• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

PRESSLED

Your Leading News Source

PRESSLED
Your Leading News Source

  • Home
  • BUSINESS
  • MONEY
  • POLITICS
  • REAL ESTATE
  • US
  • Meet the Reporters
  • About/Contact

Tech tools help deepen citizen input in drafting laws

May 16, 2021 by Staff Reporter

In March, New Jersey’s Department of Education in the United States launched a citizen engagement process asking students, teachers and parents to vote on ideas for changes that officials should consider as the state reopens its schools after the pandemic closed classrooms for a year.

The project, managed by The Governance Lab at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, is part of a month-long initiative that uses an online survey tool called All Our Ideas to help state education officials prioritise policy making based on ideas solicited from those who are directly affected by the policies.

Among the thousands of votes cast for various ideas nationwide, teachers and parents backed changes that would teach more problem-solving skills to kids.

But students backed a different idea as the most important: making sure that kids have social and emotional skills, as well as “self-awareness and empathy”.

A government body soliciting ideas from those who are directly affected, via online technology, is one small example of greater citizen participation in governance that advocates hope can grow at both state and federal levels.

Although some US states are taking small steps toward engaging their citizens more through technology, democracies such as Taiwan and Brazil are making greater strides in using technology to include citizens in drafting national legislation that helps break the traditional monopoly on the process by powerful vested interests.

“There are people who now have access and want to be ‘in the room where it happens’ and who don’t want other people to have access,” said Beth Simone Noveck, director of The Governance Lab, which advocates using tech tools to broaden the democratic process around the world.

“That’s why it’s important to create multiplicity of avenues for participation”, so average citizens who are directly affected by rules and laws can have an equal footing with the powerful, said Noveck.

Platforms based on artificial intelligence available today can aid in crowdsourcing by helping gather, categorise and summarise opinions from large audiences, as well as extract new information to assist policymakers, Noveck said.

Turning point for Taiwan

Taiwan has taken crowdsourcing legislative ideas to a new height.

Using a variety of open-source engagement and consultation tools that are collectively known as the vTaiwan process, government ministries, elected representatives, experts, civil society groups, businesses and ordinary citizens come together to produce legislation.

The need for an open consultation process stemmed from the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, when groups of students and others occupied the Taiwanese parliament to protest the fast-tracking of a trade agreement with China with little public review.

The Sunflower Student Movement, which occupied the parliament building in Taipei, Taiwan in 2014, led to the island adopting citizen input votes through mobile phone tech. — TNS

After the country’s parliament acceded to the demands, the “consensus opinion was that instead of people having to occupy the parliament every time there’s a controversial, emergent issue, it might actually work better if we have a consultation mechanism in the very beginning of the issue rather than at the end”, said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister.

The vTaiwan process focuses mostly on digital economy issues and has addressed 26 different legislative proposals, with 80% resulting in legislation or government action, according to the project’s website.

In one well-known case from 2016, the vTaiwan process was used to determine how to regulate Uber.

During a four-week process, as many as 4,000 people participated in consultations using Polis, a platform based on machine learning that gathers and analyses opinions from a large number of participants.

Taiwan’s government then ratified into legislation the four broad consensus items that emerged from the consultation process.

Non-digital-economy issues, such as environmental issues and marriage equality, are handled in Join, a process similar to vTaiwan that is managed by the country’s public service officials, Tang said.

To ensure that only Taiwanese citizens participate in the process, users must have a SIM card issued by one of the five telecom companies in the country and registered users get a confirmation code sent to their phone, she said.

“There’s actually a surprisingly high amount of difficulty in obtaining thousands of SIM cards” for anyone trying to impersonate or interfere in the process, she said.

All the open-source software platforms are run on government-operated Cloud infrastructure and tested for cyber weakness, she said.

The case of Brazil

At about the same time that Taiwan’s Sunflower movement was unfolding, in Brazil then-President Dilma Rousseff signed into law the country’s Internet bill of rights in April 2014.

The bill was drafted and refined through a consultative process that included not only legal and technical experts but average citizens as well, said Debora Albu, programme coordinator at Brazil’s Institute for Technology and Society of Rio, also known as ITS.

The institute was involved in designing the platform for seeking public participation, Albu said.

“From then onwards, we wanted to continue developing projects that incorporated this idea of collective intelligence built into the development of legislation or public policies,” Albu said.

In 2015, ITS launched a project called Mudamos, which initially involved a web platform that hosted debates on public policy issues, and later an app that Brazilians can use to propose legislation and collect signatures from fellow citizens to back their proposals.

While Brazil’s constitution allows its citizens to propose legislation at the local, state and even federal level, and draw support by gathering signatures, the right has remained largely unused because the task of collecting and verifying signatures has been daunting in the absence of technology, Albu said.

Brazilian citizens can download the Mudamos app on their smartphones and register with their electoral identification number, name and address, which are verified with the country’s electoral body.

The mobile app then issues a cryptographic key, half of which is stored on the mobile phone; the other is kept with Mudamos and used to verify a signature as authentic.

Since its launch in 2017, the app has been downloaded 800,000 times and as many as 90 legislative proposals at the local, state and federal levels are in various stages of gathering signatures, Albu said.

A federal bill needs 1.5 million signatures to be considered by the country’s National Congress, she added.

Although Brazil and Taiwan share some commonalities in citizen participation, Brazilians have problems with unequal access to technology that limits citizens’ participation, whereas Taiwan, a wealthy but small island, provides all its citizens with unparalleled access to high-speed broadband.

“Broadband is a human right” in Taiwan, Tang said.

“There’s no broadband inequality. Even at the very top of Taiwan, almost 4km high, you’re guaranteed to have that broadband connection.

“Brazil faces regional discrepancies in Internet access, with richer regions in the south and southeast having greater connectivity, whereas areas in the north and northeast, bordering the Amazon rainforest, have poor Internet access, which limits participation,” Albu said.

The country also has to tackle the challenge of training public officials about the utility of tech tools in their decision-making, said Marco Konopacki, a senior adviser for public participation in the city of Niteroi.

While Brazil’s constitution calls for citizen participation, the country hasn’t offered adequate training programmes to build a participatory culture, Konopacki said.

To be effective, “digital tools have to be connected to a participatory culture” in which public officials know how to involve citizens in the legislative and rule-making process, Konopacki said. – CQ-Roll Call/Tribune News Service

Originally Appeared Here

Filed Under: TECH/SCIENCE

Primary Sidebar

More to See

Former Georgia Tech Kicker Harrison Butker Sends Kansas City To The Super Bowl

Harrison Butker is going to be playing for another Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs.Butker nailed the game-winning field goal to send the Chiefs … [Read More...] about Former Georgia Tech Kicker Harrison Butker Sends Kansas City To The Super Bowl

Stock Market Opening News Today

Sensex, Nifty Open: आज अडानी ग्रुप शेयरों में बिकवाली जारी है. वहीं बैंक और फाइनेंशियल सेक्‍टर के हैवीवेट शेयरों ने भी बाजार को कमजोर किया है. Sensex, … [Read More...] about Stock Market Opening News Today

Henry Bott Now President of Swire Properties US

One of Hong Kong’s best known conglomerates leads this week’s set of personnel updates on Mingtiandi as Hong Kong’s John Swire and Sons announces new … [Read More...] about Henry Bott Now President of Swire Properties US

Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | About/ Contact
Copyright © 2023 · PRESSLED · As Amazon Associates we earn commissions from qualifying purchases · Log in

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
Cookie SettingsAccept All
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT