Imagine a Smart Government
Welcome to another Sunday of reflection on the state of humanity from the United States of America.
Today’s reflection point: What would it be like to have a governmental system that was revered for its intelligent design, its ability to respond to any adverse situation?
Shout out to 2020! We’d have to be blind to miss the government disfunction and divisions of today. Given that, it’s hard for me to not try to find the critical, sometimes obvious bits that are missing their due focus.
What if the D’s and R’s are framing it up all wrong, forcing us into a nested false dichotomy? (Which team are you rooting for?)
- Not Small Government
- Not Big Government
- Smart Government
And it’s not just the government as a whole, but for each component part.
- Not Small Education
- Not Big Education
- Smart Education
How might we maximize system efficiency, transparency and quality of our governmental systems?
What might a “smart” central government look like?
Smart government can’t be the government of yesterday because it requires tools to manage processes only possible very recently. This smart government grows out of technology like a smart phone. But this one has to be designed and built for people, the one we wanted but never stopped to take the opportunity to re-imagine. One that measures, reports, grows, changes and improves based upon the needs of its dynamic citizenry.
Built on powerful feedback loops. Building a system with a better listening mechanism. Those with ears let them hear. It should listen, filter out noise, allow for easy escalation at local level. This means we work cooperatively together, we demand proportional costs and effective use of any funds required of us. We should be able to see our influence, our reach inside this structure transparently.
Transparent and anti-corruptive structures. It should have the mechanisms to self-balance with the proper checks and balances to prevent corruption including process transparency and exploratory risk assessments.
Centered in the basics of protecting human rights. It should protect the individual rights of each of us and access to the original promise of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of happiness. We can not achieve this original promise if we allow violent acts to be perpetrated against one another (family, friends, neighbors, humans). We can not achieve this ideal if we don’t produce opportunity and shelter for all who seek it.
How might we ask big questions?
What might that look like? As a citizen, how might I pose a question to the collective country?
What if we could ask questions and then collectively manage iteratively creating proposals to fix our system? How might I ask for additional attention and transparency from my representative? How might I be heard? What would I ask?
What if we had 3-5 co-equal presidents each of a specific domain instead of 1 President of everything, wouldn’t the U.S.A. be less prone to identity politics and corruption?
Imagine each of the 5 co-equal presidents has a specific specialty and knowledge domain that their qualifications can align with. We would elect a president of Security, Health, Housing, Food, and Economy. They could balance each others power with official journals of record that would provide “proof of work”.
How might that change the dynamics (exploit) of single issue voters? How would this idea achieve mass consideration in our current system?
What if we could use our digital ids to run for local elected office, suggest legislation, talk to our representatives, and vote in elections?
What if that same digital id could be used to pay for things and access government backed credit for core needs, education services, energy savings improvements and pursuit of self-employment opportunities?
What if we could rate our politicians or report an incident that you want an official investigation to be done about?
What if these historical investigations were accessible to anyone after they become inactive or are considered resolved? What if you could check to make sure your comments were acknowledged or ignored? What if you could make your complaint public to solicit additional public support?
These questions aren’t just exploring speculative possibilities. There are other countries exploring this kind of radical government transparency and accessibility at this moment. It will happen here, the question is… will we have a hand in designing it. The window is open for only a small period of time. There are big challenges looping.
As an example for what might be possible in digital government services:
As a somewhat extreme example of how hard it is to raise a concern in our current system:
John Oliver a comedian who has television audience focuses attention on Death Investigations. What are the steps we would go through to achieve reform Death Investigations to improve security, transparency and consistency in accurately providing data points on death?
If we need government for some things (and we do), don’t we want it to be designed to work in our benefit, to be as smart as the phone in our pocket? I think the answer is clear that yes, our government should be designed to be smarter than this, evaluated on its performance, and improved iteratively, consistently it needs to be more resistant to the rot of time.
