Crowdsourcing a Constitution

Alana Maurushat with David Lee

When I worked at the University of Hong Kong, I had the privilege of engaging in many conversations with the world-renowned constitution-writer and scholar Professor Yash Gai. Professor Gai led constitutional reviews in Kenya and Fiji, and was asked to assist with Constitutions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over many casual lunches with colleagues in Hong Kong, I can still recall how passionate Professor Gai was for constitutional writing that was “right” for the people of the country in question. He was a staunch believer of the idea that extensive discussion and consultation among all communities of a nation was essential for building a strong constitution that would stand the test of time: constitution writing by consensus. These constitutional reviews often involved Professor Gai and his committees to lead meetings throughout urban and remote areas of a nation. These consultations often lasted years, in order to ensure that small ethnic minorities were not neglected. The process was epic.

Given that a constitution is construed as one of the pillars of a nation’s identity, one might ask the question – why not ask the citizens to draft the constitution? With the rise in online user input platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, collaborative innovation has never been easier. It should come as no surprise that Facebook alone is used by nearly 12 million people just in Australia.

This increasing popularity of social media is exactly what the Nordic European nation of Iceland needed. Following collapse of its economy and outcry from its citizens, the Icelandic government has decided to take advantage of this method. The government introduced a process in 2011 involving a unique democratic approach of using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to identify ideas, recommendations, and provisions to be included in the new constitution. The social feedback will not be binding to the Parliament of Iceland, but it will most likely have significant influence on politicians.  Because the proposals are drafted by the public, it will be impossible for politicians to "sweep popular proposals under the carpet". Icelandic citizens are welcoming this idea too – 66% of the voters agreed in a referendum to use the resulting document as a framework for the nation’s new constitution. This unique drafting method adopted by Iceland is a prime example of "crowdsourcing".

First coined by Jeff Howe in an article posted on The Wired, the term "crowdsourcing" refers to a similar concept to outsourcing. Outsourcing involves an identified and selected individual or group of individuals developing a concept or performing work duties. Crowdsourcing is a much bigger idea – it brings in the public and involves the crowd in a creative, collaborative process. Many businesses have taken advantage of this method from as early as 2001. iStockPhoto was created as a marketplace for bloggers and web-designers to purchase stock images from a gallery of photos contributed by amateur photographers. The collaborative input provided by thousands of contributors allowed these images to be sold at very low prices, often undercutting professional photographers by as much as 99%. Other notable businesses benefiting from crowdsourcing include Reddit, Youtube and Innocentive.

Crowdsourcing through social media creates exciting opportunities, as it empowers people to participate in a true democratic process. Evidently, this method has been utilised mainly by businesses for financial gains. As such, Iceland must be commended for taking the unprecedented approach of employing crowdsourcing in politics, in an effort to produce a constitution that is “right” for its citizens. Other nations will undoubtedly take note; it won’t be long before other governments follow the unique path created by Iceland. It is arguable that the constitutions of other nations are long over-due for a reformulation, with netizen contribution.

For example, the Australian Constitution was drafted by the delegates of the States in the late 19th Century, and the only input provided by the people was voting for its adoption. However, this is a debate for another time.

    Image by James Cridland, made available by creative commons license via Flickr.

Distributed and anonymous: our say, our way on the Internet

Luke Giuliani

The distributed nature of the Internet is, I think, one of its greatest assets. It was definitely one of the main design considerations when ARPANET was first established. This non-centralised design has carried through with the way that services have treated user contribution, starting with modes like IRC and BBS, through to their modern equivalents like social networks and even more broadly any site that relies on user generated content. The option for anonymity in contribution has been omnipresent, if varying in degree. Of course whether you think this is good or bad depends highly on your point of view, in the same way that one's opinion of the whistleblower depends on whether you are the victim or the culprit.

With the growth of the internet as a primary communication channel, we have seen a more subtle result of this same distributed nature; a lack of a power of proscription. This lack of control has often led to an uptake of services in proportion to the risk averseness of the institution. Thus individuals and small businesses are quick to jump on the online bandwagon, but often government entities and decision makers - people with more to lose - are slower. Part of this is also a subtle transition in publishing power. Decision makers have historically had a "right-to-proof"; "I want to see that article before it goes to print" is a standard condition on working with the PR teams of politicians or big business. This control of information is in many ways antithetical to the publishing anarchy of the Internet.

In recent years, however, the invisible hand has pushed. Too many citizens consume too much of their information from (and thus base their decisions on) the Internet for decision makers to ignore, or even conditionally accept. Now PR teams have added "run your social media presence for you" to the list of services tendered. This has had an interesting result. We now have decision makers trying to control what is an inherently uncontrolled system.

We've seen this directly at OurSay, a project I am a part of, which connects decision makers with citizens. OurSay is a web based platform where citizens can ask questions of a decision maker and vote on other users questions that they think are important. Each user gets 7 votes, so they can use them all up in one go, or spread them around. After an OurSay question session closes, we go and get the answers to the top questions from the decision maker and put it up on the site. The interesting bit here is that without a doubt, everybody we talk to about answering questions voted for on OurSay asks: "But what happens if the top question is against my views?".

The idealist in me answers: answer it anyway! You don't get to be in a position of power without having to answer difficult questions sometimes. If the question asks "In what ways are you similar to a chimp?", tell them you share 96% of the same DNA. How about a question asking a decision-maker to back up policy with hard commitment? What about curlier ones, like asking the CEO of Telstra his thoughts on the environmental consequences of printing millions of copies of the Yellow Pages each year? (go here for the answer to that one.) We at OurSay have worked with all parts of the political or issue spectrum to try and get some really substantial questions asked of the people up the top. OurSay essentially provides a platform where the contribution of individuals is metered through the mechanism of voting. It is a compromise between the control desired by decision makes and the everyone-can-say-whatever-they-want model of the Internet.

OurSay provides one model of how relationships between decision makers and citizens might evolve in the future. People will expect and demand greater interaction with their policymakers. Additionally, the Internet has enabled the provision and consumption of information at phenomenal levels. (I must have opened up a browser at least 20 times just in the writing of this post.) I hope that this increased demand for interaction and increased levels of information accessibility will be symbiotically beneficial, resulting in leaders that are responsive to citizens and citizens who are informed and proactive about the issues they care about.

Let's face it, the Internet is a scary place. Voice your opinion and at some point you are likely to be misconstrued. At worst, you'll probably be ridiculed for what you say with varying levels of constructiveness. How much more scary if you are somebody with something to lose. The trick will be how to find the right balance of accountability, accessibility, honesty, privacy and transparency.

An Introduction to OurSay Australia from Our Say Australia on Vimeo.