Tooling for Democracies

Ballarat 2016

I’ll talk about it from an Australian Context…

In Australia — our systems of government is designed as a representative democracy, much like many other jurisdictional sovereign territories worldwide. The core principle is that the governed, citizens, are represented by an elected representative of the people, by geographical region, etc.

Modern politics makes for messy issues, although it is easily argued that the governance of government, has never delivered the promises it says it seeks.

Knowledge Banking Infrastructure is built upon digital identity frameworks for humans; that incorporates in-turn, an array of ‘verifiable claims’ tooling.

This tooling, incorporates the means to identify where a person resides, nationality alongside other facts that interact with political interactions. The implication is that by providing citizens legally defensible, digital identity infrastructure there is a means to improve democratic engagement.

Representatives of our system of democracy have a duty to consider the views of their electorate. A traditional problem has been the means to curate sufficient support throughout an electorate as to prosecute a shared value.

What a knowledge banking infrastructure framework does, is provide, the infrastructure solutions required to support electronic contracts; or in other words, the ability to engage in lawful activities with others online, in a manner that is as legally enforceable as any other economic activity, online.

Therein, the means for an elected representative to garnish an understanding of an issue that is brought to their attention by member of their electorate, becomes far simpler. Rather than political interactions being provided by way of twitter, or disseminated by ‘police news’ and fake news publications; the means for citizens to engage in topics of interest with their elected members of parliament, becomes part of what can be brought about; by a knowledge banking sector (or any official, digital identity solution — whether KYC/AML is provided via commercial agents, or as an infrastructure service for society).

Irrespective of how the engagement methodology is brought about; the next series of problems, relates to how the engagement method with members of parliament is brought about.

There are several resources available that provide parliamentary information online; yet the means to easily resource, review and process these infrastructure assets and article is made more difficult than needs be.

There are also party politics that plays a significant role, as the situation of a void of reliable opinion being sourced from the community, leads to other interests playing a more vocal and directive role.

The ability for independent members of parliament to operate at the same level of sophistication as party members, is also something worth noting.

Whilst a study of parliamentary spending on parliamentary staffers overtime, by comparison to population growth (ie: are parliamentarians understaffed?)

The ability for aspiring independent parliamentary contenders to grapple with how our system of democracy works and how to engineer position statements on many complex topics; is more likely not, to have been breed into them by way of party participation from a youthful age (‘the cultivated politician’) but rather, relate to issues based politics and the desire to get something, meaningful done.

Therein — there are an array of factors that relate to how permissive commons is intended to support nuanced use-cases; that support (amongst other things) electoral engagement in current affairs & political decision making. This is in-turn intended to be integrated, in a manner that’s consistent with how the broader ecosystem is made to work. For parliamentarians websites, the solution is very similar to that of small businesses or sports & clubs.

As such, the blend between ‘permissive commons’ and knowledge banking infrastructure; can also, assist in communicating in connection to recommendations made by community members, their skills & character traits. This in-turn also kinda supplements the ideas illustrated by knowledge clouds alongside considerations made about, statistics (& analytics).

Therein; if someone is linked to a competing incumbent, or if a person is a subject matter expert within the field, these sorts of traits can be identified and weighted, alongside other historical attributes with meaningful relations to contributors.

Amongst the many key benefits brought about by a knowledge banking approach, as is distinct to the way major silos work today; is that, the security infrastructure, would be governed domestically, by domestic operators.

Whilst it is entirely able to be the case, that international crypto-relations can be made as to warrant the fact that a domestic government has not tampered with results or manipulated key decisions; the underlying series of practical architectural solutions frameworks, is considered to be quite different to alternatives.

Politics, the governance of government and public service; is part of the daily lives of all people. Today, we haven’t used technology to support democracies.

It’s about time, we start thinking about whether or not, it’s important to do so.