Citizen Assemblies for Democracy

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Multi-stakeholder organisations such as representative democracies, local authorities, smart cities, NGOs, cooperatives, associations, DAOs, and multinational corporations, must engage with diverse communities of stakeholders in order to take decisions that enjoy widespread acceptance and consensus.

This is exceptionally challenging when diverse communities of stakeholders with conflicting interests are asked to provide views, or advise - on complex issues that require specialist knowledge (e.g. selecting among a number of investment opportunities, managing commons, deciding on policy or strategic direction, etc.) due to stakeholder lack of specialist knowledge on the subject of deliberation and zero or low incentives to participate in deliberations.

A "citizen assembly" is a well-tested method for a facilitated deliberation among a group of citizens in order to decide on an issue. Although "Citizen Assemblies" (or "citizen juries") have been shown to deliver an excellent way to engage with diverse communities and enhance trust in public and private governance, setting up and running a citizen assembly is currently very costly and inefficient due to the complexities of selecting a truly representative sample of citizens, educating them on the subject under deliberation, incentivising and facilitating their deliberations, and enabling consensus on potentially polarising issues.

Our solution ("Voxiberate") delivers an end-to-end software platform for multi-stakeholder organisations to set up Citizen Assemblies quickly, efficiently, and at low-cost. To do this we are applying advanced AI techniques, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), to enable the fair selection of a citizen group from the wider community; clustering and aggregating citizen dialogues and analysing their deliberations; a learning feature to provide necessary information and knowledge so that citizens can have high-quality deliberations on complex issues; as well as various features for onboarding citizens and facilitators, managing communities, and executing deliberations that lead to voting on proposals. We have already built the first iteration of our MVP where we have implemented the core features of our solution, as described.

We now wish to further develop our solution as a decentralised app on web3 whereby we:

1. ensure citizen anonymity and security via DID/Wallet login;
2. deliver transparency and auditability of deliberations and votes by recording votes on a blockchain or on a permaweb/decentralised storage;
3. leverage a native utility token to incentivise "good civic behaviour", encourage citizens towards consensus and away from polarisation, and provide opportunities for civic and community leadership to those who deserve it;
4. integrate a middleware for DAOs to release funds via deliberations on Voxiberate ("voxiberations");
5. pilot our solution to use cases whereby citizens can delegate to other citizens the authority deliberate and vote on their behalf (liquid democracy/ delegated voting)

Ultimately, we envision our platform ("Voxiberate") as a decentralised application on Cardano that enhances participatory democracy across nations, regions and cities; but also supports agile corporate governance, whereby all stakeholders, including employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, local communities and others, collaborate in collective decision-making and in the crowdsourcing of ideas.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Our Proposal aligns with Cardano's social mission. Like Cardano and its global community, we too aspire to make our world a better, kinder and more inclusive place where everyone has a stake - and a voice! - in shaping their destiny. At Voxiberate we believe that the decentralisation of the web is a historical opportunity for communities across the world to self-organise and create new social and economic value. But for this vision to take place, and for Cardano to be adopted by the wider society, we think that it is necessary to introduce concepts and well-tested practices from political science in the governance of decentralised communities. We think we can contribute towards this goal by further developing Voxiberate, our deliberation platform for setting up and facilitating citizen assemblies on web3.

Voxiberate is the "deliberation layer" on web3. Such a layer currently does not exist. DAO member communications and deliberations take place in not-fit-for-purpose messaging platforms (Telegram, Discord, Twitter, etc.). The absence of an effective and efficient deliberation layer is one of the main reasons why so few members engage actively in the governance of their DAOs.

We therefore think that Voxiberate will be extremely useful to current and future Cardano projects - and indeed to all DAOs that support democratic decision-making in public, as well as private, governance. Voxiberate will enable scaling up and ensuring the trust of DAO communities, and the wider adoption of web3 and Cardano by nations, regions, cities and society at large.

More specifically, we will develop and/or integrate the following decentralised features:

1. Voting process, as fraud-proof way of voting and/or a verifiable audit trail
2. Our VOX utility token, whereby citizens are rewarded for good civic behaviour and earn reputation points
3. Login with DID/wallet to deliver citizen anonymity and security
4. We will work closely with Catalyst Swarm - and with other Cardano communities too - to integrate tools and techniques that they have developed for community management, particularly in vote delegation as well as integrting a middleware for DAOs to release funds via "voxiberations" (deliberations on the Voxiberate platform)

With regards to the Dapps, Products and Integrations Challenge, our product aligns with the Challenge's goals because we will provide a very powerful Dapp within the broader Cardano ecosystem, that introduces the voice of citizens in participatory democratic governance. Sustainable prosperity can only be effected through the active participation of citizens and communities in policy and decision-making. Our proposed solution aligns with the Dapps, Products and Integrations Challenge, as we will build an application that will drive wider adoption of Cardano by empowering nations, regions, and cities to set up citizen assemblies quickly, easily and at a very low cost.

More specifically, we aim to support the following KPIs that align with the Challenge:

• Participation and/or partnerships between Cardano and other international organizations

• Number of countries using Cardano in governance

• Number of Dapp users, registry accounts, transaction volumes

• Dapp development and implementation

• Dapps impact on social/financial inclusion

• Dapps impact on economic development

We plan to communicate the outcomes of our project via several channels, including social media channels, blogs, and conferences. We will engage with the wider Cardano community and will offer our product for pilot testing to community projects.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

The team has already worked successfully together over many months, and we have already developed the first iteration of our MVP that includes the core platform functionality (front end and back end), and the core AI Engine and algorithm. Because of this we have already de-risked much of the project, since we will be entering the project as a seasoned team with a product that we can demo and pilot. Nevertheless, there are two risks that we must address:

Risk 1: Identifying the appropriate Cardano integrations. To ensure that we meet the project plan timeline and deliver on our goals we must conduct in-depth research on the best available integrations in the Cardano ecosystem for DID/Wallet, decentralised storage, middleware for DAOs to release funds via voxiberations, within Month 1 of the project. Our preliminary research has identified a number of tools, such as Cardano CLI and maybe atalaprism for DID/wallet login, but we need to conduct further research to assess maturity, complexity and availability of appropriate technologies.

Mitigation strategy: We will partner with the Cardano community to help us quickly identify the appropriate integration tools, SDKs, and strategy for Voxiberate. We have already partnered with Catalyst Swarm and we will engage further with others in Cardano as well.

Risk 2: Ensure that the "voice of the customer" guides product development. Given that Voxiberate's end users will be citizens in various countries, regions and cities, it is important for our success that the Dapp meets their needs, as well as that we communicate clearly to them the benefits of using a decentralised application for democratic deliberation. Unless we include perspectives from end users throughout the product development process Voxiberate will not live up to our vision.

Mitigation strategy: (a) We will assign to a member of our team (Luiza Romero) to be the "user advocate" with responsibility to ensure that our end users are represented in the development process; (b) Luiza will compile a "Voice of the Customer" plan on Month 1 which will include practical steps for mitigating Risk 2; this plan will be executed during Months 2 and 3; (c) Voxiberate is already partnering with Miami City and we will use this partnership to continuously engage with citizens and community leaders in Miami so that we may include their perspectives into our development effort. This engagement will be part of the "Voice of the Customer" plan

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

We are proposing an execution plan over a 3-month period. Please see below a detailed description of our plan, for each month.

Month 1

Tasks

1. Research on Cardano Integrations (DID/Wallet; Auditing votes; Delegating Votes; Vox Token; DAO Middleware for releasing funds via voxiberations; SDKs);
2. Decision on technologies' selection by prioritising Cardano integrations on the basis of technological maturity, availability and complexity for integrating to our platform;
3. Further development of AI Engine;
4. UX design improvement (facilitator dashboard; citizen UI; Analytics dashboard) and front-end development;
5. Voice of the customer plan

Team Responsibilities

• G Zarkadakis (overall management responsibility; AI development; communications and community engagement);
• D Lazarou (further development of AI Engine);
• A Alm (software development and integrations);
• M Ilie (UX design);
• L Romero (Voice of the Customer)

Milestone: List of Cardano integrations to implement in current project

Key Deliverables

1. Report on possible integrations and decision on what to integrate with Voxiberate (prioritising preference for Cardano technologies, providing they are technologically mature, easy to integrate, and available to integrate);
2. iteration of developed AI Engine;
3. Voice of the customer plan

Month 2

Tasks

1. Implement selected Integrations;
2. Further development of AI Engine;
3. software implementation of improved and new UX features and functionality;
4. continuous testing of software development and integrations;
5. research on pilot;
6. voice of the customer plan execution

Team Responsibilities

• G Zarkadakis (overall management responsibility; AI development; communications and community engagement);
• D Lazarou (further development of AI Engine);
• A Alm (software development and integrations);
• M Ilie (UX design);
• L Romero (Voice of the Customer)

Milestone: NA

Key Deliverables

1. Dapp MVP 1.0 (50-60% complete). We are targeting to integrate as many of the following features as possible: DID/Wallet, Auditing votes; delegating votes; DAO Middleware for releasing funds via voxiberations; depending on maturity, complexity and availability of existing technologies;
2. iteration of developed AI Engine

Month 3

Tasks

1. Complete integrations and execute pilot for Dapp MVP 1.0 in collaboration with a selected Cardano DAO project;
2. voice of the customer plan execution

Team Responsibilities

• G Zarkadakis (overall management responsibility; AI development; communications and community engagement);
• D Lazarou (further development of AI Engine);
• A Alm (software development and integrations);
• M Ilie (UX design);
• L Romero (Voice of the Customer)

Milestone: Dapp MVP 1.0 complete and ready to be user tested/piloted

Key Deliverables

1. Dapp MVP 1.0 (100% complete). We are targeting to integrate as many of the following features as possible: DID/Wallet, Auditing votes; delegating votes; DAO Middleware for releasing funds via voxiberations; depending on maturity, complexity and availability of existing technologies;
2. Dapp MVP 1.0 Pilot Workbook detailing approach, metrics, and method for measuring;
3. Pilot, Report on Pilot,
4. Independent event in collaboration with Catalyst Cardano to present results, demo Dapp MVP 1.0, and discuss results with community

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Our total budget for the 3-month project is: USD $50,000. This budget is divided in 3 equal instalments for each month (approx. USD $16,660). We assume all payments in USD (i.e. that payments will not be affected by ADA volatility). We have assumed an hourly rate of $45 for the senior members of the team and of $25 for the junior member; by benchmarking labour costs in local markets (Europe and US). We have estimated the work that needs to be done in order to deliver on the project goals and we have allocated appropriate time from each member of the team. We are only asking for labour costs and no overheads.

For a full analysis of our budget see the spreadsheet below. For our budget request we have rounded down the total fees to USD $ 50,000 (from USD $ 50,160).

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Dr George Zarkadakis is Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Centre and the CEO of Voxiberate. He has >25 years’ experience in business consulting, media, marketing and communications; as well as in technology innovation as a founder, advisor, and investor in startups. He has held leadership positions at Accenture, Silicon Graphics, the European Bioinformatics Institute, and Willis Towers Watson. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from City University, and is the author of "In Our Own Image: will Artificial Intelligence Save Us or Destroy Us?” (Penguin 2015), and "Cyber Republic: reinventing democracy in the age of intelligent machines" (MIT Press 2020, with an introduction by Don Tapscott, author of “Blockchain Revolution”). He has been awarded a knighthood by France for his international work on the public understanding of science; is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and a global thought leader on the future of work and democracy. He speaks English, French, and Greek.

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

Anders Alm has >20 years of experience as a software developer and entrepreneur, and is the CTO of Voxiberate. He is the founder of WAU I/O, a technology company that delivers customised web 3.0 and business software solutions to the international market, and an investor and Board member of e-sakafo, the leading food delivery service in Madagascar. Prior to that Anders has worked in various project management and product development roles with the Government of Norway, McAfee and Dell. He studied engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and is fluent in English, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.

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

Luiza Romero has a degree in Law. She has worked at EY for 11 years, in its global tax practice. In 2014 she became the driving force behind the design and implementation of six uniquely positioned tax data analytics solutions with a global scale, and worked with global innovation leaders on a variety of technology projects, mobile/web applications (TaxChat), AI and crypto (EY CryptoPrep). In 2018 she joined a blockchain startup as a product manager to help lead the financial audit and reporting industry transformation into its decentralized and real-time future. She is lecturer on blockchain at NYU. She speaks English and Portuguese.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/luiza-romero/

Dimitris Lazarou has an MSc in High Energy Physics from Florida State University, and a BSc in Software Engineering from Athens University. He has 8+ years of experience head of data science in successful startups such as Seez (second hand car marketplace in Middle East) and Careem (acquired by Uber for $3.1B in 2020). Prior to that he worked as quantitative analyst at Golden Water Capital (a hedge fund) and Signal Maritime. He is an expert in Machine Learning, Data Engineering and Data Warehousing. He speaks English and Greek.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitrios-lazarou-msc-378a0799/

Maria-Adriana Ilie is graduating in 2022 with a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, and she's an experienced UX/UI designer across a diverse portfolio of projects. She has worked with Voxiberate in the design of the first iteration of our MVP. She speaks English and Romanian.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-adriana-ilie/

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

We would like to remain engaged with the Cardano community and support community-based projects that require participatory democracy in their governance. We therefore expect to return to Catalyst for further funding that will be used to (a) further improve our platform; (b) pilot our product in various use cases and in partnership with other Cardano projects

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Our Key Metrics per month of the project are as follows:

For Month 1: Selection criteria for integrations: maturity of technology; acceptability; user base; sociopolitical nature of projects

For Month 2: Software testing criteria: integrations functioning properly and reliably

For Month 3: Percentage of members participating in Voxiberation, benchmarked against percentage of members participating in community deliberations using other platforms; Net Promoter Score (as provided by the citizens that will participate in the pilot); quality of citizen comments; consensus vs popularity (by comparing Standard deviation of normal distributions between votes on comments across clustered opinion groups).

We will be reporting on the above metrics at the end of each month with a Monthly Progress Report. This Report will be published on our Twitter channel , the Catalyst Telegram channels, and on the Catalyst Discord Channel.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Our Critical Success Factors are:

1. Digitalise participatory democracy experience. Successfully reproduce the experience of a citizen assembly from the physical to the digital
2. Beat apathy. Increase the number of citizens (community members) that engage with the governance of their community
3. Enhance Trust. Increase citizen trust in the institutions of government by enabling their voices to be heard, and matter
4. Catalyse civic consciousness. Successfully achieve broad consensus in the assembly on the issue under deliberation

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal has not been previously funded by Catalyst.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

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

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

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:

1.4 By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance

1.b Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions

11.b By 2020, substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, holistic disaster risk management 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