Better management of projects and communications in the houses of parliament
Summary: Introduce the latest project management and communication technologies
Manage policy discussion much better in the government and use the most modern project management techniques, for example "lean" and "kanban" techniques.
There are two layers to this solution : Basic layer : 1.) better prioritisation of discussions in terms of time duration 2.) only include people who could genuinely contribute to a debate on a certain topic, and don't waste time on including people who have vague knowledge of a topic ( this is a huge problem in all houses of parliament - especially among "backbencher" politicians who don't have an educated understanding of some topics but are invited to contribute ). 3.) implementation of "lean" and "kanban" methodologies 4.) introduction of digital platforms such as message boards and trackers to policy discussions. Too many policies are discussed verbally, and this leads to emotional confrontation which makes some arguments invalid. Message boards ensure that members of houses of parliament will have time to compose themselves and express their thoughts more accurately. If they fail to express their thoughts or opinions in simple terms, and fail to deliver their argument, then their input is excluded. 5.) introduce stricter metrics of accountability to members of house of parliament. With the use of message boards, it will be possible to measure the ratio of input to successfully accepted output. Then the politician will have a better sense of how successful they are and what they need to do in order to improve.
Advanced layer This is completely beyond my skill set, but in the case of Irish Government meeting minutes, it is possible to analyse speech patterns and find patterns of inefficiencies and misunderstanding. This involves knowledge of behavioral linguistics and psychology. Based on those patterns, it will be possible to design a better way to communicate a particular policy and make decisions on it.
Second idea : Online feedback forum/board for citizens
Government should also have an online feedback forum where people could freely complain about things. That feedback forum should only be available to citizens of a particular country and special controls should be implemented to make sure that the complaint is genuine. This forum should also be linked to main policy debates that happen in the government. So feedback from that forum should be linked to tracked discussions inside the houses of parliament, i.e the same system as mentioned under point 4 above.
Ideally, if all government debates would happen in writing on forums, then it would be easier to let the public be involved. However, right now, they are done in the following way, which is inefficient : Your text to link here...
Hey, [Yuri.Brigadir@8E326B69],
I imagine the whole parlaments going kanban? Oh, maybe :) The recent version of Infinity kind of goes that direction ( check out http://inf.li ).
Totally agree. That's again, what should happen. With the introduction of blockchain, I suppose, this would make it possible to just let people tell their opinions with public and cryptographically signed messages.
The 2nd idea -- would be good to separate as separate as independent one.
I have expanded both ideas, and connected them too. If there are still some further questions, I will re-think the defective parts of the ideas.
As for connecting them together, it is too early to establish exact way to do it, because we will need to try out all the points that were mentioned in the idea and test them first.
Also, can you crystallize in more detail, how this would work in practice? Would the system transcribe all discussions in the houses of parliament, and make them available in this govt-run forum? How does that integrate with project management? How would this guarantee to solve the parent problem?
Great, and congratulations with the first idea on Infinity! :) I see several ideas in one - use most modern project management techniques, and create a government-run forum for feedback and complaints.
The "Use the most modern project management techniques" is very vague, because it is not clear what is "the most modern". We had thoughts that "oh, you could use trello for government, you could use basecamp for public issues, etc.", or "you could use 'agile' for government projects," and so forth. However, a few years later "agile" is not modern anymore, and "basecamp" is replaced by new technology "X". So, it would be good if you can be more specific about this, because "use the best technology" is not an idea, it's a homework problem.
Regarding the forum thing. So, essentially, a "government-run online feedback forum for complaints"?. Not a bad idea at all. In fact, I have had a bit similar idea by a friend of mine, recently expressed, as -- "A complaints register!" (allow citizens to easily and semi-automatically file legally binding complaints), and make the govt do what it is supposed to do. Complaints are, in fact, a supported form of feedback from citizens in many countries, that government officials are obliged to pay attention to, if the number of complaints reaches certain threshold.