₳GOV: Policy Registry

The challenge

Today, public institutions like municipalities, political parties, NGOs and government ministries wishing to involve the public in their policy shaping and decision-making, often use social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. The result is an overflow of comments, ideas, and opinions that produce too much noise.

Our Solution

Consenz is a tool that gives these institutions a way to address large crowds, get their advice, and listen to their ideas without being overwhelmed with noise. It does this by focusing the discussion on one document that has been edited by all users, in a democratic manner. The users can vote for alternative text suggestions, comment on them, and publish suggestions of their own. The process is based on an automatic algorithm that calculates the level of consensus that the document as a whole achieved during the discussion.

Consenz is designed to

• Increase democratic values in the daily work of the political system and other organizations
• Amplify the voice of communities from different socioeconomic backgrounds in policy shaping that impacts their life
• Give a powerful collaborative tool to civic society organizations

Consenz has been used in public participation processes by municipalities and NGOs in Israel, and by doing so helped to create the processes of decision making to be more efficient, more transparent, while widening the circle of citizens that choose to take part in them.

Our solution offers a simple and intuitive application that gives users a new way to express their views on matters that impact their lives, and gives policy shaping institutions a new way to hear the public and respond to them.

The Project Status

Since 2018 we have been building a prototype of Consenz (until lately it was available only in Hebrew) and in 2020-2021 we have completed a proof-of-concept phase. The app prototype has been used by diverse groups for different purposes in Israel, among them:

• Schools' teams used Consenz to create teaching guidelines during the covid19 restrictions.
• Unorganized protest movements used Consenz to create demands lists.
• Environmental organizations and activists used it to collaborate with government and municipality workers to create plans for dealing with the climate crisis.

In order to provide this tool for the use of communities and governmental agencies such as  municipalities and other of the purpose of public participation in decision making, we plan to:

• Reach out for officials and public service workers and get them to use our tool for better engagement with the public they represent 
• Involve NGOs and social movements that need better ways to communicate with the public and with the decision makers
• Enable support of different languages in the platform

Cost breakdown:

• Build a landing page and web site that will address the relevant audience: 1,600 USD
• Create videos to explain the needs that consenz answer and how it does it: 1,800 USD
• Adjust the platform for different languages and translation: 7,000 USD
• Design and Implement necessary improvements at the UI/UX: 12,000 USD
• Manage content - 6,000 USD 

Total: 27,400 USD

KPI:

Our main goal is to provide Consenz to the small governmental agencies around the world. We have already been contacted from some potential costumers as Tel Aviv municipality , , and we hope to start onboarding them as soon as we finish developing and testing the MVP version of Consenz.

Success metrics will includes number of agencies using Consenz platform, and number of active users registered and returning.

Targets for 3 months after MVP lunch:

• At least 3 paying agencies/customers
• With > 1,000 active user

Targets for 6 months after MVP lunch:

• At least 10 paying agencies/customer
• With > 5,000 active users

The Team:

Consenz is partner of ADAgov.org, Software Development Cooperative. Funded F3, F4, F5.

http://adagov.org/

Consenz founder and project manager: Aharon Porath, a techno-social entrepreneur. Since 2011, Aharon has been involved in a few tech and non-tech ventures to develop consensus-based decision-making methods and platforms for distributed public participation goals.

Aharon has 6 years of experience as a project manager of web platforms and apps, among them - "Open Committee", a web app that enables environmental activists, NGOs and citizens to participate in the decision-making process of Israel's planning department, funded by the government's Israel Innovation Authority.

Design and Development: Sofi is a software cooperative that provides solutions for municipalities, universities, startups, well-established companies, entrepreneurs and NGOs.

The coop model relies on decentralized, consensus-based decision making, as well as total influence and wage equality for all present and future members.

https://www.soficoop.com/

Product Manager: Roy Golan. Sofi Coop co-founder. Civic participation & collaboration tools enthusiast since 2012.

Community Manager & Business Development: Ofry Erlich. Sofi's business development director. Political activist with exepertise in political parties campaigns & internal processes.

UI/UX Designer: Tzur Sherzer. After managing a big design department, Tzur has joined the team as a lead designer, and is dedicated to the challenge of making the advanced deliberative democratic discussion interface accessible for people from all communities and backgrounds.

Software Architects and Developers: Aviran Katz, Nadav Moreno. With vast experience from dosens of projects, Aviran and Nadav will be leading the development team, with the backup of the entire Sofi development department, as well as external developers.