Citizens Initiatives and Open Data in Finland. Joonas Pekkanen

Transcription

1 Citizens Initiatives and Open Data in Finland Joonas Pekkanen

2 Forum Virium Helsinki 2

3 Open Knowledge, Open Government 3

4 Open Ministry Non-profit civil society organisation without party-political links, un-funded, volunteer-based Founded in 2012 to advocate well functioning citizens initiative process and to help individual CI campaigns Aims to make sure that lessons learned from earlier campaigns are put to use in future campaigns Has been involved in 6 of the 9 initiatives that have reached the 50k threshold Takes part in various projects to improve citizen participation, transparency and accountability including taking part in public discussion 4

5 Some Challenges in the Current Model Citizens feel disenfranchised, lack of influence Elections every 4 years are not enough for people who want to take part actively Elected representatives lack expertise in increasingly complex issues Issues are too big (climate change, global equality, etc) and exceed 4 year government term The power of lobbyists, industry and economic drivers is emphasised Internet has changed all aspects of life (how we work, communicate, meet people, follow news, etc) except the way we make decision together 5

6 The Finnish Citizens Initiative Enshrined in the Constitution in the latest basic right of Finnish citizens The politicians monopoly to set their own agenda has been broken Now citizens can force any issue on the parliamentary agenda Proposals can be either in law proposal format ( ) or general suggestions for law-makers Initiatives can concern anything within the scope of parliamentary legislation powers excluding international treaties and direct budget issues 6

7 Launching & Supporting an Initiative No pre-censorship / moderation of the proposals before launching At least 2 people with voting right needed to launch an initiative Support is collected online in Ministry of Justice s website (kansalaisaloite.fi) over a 6 month period Online bank id s or mobile verification is needed for launching and signing Open Ministry helps in formulating law proposals and designing campaigns 7

8 What Initiatives Have been Done? More than 320 initiatives have been launched 9 initiatives have reached the required 50k threshold, issues concerning: Fur-farming Same-sex marriages Copyright reform Swedish language Energy certificates Abortion Birthing hospitals Drunk driving Child molestation 6 have been given to the current parliament (3 wait for the next parliament to start work) - 1 has been accepted! 8

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10 Example: Copyright Reform Campaign 10

11 Example: I do 2013 Campaign 11

12 Example: Energy Renovation 2015 Campaign 12

13 Paul Baran (1964) 13

14 Characteristics of New Decentralized Citizens Campaigns Participants are not known to each other beforehand Share a common value base, embrace free public discussion Requires the activity of one or few key people (fire starters) in the beginning who are capable of exciting a few key people to join the core who are capable and willing to distribute their power early enough Self-organise using free online tools and social media Facebook groups, google forms, google documents, etc. 14

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16 D-CENT: How to Improve the Current Tools? How to make the work for the fire starters as frictionless as possible Make it easy to test if an idea has traction Make it easy to create the core group How to make it easy to scale up the organisation Make it easy to facilitate and link between self-organising subgroups Make it easy to make decision as a large open ended groups Make it easy to keep track of various co-edited documents Make it easy to manage, delegate and contribute to tasks 16

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18 Justifications for Open Data 1. Democracy a. transparency & accountability b. participation c. data is owned by the taxpayer 2. Cost savings for Government a. public sector efficiency b. improved procurement processes 3. Business opportunities a. new services b. enriching existing services 18

19 Apps4Finland

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21 Mobility as a Service

22 Case: Sujuvuusnavigaattori Project

23 Case: Biodiversity Project (lajirikkauskartta)

24 Thank you web: dcentproject.eu facebook: facebook.com/dcentproject

25 How the Initiatives are Processed Initiatives are processed identically to government bills initial plenary discussion => committee hearings and report => plenary session In theory if not processed in time before parliament is disbanded, the initiative lapses The committee arranges one open session, but rest of the sessions (expert hearings) are behind closed doors The expert statements become public when the committee publishes its report Citizens initiatives have been criticised for being inadequately prepared - although the committees could have improved them together with the initiators 25

26 Version Control for Laws and Crowdsourced Fixing Current laws, amendments to them and any new laws should be available to everyone in a version control system (similar to git in software development) The origins of any individual clause could be tracked For example, which lobby group suggested it in the drafting phase Anyone should be able to comment, ask for clarifications or suggest changes to any clause What processes needed to fix the laws that have received crowdsourced patches i.e. how should civil servants manage manage pull requests from the public 26