I was in Rome last week, to hold a keynote presentation at a large government tech/innovation trade fair called ForumPA. It was a lot of fun, with a very high energy exchange between me and the audience. 18 months after my book Wikicrazia hit the bookshops, we talked in a very frank way of where the frontiers of online collaboration between citizens and institutions are, and what new and interesting problems are emerging. One is “kicking down doors”: piggybacking on innovative civil servants or elected officials to set precedents and open up new administrative channels, in order to extend the space of actions perceived as possible by administrations. Another one is the dire need for complex ecosystems of governance, with civil society acting as skunkworks of new solution that might then be adopted by institutions proper. You can find the video here (very professionally made, in Italian); the slides are above.
Category Archives: Wikicrazia
Wikicrazia reloaded: cerco storie di collaborazione cittadini-istituzioni per un e-book
Sorry, this post in Italian only. The gist of it is that I am launching a call for papers to include in the e-book edition of my book Wikicrazia. You are welcome to participate too, but the paper has to be in Italian 🙂
A un anno e mezzo dalla pubblicazione di Wikicrazia, qualcosa si è mosso. La collaborazione costruttiva, abilitata da Internet, tra cittadini e istituzioni è ancora un fatto eccezionale; ma la pattuglia degli sperimentatori, che nel 2009 e 2010 in cui scrivevo era in grado di mettere insieme pochissimi progetti, si è molto allargata, e anche tra chi non è ancora passato all’azione si sente che l’interesse è molto aumentato.
Il momento mi sembra propizio per fare di Wikicrazia un e-book. Nello spirito che ha sempre contraddistinto il libro (e, mi piace pensare, della mia attività in generale), vorrei fare un e-book collaborativo. In particolare, penso a due parti: Wikicrazia, cioè il libro uscito per Navarra Editore nel 2010; e Wikicrazia Reloaded, cioè una raccolta di saggi che raccontano esperienze di progetti in cui cittadini e istituzioni collaborano a attività di governo; dalla progettazione delle politiche al monitoraggio del territorio, con tutto quello che ci sta in mezzo. Che tu sia un rappresentante eletto, un cittadino, un funzionario pubblico, se hai una storia così da raccontare abbiamo una buona occasione per diventare coautori. Riccardo Luna, generosamente, ha accettato di scrivere la prefazione.
La cosa funziona così:
- Scrivi una storia. Concentrati sull’esperienza: racconta cosa succede, chi ha avuto l’idea, con chi si è alleato per realizzarla, quali difficoltà ha incontrato e quali sono stati i risultati. Non c’è bisogno che sia una storia di successo, possiamo imparare anche dagli errori e dalle false partenze. Una riflessione finale è ben accetta.
- 1200 parole, in italiano. Controlla bene l’ortografia, perché non ci sarà editing. Ti consiglio di fare riferimento alle guide di scrittura: la più famosa (e buffa) è Come scrivere bene di Umberto Eco, ma ce ne sono anche di più tradizionali. Consegna entro il 30 di aprile a alberto[at]cottica[punto]net.
- Non sono ammessi: asserzioni non dimostrate (“è ormai chiaro che la democrazia occidentale è in crisi irreversibile”); piagnistei (“non ce la faremo mai”), soprattutto nella variante esterofila (“A Trinidad e Tobago sì che queste cose funzionano, altroché da noi”); qualunquismo da troll (“hai voglia a fare la wikicrazia, tanto questi pensano solo alla poltrona”);  contrapposizione noi/loro (“mentre il Sindaco Casalmacchi si arroccava in un burocratismo sempre più autoreferenziale, un pugno di cittadini generosi progettava i destini del territorio sotto la guida illuminata del geometra Paladini, che aveva un cugino che era stato un anno al MIT”).
- Licenza Creative Commons BY.
- Ciascun co-autore firma il suo pezzo. Dobbiamo trovare una dicitura per tutto il lavoro. Potrebbe essere “A cura di Alberto Cottica”, ma se hai un’idea migliore ti ascolto.
- Se serve aiuto vai qui.
Una volta ricevuti i contributi, impacchetto il tutto con Wikicrazia; faccio convertire il file; e pubblico su Amazon, al costo di 3 euro al download, in creative commons. Amazon lascia all’autore il 35%, cioè un euro, cioè 75 centesimi perché mi tassano all’origine, a download. Se riusciamo a vendere 150 ebook mi ripago il costo della conversione del file. Nessuno ci guadagna niente, ma abbiamo fatto insieme il punto della situazione su questa partita. Che ne dici?
Introducing the citizen expert
I have been studying Internet-enabled collaboration between citizens and institutions for some years now. I have had the chance to explain its basics to many people from different backgrounds. There is a point that has almost everyone take issues, at least in the beginning when I say online collaboration works so well because participants are not selected by anyone. This is counterintuitive. How can an unfiltered environment perform better than one where participants are carefully chosen? And yet, that’s the way it works, thanks to the combination of large numbers (unfiltered spaces are more crowded, so they have more brainpower to throw at issues) and self-selection (people flock to spaces where the discussion is about things they are knowledgeable and passionate about). I am well aware I will have to repeat my case over and over, but as far as I am concerned the case is closed. Online collaboration between citizens and institutions works. Get used to it.
This brings a new figure to political processes: the citizen expert. All successful experiences I know have produced authoritative figures, citizens who are passionate about the discussion and bring to it contribution of astonishingly high quality. These people are typically complete unknowns: they seem to materialize from nowhere, but they become very important to the processes and take observers by surprise for the quality and integrity of the role they play. Davide Davs’s air pollution graphs in the Area C group attract a lot of attention, and they have more or less established in that space the principle that it is a good idea to back your claims with data.
All this works well online. My team and I have decided to run an experiment within Edgeryders, the project I manage at the Council of Europe: bring our citizen experts to an offline event, Our idea is this:
- take a group of citizens, NOT selected but rather self-selected.
- socialize them through an online community, oriented towards constructive discussion.
- organize a conference for them to interact with policy makers and academics.
- cast them as experts: official invitation, travel and accomodation costs covered, commitment to produce some deliverables. The message is loud and clear: you are not on the receiving end of public policy. You are a protagonist, a policy maker.
- ask them to produce proposals for reform – in our case, of European youth policies.
I am convinced that the results will be extraordinary. All the conditions are there: policy makers can explain the latitude and the limits of their mandate; academics contribute with statistical data and analysis. Citizen experts can bring to the table the “living data” of their experiences, which generalize to ideas and proposals more naturally than you may think. If there are enough of them (and there will be) they can also contribute by seeking consensus on certain points, like a large focus group. Thanks to the months spent interacting in the Edgeryders platform, our way to discuss has been washed clean of normative thinking (“the world should not be like this!”), non-demonstrated statements (“it is clear that the age of capitalism is coming to an end”) and trolling (“you are all slaves to big business anyway”). Participants have recognized each other as partners in this particular effort – the Edgeryders researchers themselves use the platform to interact with the community they are a part of – and that makes us free to spend our time at the conference actually getting things done. We did a small-scale prototype in March – a workshop, open to a few community members – and it went really well: the discussion was productive, effortless and fun. It shows even in the photos!
We believe in this solution so much to invest in a quarter of Edgeryders’s budget in the conference – i.e. in covering travel and accommodation costs for citizen experts. We should be able to cover 100 to 120 people, mostly young, converging onto Strasbourg from all over Europe on 14 and 15 June. The community is already organizing an unconference for 16-17, so as to have more time to hang out and plot out our common future. If you care about the transition of young people to an independent active life, think about putting yourself forward to be a citizen expert: on the Edgeryders blog you can find out how to get an invitation, the program and Vinay Gupta’s call to arms. Why, you might even find yourself being part of a small innovation: a new online/offline interaction format for citizens-institution collaboration!