday lives.
2. As a few people have mentioned above, who is your main audience? Is it for legislators and their staffs to share ideas and discuss potential ways of dealing with problems or is it for citizens to see what laws are being passed and how it effects them?
I am all for finding gaps and filling them. Regarding the part of the idea that it would be great to have all legislation in one place – sounds great and sounds like it would require a lot of research.
(Q): Do state/local governments already have what you are talking about on their site? Would this new site be a link to all other sites that currently do this in their own region? If this is the case, then updating, etc… would just be a matter of making sure links are set appropriately on the site.
You’re very good at talking to everyone related to anything you’re interested in so I’d figure out from legislators, their aides, lawyers, law students, students in general, activists, etc… whether they’d go to this site and what they would look for.
I’d “set the context” for things people said they wanted to digest better. There could be a system where people who want a better understanding of something let the site know through an “e-mail to the editor” who then provided analysis on whatever it is people want to understand.
Ross,
I think that this is a great idea, and I also think that the statement you made is more of a statement of possibilities and intention for how the site will be used than an explanation of it. It remains unclear how you will get there. Many of the questions that people have asked in the other posts will help you to flesh out your idea further, so I will not reask them. Questions I have to add are:
1. When you say all the legislation, do you mean everything currently on the books or all proposed legislation. If you truly mean everything, are there unintended implications. For instance, people may decide that they want to repeal something already in existence.
2. Sometimes legislation is written for a very specific constituency for a very specific situation. How will the site ensure that this context is conveyed, especially when those interpreting the legislation may not understand this context.
I am intrigued by this idea and I would love to see a more detailed explanation of what exactly the website will include. At that point I will offer more feedback.
Ross,
Congratulations on thinking big and in possibilities. As someone who has done legislative research in many levels (as a legislative aid in the NY state assembly and as a policy student) I have had many moments of frustration with the process. So I can see how a site like this can be quite helpful. I do agree that the language in which legislation is written can be very confusing and difficult to understand. I would be interested in learning more as this idea develops.
I do not have anything else to add to the conversation since everyone else has done a great job in providing you with thoughtful feedback.
Keep me posted!