Dear members and community,
With the present email I'd like to share a (slightly redacted) version of the proposal I made to the Board of Directors for the ongoing effort of implementing a platform for participatory democracy, Decidim.
You may find all the details in the document at:
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/4BQ6S82PJqMb2YQ
I am available, of course, to clarify any doubts the provided proposal will raise.
Cheers,
Hi Emiliano!
Thanks for the update. It was an important topic discussed in the last Q+A session with the BoD candidates and it’s great to see it’s moving forward!
Best,
Gustavo
Hi Emiliano!
Many thanks for your work on this document, which is very useful. I do think a tool for Trustees to discuss Foundation matters is very important and I largely agree with your analysis. I also agree with your evaluation that Decidim is a very raw tool that needs a lot of shaping - which is a necessary aspect given it is intended to facilitate the full democratic process for cities, states and nations.
In a spirit of general support for your proposal, I do have some questions and as we don’t have a collaboration tool yet I have to ask them here!
Simon
On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 8:18 PM Emiliano Vavassori <syntaxerrormmm@libreoffice.org> wrote:
Dear members and community,
With the present email I’d like to share a (slightly redacted) version
of the proposal I made to the Board of Directors for the ongoing effort
of implementing a platform for participatory democracy, Decidim.You may find all the details in the document at:
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/4BQ6S82PJqMb2YQI am available, of course, to clarify any doubts the provided proposal
will raise.Cheers,
Emiliano Vavassori
syntaxerrormmm@libreoffice.org
–
El 16/2/22 a las 17:17, Emiliano Vavassori escribió:
Dear members and community,
With the present email I’d like to share a (slightly redacted) version of the proposal I made to the Board of Directors for the ongoing effort of implementing a platform for participatory democracy, Decidim.
You may find all the details in the document at:
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/4BQ6S82PJqMb2YQI am available, of course, to clarify any doubts the provided proposal will raise.
Cheers,
Thanks Emiliano for putting all this stuff together.
In my opinion there’s an area where a tool like Decidim can make a significative difference: BoD discussions / voting. There are not few examples of long and tedious discussions in mail threads. Very hard to follow from my POV.
So, maybe the new BoD would be interested in exploring such alternative to improve communication.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for your support to the proposal.
* You mention that Decidim is not the only potential tool, and assert
that analysing the internal processes is more important than
evaluating which tool to use. I definitely agree that a
specification should come first. I wonder if you can tell us briefly
why you already picked Decidim over the other well-known tools
(specifically Consul and LiquidFeedback)?
As said in the proposal, the instance was already running at TDF for nearly a year; members of the MC, of the BoD and the Team already invested considerable time on it. It would have been a waste of efforts to change the platform at this point and mostly unhelpful/unfruitful to change it without a clear understanding of its shortcomings, with the regards of our use cases; a knowledge we can achieve only having some processes mapped in the platform.
We already have expertise in the Team about this specific platform, also.
Other platforms were mentioned and at least brainstormed, see for example: https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3251
* With only a few hundred Trustees our use case would be very small
compared with most of the tool's applications (although I am aware
that these tools have parts that are used by consultation groups).
Are there any useful examples of Decidim (or Consul) being used for
the tasks we are considering? I am not asserting a problem, just
wondering if there's an example inspiring you.
The Decidim community itself is using the same platform to discuss and shape the framework redesigns: https://meta.decidim.org/
A fellow Director asked a similar question, and I failed to answer him with a proper research. I hope this answer will suite him, too.
* Given the goal here is to widen participation beyond the current
insiders, have you considered including some Trustees in the working
group as well?
I surely have, and I am more than favorable about it in principle; but I also see some minor flaws with this approach.
The proposal allows for 8 people to attend activities with the consultancy; this should accommodate at least two people out of the MC, two out of the BoD and two more people from the Team to participate to the working group, but not limiting to 2 people out of each body.
If this holds true at the minimum, it will leave a very small space for Trustees to be included in the working group, so we either:
1) ask the Trustees, and have to manage in the end to choose who is included or excluded and on which (more or less) arbitrary basis do this choice (not the most fair/inclusive outcome, honestly), or
2) ask directly to selected people to participate to the working group, which is leaner than 1) but indeed arbitrary and not inclusive.
Widening the audience to the consultancy activities to allow for more participation from the Trustees can be another solution, but pragmatically we know smaller working group has the best chance to reach their goals. And I am willingly leaving out considerations about the economic impact of such widened participation.
I am more of the opinion that, once the working group has reached a quasi-working setup, involving the community back is the right thing to do, to run some simulations, possibly in parallel to the real BoD decisions, to have some time to collect volunteers' and members' feedback/improvements on the implemented processes, before the BoD finally approves the use of the platform.
I hope this can be helpful.
Cheers,
Hi Emiliano! Thanks for the reply.
On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 12:04 AM Emiliano Vavassori <syntaxerrormmm@libreoffice.org> wrote:
It would have been a waste of efforts
to change the platform at this point and mostly unhelpful/unfruitful to
change it without a clear understanding of its shortcomings, with the
regards of our use cases; a knowledge we can achieve only having some
processes mapped in the platform.
Yes, it’s good to start with something to gain the experience needed to make a good permanent choice, I agree. As long as we do actually take an evaluation step before committing long-term to this tool (rather than become victims of the sunk-cost fallacy) that’s a fine approach.
The Decidim community itself is using the same platform to discuss and
shape the framework redesigns: https://meta.decidim.org/
Thanks for that. Decidim is something of a special case - knowing that community I would totally expect them to use Decidim to design Decidim! So I still think it would be worth asking around to see if there is another open source community using Decidim/Consul/LiquidFeedback in their governance who can share their experiences. I can do that if you want or there are others here who participate in the Open Source Foundations mailing list who could do so.
If this holds true at the minimum, it will leave a very small space for
Trustees to be included in the working group, so we either:
- ask the Trustees, and have to manage in the end to choose who is
included or excluded and on which (more or less) arbitrary basis do this
choice (not the most fair/inclusive outcome, honestly), or- ask directly to selected people to participate to the working
group, which is leaner than 1) but indeed arbitrary and not inclusive.
Right, I recognise the issues you describe. All the same it seems to me arbitrary inclusion is better than none at all! There are clearly some of us who are interested in donating effort but until the “members” list has been asked there’s no way to know exactly how many.
I am more of the opinion that, once the working group has reached a
quasi-working setup, involving the community back is the right thing to
do, to run some simulations, possibly in parallel to the real BoD
decisions, to have some time to collect volunteers’ and members’
feedback/improvements on the implemented processes, before the BoD
finally approves the use of the platform.
Widening the circle once the design consultation has been delivered seems smart, good proposal. The participative approach has its own potential problems so a diverse oversight group is important. I’d suggest focussing on involving Trustees in the actual deployment working group rather than just as test subjects, if the feeling that an insider group is in control of TDF is to be overcome.
Again, thanks for your work here and I remain happy to help.
Cheers!
Simon
–
Hi Simon,
Simon Phipps wrote:
So I still think it would be worth asking around to see if there is
another open source community using Decidim/Consul/LiquidFeedback in
their governance who can share their experiences. I can do that if
you want or there are others here who participate in the Open Source
Foundations mailing list who could do so.
Not speaking for Emiliano, but I would very much appreciate you trying
to make those connections. TIA!
I know Bjoern (in Cc) had some first-hand experience at least with
LiquidFeedback, so perhaps he can also provide input.
Cheers,
-- Thorsten
Hi Emiliano
Many many thanks for bringing this forward!
One thing I'd like to amend, even if I feel it is not necessarily suited to be integrated into the proposal yet:
Everybody wanting to use such a tool (no matter which one of the mentioned) must realize that this will not work out without permanent professional (means: educated and work intensive) moderation. We must consider that in every discussion.