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In 2015 Ada Colau, an activist with no experience in government, became mayor of Barcelona. She called for a democratic revolution, and for the last two years city hall, working with civic-minded coders and cryptographers, has been designing the technological tools to make it happen.
Their efforts have centred on two things. The first is opening up governance through participatory processes and greater transparency. And the second is redefining the smart city to ensure that it serves its citizens, rather than the other way around.
The group started by creating a digital participatory platform, Decidim ("We Decide", in Catalan). Now the public can participate directly in government as they would on social media, by suggesting ideas, debating them, and voting with their thumbs. Decidim taps into the potential of social networks: the information spreading on Twitter, or the relationships on Facebook. All of these apply to politics — and Decidim seeks to channel them, while guaranteeing personal privacy and public transparency in a way these platforms don't.
"We are experimenting with a hybrid of online and offline participatory democracy," says Francesca Bria, Barcelona's Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer. "We used Decidim to create the government agenda — over 70 per cent of the proposals come directly from citizens. Over 40,000 citizens proposed these policies. And many more citizens were engaged in offline collective assemblies and consultations."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday May 22 2018, @01:31PM (2 children)
That was my thought as well, but for a slightly different reason: Institutionalising mob rule may not be the best idea in the long run. Initially it's fine when the main contributors are idealists, but once the crazies realise they can flood the system to push their pet agendas it could turn to crap very quickly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @08:54PM
Agree. It might end up looking like the "two party" system in the US.
I wouldn't wish that hell on anybody.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday May 22 2018, @10:28PM
Mob rule would indeed be bad, as the French Revolution shows, but this looks more like the public making proposals and their representatives making the actual decisions.
I could be wrong of course and it might degenerate into the sort of unpleasantness they have had recently in their dealings with Madrid, but on the face of it this looks like a Good Thing™.