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#LOTE2 gearing up: can citizens do actual policy design? (Italiano)

Non vedo l’ora che cominci #LOTE2. Parteciperanno alcune delle persone più interessanti che conosco: e se non bastasse, stiamo montando un bellissimo programma, interattivo e no-spectator-allowed. La mia parte preferita è la Policy Hero Challenge: l’idea è di prendere alcune delle raccomandazioni generate dal progetto Edgeryders e dare loro la forma di politiche pubbliche. Processi possibili, seri, compatibili con la normativa, accountable; roba che potrebbe essere presa così com’è e portata in Parlamento – o diventare una decisione amministrativa di qualche dirigente. Di solito i cittadini – anche quelli molto intelligenti – non sono in grado di fare questo. Quindi, a ogni sessione parteciperà almeno una persona che lavora nelle istituzioni. Il suo compito è è non permettere alla sessione di assumere un atteggiamento semplicistico.

Lasciatemi fare un esempio. Abbiamo una sessione su “ricablare le politiche per l’innovazione”. Molti edgeryders pensano che le politiche europee dell’innovazione si perdano l’occasione di sostenere persone innovative: non le vedono nemmeno, perché sono concentrate le organizzazioni. Come potrebbe essere una politica per l’innovazione centrata sugli individui? Immagino che la sessione comincerà circa così:

“CITTADINO: “I governi vogliono solo dare grandi progetti a grandi imprese high tech. Tutti sanno che non sono questi i soggetti più innovativi. Dilbert lavora per una grande impresa high tech! Stiamo davvero dicendo che ha senso finanziare il capo di Dilbert per produrre innovazione?”

POLICY MAKER: “Piano. Dobbiamo rendere conto di ogni centesimo, e questo è bene. Ora, le grandi organizzazioni sanno fare a spendere denaro del contribuente: hanno sistemi di contabilità sofisticati e possiedono beni di valore – quindi, se non producono risultati, possiamo sempre fare loro causa e recuperare il denaro. Per esempio, nel 2009 c’è stato un episodio sgradevole in cui alcune piccole imprese hanno montato una specie di truffa […] Certo, se avessimo indicatori affidabili della qualità dei progetti ex ante, potremmo correre qualche rischio in più sull’amministrazione in cambio della certezza di sostenere i progetti migliori, ma misurare la qualità di un’innovazione a priori è molto difficile. Ecco perché: […]

Alla fine è questo: se vuoi fare politiche pubbliche, devi misurarti con la loro piena complessità. Le versioni annacquate non funzionano: almeno, a me non viene in mente un modo di fare queste cose senza trattare tutti come adulti pensanti, e senza pretendere che tutti si comportino come tali. E a pensarci è un’idea bellissima. Esige completa onestà e trasparenza da parte dei policy makers; rigore intellettuale e duro lavoro dai cittadini; e rispetto reciproco da tutti. Porta alla luce il meglio di ciò che ciascuno ha da dare. E potrebbe funzionare.

Sono molto curioso di fare l’esperimento, e molto orgoglioso. Sono orgoglioso della comunità di Edgeryders che fa lo sforzo di autoconvocarsi (Dio sa che molti di loro sono poveri, e il loro investimenti di tempo e denaro per venire a Bruxelles a fare queste discussioni è un dono generoso); orgoglioso dei nostri policy makers, Prabhat Agarwal e i suoi colleghi alla Commissione Europea DG Connect, Justyna Krol e la sua unità a UNDP-CIS; super-orgoglioso dei miei colleghi al Consiglio d’Europa – Gilda Farrell, Nadia El-Imam, Malcolm Cox, Noemi Salantiu, Andrei Trubceac, Joel Obrecht – per sostenere l’evento anche se non è un evento ufficiale del Consiglio d’Europa

E sono orgoglioso di tutti voi, umani come me, così ben rappresentati a #LOTE2. Dopo tutti gli errori nella lunga, sanguinosa storia di ciò che oggi chiamiamo governo; dopo tutte le false partenze, le promesse infrante, le ideologie false, i leaders visionari traditi dai mediocri intorno a loro (e non parliamo nemmeno della roba davvero pesante dei Gulag e delle polizie segrete); dopo tutto questo, sembra che siamo abbastanza intelligenti da guardare la verità in faccia; abbastanza forti da perdonarci a vicenda; e abbastanza pazzi per riprovarci, e perfino per pensare che, questa volta, potremmo riuscire.

Se vuoi partecipare a #LOTE2, leggi qui.

#LOTE2 gearing up: can citizens do actual policy design?

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I am looking forward to #LOTE2. Some of the most interesting people I know are coming: as if that were not enough, we are also coming up with a really great, interactive, no-spectator-allowed program. My favorite part is the Policy Hero Challenge: the idea is to take up some of the recommendations generated by the Edgeryders project and hammer it into policy. Real, solid, compliant, accountable, honest-to-God policy; the stuff that could be put before Parliament, or just be signed into existence by a senior bureaucrat as is. Of course citizens – even very smart ones – typically cannot do that. So, we are deploying professional policy makers in each session. They are tasked with not allowing the session to be simplistic.

Let me give you an example. We have a session on rewiring innovation policy. Edgeryders think innovation policy in Europe is missing the opportunity to support innovative people, as it simply can’t see beyond organization. So, how would innovation policy that targets individuals look like? I can imagine the conversation starting like this:

CITIZEN: “Governments only like to give big money to big tech companies. Everybody knows these are not the most innovative players! I mean, Dilbert works for a large tech corporation. Are you really giving taxpayer euro to Dilbert’s boss to innovate?”

POLICY MAKER: “Not so fast. We are required to account for every penny, and that is a good thing. Large organizations can show us how they spend taxpayer money: they have sophisticated accounting systems and they own large assets – so, if they don’t deliver, we can always sue them and get the money back. For example, in 2009 there was a really nasty episode with some small firms that put together a scam […] Of course, if we had reliable ex ante project quality indicators, we could take more risks on the accounting as long as we would be supporting the best projects, but measuring the quality of an innovation project a priori is a very hard problem. Here’s why […].”

It boils down to this: if you want to make policy, you have to take on board its full complexity. A dumbed-down version just won’t work: at least, I can’t think of any way to do this without treating everyone as an intelligent adult, and demanding everybody behaves like one. And when you think of it this is a really beautiful idea. It demands full honesty and transparency from policy makers; intellectual rigour and hard work from citizens; and mutual respect from everyone. It brings out the best everyone has to give. And it might work.

I am really, really curious to run the experiment, and very proud. I am proud of the Edgeryders community for making the effort (God knows many of them are broke, and investing time and money to come to Brussels to have this kind of discussion is a really generous gift); proud of our policy makers, Prabhat Agarwal and his colleagues at the European Commission’s DG Connect, Justyna Krol and her unit at UNDP-CIS, Anna Maria Darmanin at the European Economic and Social Committee, Amelia Andersdotter at the European Parliament; super-proud of my colleagues at the Council of Europe – Gilda Farrell, Nadia El-Imam, Malcolm Cox, Noemi Salantiu, Andrei Trubceac, Joel Obrecht – for supporting the event even though it is not an official Council of Europe one.

And I am proud of you all, my fellow humans, so well represented by the wonderful people at #LOTE2. After all of the screwups in the long, bloody history of what we today call government; after all the false starts, broken promises, bogus ideologies, visionary leaderships betrayed by mediocrity (and don’t even get me started on the really heavy stuff of Gulags and secret police), it looks like we are still smart enough to look truth in the eye; strong enough to forgive each other; and crazy enough to try again, and even think that, this time, we might get it right.

If you want to participate to #LOTE2, read this.

The Internet vs. the democratic deficit: can online collaboration break the ice between citizens and international institutions?

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Global problems demand global governance: we have been repeating it for years. And truly, after World War II, international institutions have proliferated and ended up playing important roles in almost every field. It’s not just the United Nations, with their galaxy of agencies, but also the Bretton Woods twin institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; OECD; OPEC; the World Economic Forum; the structured military alliances like NATO and SEATO; the Club of Madrid; the International Atomic Energy; the WTO and many others. In Europe, this tendency is amplified by the continent’s unification project, and Brussels’s influence on public policies of EU member states has come to be very important. By some calculations, 70% of the activity of the average European country’s parliament consists in signing and stamping directives discussed and decided upon in Brussels and Strasbourg – which would make those parliaments little more than expensive decoration.

This system is extremely efficient. With 736 MEPs (the German Bundestag has 622) and a bureaucracy of only 33,000 employees the European Union runs the world’s largest economy, with 500 million inhabitants (Oxford Economics estimates public sector employees at 2.5 million in the UK in 2009, though the two figures are of course not directly comparable). But such efficiency comes at a price; many Europeans perceive the Union’s institutions as distant, inaccessible, unaccountable – at least to them. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is not elected, but appointed by the member states. The European Parliament is elected, but MEPs find it hard to reconcile the day-by-day work in Brussels with the need to stay in touch with their constituency, which tend to be very large. As a result, these institutions feel like they are working in a vacuum. They study official reports from far-away places, but the everyday life of citizens is perceived as some remote radio transmission with a lot of static on top. The combination of isolation and need for high quality information creates a space for lobbying, and, unsurprisingly, lobbying ensues. In the European political jargon, this problem is called democratic deficit.

The social Internet, I believe, has the potential to break the barrier separating the women and men working for international institutions from citizens. Social filtering allows to entertain massive-scale conversation without too many information overload problems. My past experience with Kublai showed that a central administration can open a direct dialogue with individuals in peripheral territories, leapfrogging all the local administrative levels, and that such disintermediated discussion is an very effective learning tool for the institutions that engage in it. My team and I are trying to enact similar tactics at the European scale with Edgeryders. Individual elected and appointed officials are exploring this space in a more agile way than large organizations can: Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake and Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes are notable examples.

International institutions are interested. Tomorrow (November 29th 2011) the European Parliament – led by its vice president, Gianni Pittella – hosts a discussion on this issue, with a lively program: I have the honor of presenting Edgeryders. On December 9th I will hold a webinar with United Nations Development Programme/Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It is a promising path: I hope it takes us far, because we are are in dire need of reinforcing supranational governance with democratic legitimacy.