Open-source governance

Open source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open source and open content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry in this way, allowing policy development to benefit from the collected wisdom of the people as a whole.

Some envision this form of governance as a post-national "virtual state" governing structure, where policy-setting is decoupled from territorial management. Some models are significantly more sophisticated than a wiki, incorporating levels of control or scoring to mediate disputes. In any event, the idea demonstrates the still untapped potential of how open source philosophies can merge with government.

A typical core principle is the concept of a "central codebase" in the form of a set of policies that are maintained in a public registry and that are infinitely reproducible. "Distributions" of this policy-base are released (periodically or dynamically) for use in localities, which can apply "patches" to customize them for their own use. Localities are also able to cease subscribing to the central policy-base and "fork" it or adopt someone else's policy-base. In effect, the government stems from emergent cooperation and self-correction among members of a community. As the policies are put into practice in a number of localities, problems and issues are identified and solved, and where appropriate communicated back to the core.

Because so much information must be gathered for the overall decision-making process to succeed, however, technology may provide important forces leading to the type of empowerment needed for participation in this kind of government, especially those technological tools that enable community narratives and correspond to the accretion of knowledge.

See also

• Direct democracy
• E-democracy
• E-participation
• Electronic voting — Referring to both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes.
• Emerging Virtual Institutions
• Government 2.0
• Open Voting Consortium
• Radical transparency

External links

Specifically about open source governance

• Metagovernment — Open governance project aimed at replacing all governments with scored websites.
  • Related projects — An extensive list about Open Source Governance projects around the world.
• DemocracyLab — A Portland Oregon based nonprofit organization seeking to connect the values people hold to their positions on issues and the policies they advocate. Currently partnering with the Oregon 150 Project to help high school students create a collaborative vision for Oregon's future.
• Future Melbourne — A wiki-based collaborative environment for developing Melbourne's 10 year plan, which, during public consultation periods, enables the public to edit the plan with the same editing rights as city personnel and councilors.
• New Zealand Police Act Review — A wiki used to solicit public commentary during the public consultation period of the acts review.
• Aktivdemokrati (Swedish) — Direct democratic party, aiming for the parliament of Sweden.
• Mass Collaboration Wiki — A wiki to develop a massively collaborative direct democracy.
• White House 2 - Crowdsources the U.S. agenda, "imagining how the White House might work if it was run completely democratically by thousands of people on the internet."
• Us Now - A film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet.

About incorporating open source software into government

• Open Voting Consortium
• "Open-Source Government Free-software guru Bruce Perens has a new information-technology solution" — Outlines use of open source technologies in government.
• VOTE System News — The Verifiable Open Technology Elections (VOTE) approach is a collaborative initiative between voting system vendors, open public standards organizations and public open source development organizations.
• C2 Wiki on Open Source Voting Technology
• Crashing The System on Mother Jones.
• Participatory Technology Blog — Reviews of Open Source tools to support eParticipation.

Wikibooks

• Free/Open Source Software:Government Policy

References

• Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff, 2004
• What's Wrong With Politics and Can Technology Do Anything To Fix It? by Mitchell Kapor, October 7, 2004
• Berry, D M.& Moss, Giles (2006). Free and Open-Source Software: Opening and Democratising e-Government's Black Box. Information Polity Volume 11. (1). pp 21-34