Decentralizing Government

A web app that can be used for public participation in policy shaping, from the municipality level to the nation state level.

10 years of working with governmental officials and municipalities to build and promote apps for public participation in decision making

[IMPACT]

The challenge

When People are excluded from the decision making process their chances to improve their live are very low. Creating a governance systems that are transparent, open and inclusive can pave a pass towards improvements in many aspects of life.

Institutional corruption can be reduced by implementing and practicing public participation in decision making processes. To do that in large scale we need decentralized tools that will be efficient, secure, user friendly and trustworthy.

Our Solution

Consenz is a tool that open 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.

Many poor nations tend to suffer from governmental corruption. Democratize decision making in those countries from the top (current government institutes) down is almost impossible because of inherent corruption in those institutes.

By providing a bottom-up solution for decision making for communities and local level agencies we can contribute to encourage a new culture of managing the common goods that may, eventually, create a long term impact on the national level.

More on the connection between corruption and poverty see:

1. Negin, Vahideh and Abd Rashid, Zakariah and Nikopour, Hesam (2010): The Causal Relationship between Corruption and Poverty: A Panel Data Analysis
2. Ina Purwantini Rahayu, Tri Widodo (2012): THE CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CORRUPTION AND POVERTY IN ASEAN: A GENERAL METHOD OF MOMENTS/ DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

Opening the process of decision making may be vulnerable to trolling, bots using and other harmful activities.

We plan to mitigate this risk by creating a community driven moderation system that will encourage trustworthy participants to identify and report those bad actors without using centralized censorship.

[FEASIBILITY]

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: 28,400 USD

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.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aharon-porath-90158962

Social UX Advisor: Niels Kijf. Niels (Master Digital Media Design, Oxford) is a digital design innovator pur sang . He started the Social Design Academy to deliver UX 3.0 education. Our current software design is still targeting the individual, yet web3 is designing shared experiences for groups, a fresh new field that needs a new educational program. Levelling up UX into Social UX is one of the SDA missions for 2022.

https://socialdesignacademy.io

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.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roy-golan-490069a2

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

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofry-ehrlich-470862119

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.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzursher

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.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviran-katz-491163b3

[AUDITABILITY]

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.

• 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

Success of this project will be that consenz platform will become the standard tool for drafting and creating agreements by communities, municipalities and government agencies.

Fund 6: "Consenz: A Virtual Parliament App" - not funded.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367771

Fund 7: "₳GOV: Policy Registry" - not funded.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/380928

Fund 7: "₳GOV: Agreements Building Platform" - funded.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/380926

This is a resubmission of our F7 proposal for the Nation Building dApps challenge.

Other consenz Fund8 proposals:

1. For Accelerate Decentralized Identity challenge: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/396670
2. For Lobbying for favorable legislation challenge: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397877
3. For Community Advisor Improvements challenge: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397872

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

SDG subgoals:

11.3 By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries

16.3 Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all

16.6 Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels

16.7 Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels

17.16 Enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries, in particular developing countries

17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

11.3.2 Proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management that operate regularly and democratically

16.3.3 Proportion of the population who have experienced a dispute in the past two years and who accessed a formal or informal dispute resolution mechanism, by type of mechanism

16.6.2 Proportion of population satisfied with their last experience of public services

16.7.1 Proportions of positions in national and local institutions, including (a) the legislatures; (b) the public service; and (c) the judiciary, compared to national distributions, by sex, age, persons with disabilities and population groups

16.7.2 Proportion of population who believe decision-making is inclusive and responsive, by sex, age, disability and population group

17.16.1 Number of countries reporting progress in multi-stakeholder development effectiveness monitoring frameworks that support the achievement of the sustainable development goals

17.17.1 Amount in United States dollars committed to public-private partnerships for infrastructure