I am an Openist

I believe there is the need for a movement towards creating a software platform and ideology that will allow, inspire, and enforce complete transparency in all aspects of government.

I am an Openist.

Information systems architecture and implementation principals are designed to solve problems efficiently. We can take the lessons we have learned in the field and apply the same principles to creating a system for organizing government that will allow and further the empowerment of people past what current democracy allows.

Democracy has allowed us to escape, for now at least, the cycle of oppression and revolution. It has allowed us to revolutionize within the system enough to prevent the violent upheaval of society. The world is moving faster and faster and I believe the system is proving too slow and encumbered by bureaucracy to the point where it’s no longer an effective tool to solve society's fast moving problems.

Our current democratic government has successfully allowed us to evolve a large part of human society, but in order to remain effective, government must evolve outside of its current confines. We have to create a system of government that gives people the ability to be more involved and informed in the process of government, a more dynamic and rapidly adaptable system.

On Leadership

Let’s discuss, for a moment, why and how we have chosen and currently choose our leaders. In the distant past, we had monarchies and other forms of feudal leadership headed by figures that were believed to be smarter, stronger, and destined to rule by birth or strength of arms, and often, because they were seen as having been appointed by god.

There were many different routes from feudalism, to nation state, to modern democracy, but it may be presumed that in modern representative and direct democracies, we elect or through our electoral body appoint leaders because they share our political opinions and we believe in their ability to lead. We defer to people who have more experience and knowledge than ourselves. This is a fundamental aspect of democracy and I believe it is inevitable. Individuals cannot and will not be involved in making decisions about all of the many actionable items that government takes care of from the management and practice of law to budgeting, internal projects, etc..

Government power structure in modern democracy is very distributed right now; each individual in government has very little power. Every decision is heavily debated and tested, pondered, and then only implemented if an agreement can be reached. The reality of this system, however, is that the actual final decisions are often made for different reasons than the issues at hand, due to the slow, non-dynamic nature of the process. Through the growth of international government and trade organizations we abstract power one step further away from people.

On Technology

Information technology, open source software, and the internet have allowed us to do things that ten years ago most of the world would have said was not possible. Every year, our ideas of what information technology and the internet can do change. Successful businesses are being built right now on the basis that the infrastructure of the internet will be vastly different by the time they come to market and the internet continues to get faster, more secure, more penetrative, and more usable.

Government is formed to solve large problems and make large decisions such as law reform, and environmental and social issues that deserve a high level of public scrutiny, but also must take care of all the small things such as day to day municipal issues, staffing, and non-criminal legal proceedings. Through information technology, I believe we can create a system that will divide the power further and allow important decisions to be consistently addressed in a public, open manner appropriate to their potential effect on a society, while allowing the small decisions to be taken care of with little interaction from the public

On Failings

We've seen some very large failures in integrating electronic accountability into the democratic process. However, I believe that the causes of this failure are largely artifacts of an incompatibility between modern representative democracy and the closed information technology it creates.

In order to apply the principals that have been successful in open information system projects, the fundamental nature of democracy must be altered and shaped into a tool to deal with today’s problems.

While the world is moving and changing faster than ever and current democracy is proving too slow to react to important issues, we still need to defer decisions to people with greater knowledge than ourselves, but we must also utilize the power that a distributed network of knowledge has to solve problems and adapt quickly.

I would argue that the inevitability of international government is looming on the horizon. Will international leaders be appointed by the leaders of our government for reasons that the common citizens of the world know nothing about? With the inexorably dense mechanics of such a system rolling slowly into place, we seem almost to be on the brink of a return to the opacity of government experienced by those whose leaders were said to be chosen by god(s).

To prevent this depressing vision of the future, we have to revolutionize the system from within and seize control before it's too late and power has shifted to an international government whose workings can barely be fathomed.

On Solutions

Rapid dynamic evolution is the only way any animal can survive in an environment that is unsustainable and rapidly closing in. We need to bring that type of dynamic rapid adaptability to government.

Through open source software and peer review, a system like this could not only allow us to quickly react on issues, it could, further, allow us to revolutionize the system of government itself through an open reform process.

I believe the success of an open source software project is directly proportionate to its importance in the world. It goes without saying that the importance of government is paramount, hence I believe the success of an open government project is almost assured.

What Now?

What I'm proposing is building a system, a system that looks at our current democratic government systems as competitive products, and tries to do it better. We analyze the stakeholders, the problems government solves, the technology and organization of our competition, etc., and try to tackle those problems using an information system.

To be a part of this movement, all you have to do is add your ideas, hack some code, write some docs, or work on a bug queue. You certainly don't have to agree with anything that I have said above, all you have to do add your opinion in any way to the project.