School of Data submission

Title

Consensus-building Methods for Tackling NYC Issues

Short Description

We would like to invite School of Data participants to engage with us on the topic of open consultation. In our definition of open consultation, citizens, scholars, the public sector and private sector, engage in deliberation to reach rough consensus on issues in the public sphere and help government craft public policies and programs. There is an ever adapting process based in the civic tech community in Taiwan that helps government have an open consultation with citizens on crafting legislation. Our workshop will start with a brief description of Taiwan's open consultation process. We will then open the floor to discussion so everyone can share knowledge around participatory processes. Within this discussion we will bring focus to NYC issues that can benefit from an open consultation, and brainstorm ways to tackle these issues using knowledge gained from Taiwan and other experiments. The content we will contribute to this conversation will include Taiwan's structured conversation methods and case studies to emphasize the unexpected breakthroughs happening with the vTaiwan process and the use of AI-powered surveying tool, Pol.is.

Your background

Facilitators: Liz Barry, Claudina Sarahe, Darshana Narayanan

Describe how this session responds to the selected themes/issues

The workshop we propose directly adds to BetaNYCs main missions of fostering democracy, building cross-borough relationships, and mentoring a new generation of civic leaders—by engaging them in dialogue around process, technology and core values of inclusion, transparency and accountability.

For Noel

Rise
43 West 23rd Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10010
Google Maps - https://goo.gl/maps/qPsdGCW1c3C2

Topic

Consensus-building Methods for Tackling NYC Issues

Description

Discover the ever-adapting process – based in the civic tech community in Taiwan – that helps their government openly consult with citizens on legislation. After a brief presentation, we will role play how the structured conversation method could assist deliberation around a tough issue facing New Yorkers.

Objectives

• Improvements to governments aren't solely going to happen through technoloy platforms—conversational technologies (facilitation)

Agenda

1:45 - 2:45

15m intro
10m fact
10m feeling
20m ideas
5m decision

Detailed Agenda / Run sheet

OPTIONAL ADVANCE SET-UP:
have unordered chairs - chaotic

1:45 - 1:50 :

Opening gambit – "What if our civic tech movement created a broad-base of consensus that showed government what steps to take? And what if our civic tech community was asked by the government to install this open process for rule-making? This is happening in Taiwan, and we're going to roleplay this process."
*(Optional additional points to make, also could move to closing reflections: )

• having values as an open source community
• importance of conversations: how conversations outlive technology
  • patcon Re: Pace layers? conversations = culture?
• Taiwan as a combination of humanity + tech

1:50 - 2:00

"Every wednesday, for the whole day, a space is dedicated civil society and government to come together and propose issues for deliberation and action. This happens in an airport hanger-sized auditorium – the size of a giant dim sum restaurant."

"Ways to participate:

• In Taiwan, you can come in any time of day and propose an issue that you would like the whole country to deliberate on and tackle.

(Overview of Process)

"We are going to structure discussion on this issue into four phases: fact-finding (magnifying glass), feeling (heart), idea (lightbulb), decision-making (checkbox)."

Introduce the taskforce

"To explore how this works in pratice, let's say that a certain issue comes to prominence —

• from our in-person gathering at the wednesday hackathons
• issues can bubble up via distributed effort via the Join platform where issues to gather signatures ()

"The vTaiwan taskforce (consisting of members of government and civic tech community) acts to find a government agency who will do the ground work within government for this issue:

• provide the relevant background information
• commit to show up during the process
• carry the results of the process into action (legistaltion)

"Further, the vTaiwan task force:

• identify and train the issue facilitator (any individual with interest in the issue but no direct stake)
• gather additional relevant background information
• identify relevant stakeholders from across the landscape
• holds listening sessions with stakeholders
• cycles through stakeholder consultation until the frame of discussion is agreed to by all

"For the next hour, CS, Darshana, and Liz are not only presenters, but are also playing roles as the vTaiwan taskforce and the issue facilitator ("the nobodies") of this process. It's also going to be "cooking show style" – going through the main steps but skipping ahead so that you get an overview of the whole process start-to-finish.

2:00 - 2:02 the issue for the workshop (cooking show magic)

accountability and transparency beyond datasets and government."
*(the following are optional refinements to be deleted Sunday Feb 25:)

• How much corporate involvement in urban data collection is appropriate?
• Surveillance VS services: how much privacy (if there's any left) is worth giving up for the city of the future?
• What responsibility do urban data companies have to release the data they collected on the public publicly?
• How to hold algorithms accountable?*

– put this on a slide

2:05 - 2:10 Fact finding

"The vTaiwan task force, kicks off fact-finding phase to create a repository of information so that we can all educate ourselves and build a shared lexicon for discussion"

"We identified a few stakeholder groups who would be involved in discussing this topic:

• The Mayor's office of the City of New York
• corporations seeking to innovate in cities, such as SidewalkLabs
• open government & transparency advocates
• netizens who work primarily over the internet (no formal office)
• ?
• MoDA
  • patcon Should we allude to "rolling invites" to contribute to bank of stakeholders? These deputize receivers of the email to forward on, suggesting potential new stakeholders to add to the outreach list.

Speak directions to the audience: "Please pick up your chairs and form into [6] stakeholders groups. They don't have to be exactly the same size!"

2:10 - 2:15

"Once in your groups, individually write down some important "Facts" assuming the point of view of the stakeholder group you are sitting in. After about a minute, begin sharing amongst your group, and writing them into the hackpad"

'Notice jargon – any unique words, phrases, principles that may not be universally understood – and explain it in plain language so everyone is on the same plane. We will form these into a "shared lexicon" that will be circulated before we go on to the next phase."

Phase 2 - Feeling

2:15 - 2:20

"How does it work? Open source AI helps people unearth sometimes surprisingly clusters of attitude/perception/values, through:

• Facilitors seed the poll with representative statements

• Poll is advertised

  • patcon mention nature of digital ad targetting?

• People all over the country respond to the poll

• DRAFT SEED STATEMENTS

  • patcon: Could we encourage statements to start with 'I feel that…'? Coaches people down path where easy to tell the "right" sort of sentiment to add. Also, others can dispute facts, but not how a person feels.
  • it is appropriate for the City of New York to set up an IOT network as public infrastructure
  • it is not appropriate for the government to collect any more data on citizen movement through the city
  • private companies should set up collaborations with government for public use of data

Phase 3 - Ideas

2:20 - 2:35 proposal-weighing / REFLECTION stage –

• patcon I am a little confused: "ideas" in ORID are the "interpretive" phase, not "reflective". Or maybe I misunderstand ORID?

Rearrange chairs into this slide for the reflection meeting:

Facilitators present the results back to the group, pointing out the phrases of the most consensus and the most division.

slide – series of three Polis images from Darshana's archive

• discuss opinion clusters
• define what consensus means for your group
• values

Offering ideas

idea:

• stakeholder groups get 1-2 minutes to put together a presentation using results from polis
• groups present with question time, led by a facilitator
• explain how it's a cycle with many iterations

2:35 - 2:37

decision phase

• government authority for the issue is very important for this phase. They are responsible for carrying the consensus arrived at through the vTaiwan process into action (in Taiwan's case it directly passes into legislation)

End of workshop reflections:

End at decision making: legislation, program creation, etc. some kind of decision for action.

"Would anyone like to share some reflections after having participated in this brief experience?"

Call to Action:

• Get trained as a facilitator (a “nobody”)

• Help organize a facilitator training course with Taiwan's Digital Minister

• Keep receipts of public processes through live-streaming & mixed reality

• Synthesize and visualize information and data to help divisive issues

• Organize structured deliberation events

• Shape "v_YOURCITY_"

• • Here in NYC, we could experience a mini-Hackathon and get some pointeers on how to potentially do this locally by staying a little later at ProgHack night Tuesday evening and staying to 10pm which is their 9am as they get started and join them in Virtual Reality."
    • patcon I think they're exactly 12hr off now?

2:45 END

Todo

• Find out more about decisional phase (incl how people / groups make proposals)
  • Ask Shu
• Setup sample Pol.is around topic
• Send out pol.is to our networks

Taiwan's stages

• proposal (to engage an issue/topic)
  • mini Hackathon
  • (expert trains the facilitator)
    • patcon "expert" being a professional facilitator?
• opinion
  • discourse and polis
• reflection
  • in person meeting
• legislation

Slide 1

Consensus-building Methods for Tackling NYC Issues

Slide 2

prompt — Name and 2 key words
media release
mention the hackathon session

Slide 3

What if Occupy here in NYC had resulted in a broad-base of consensus that showed government what steps to take?

Slide 4

What if New York's civic tech community was asked by the City government to install this open process for rule-making on divisive issues?

Slide 5

This is happening in Taiwan, and we're going to roleplay this process.

• photo of occupied Parliament
• “v” in vTaiwan stands for “vision”, “voice”, “vote” and “virtual”, as vTaiwan embarks on a “virtual venture” of open consultation processes with the citizens.

Slide 6

"Every wednesday, for the whole day, in an airport hanger-sized auditorium – the size of a giant dim sum restaurant – civil society and government to come together and propose issues for deliberation and action."

• photos of vtaiwan hackathon

Slide 7 — Overview

fact
feeling
idea
decision

Slide 8

The vTaiwan taskforce (consisting of members of government and civic tech community)

• vNYC

Slide 9

"To explore how this works in pratice, let's say that a certain issue comes to prominence —

• from our in-person gathering at the wednesday hackathons
• issues can bubble up via distributed effort via the Join platform where issues to gather signatures ()

Slide 10 – ISSUE

• issue government owner
• issue facilitator (any individual with interest in the issue but no direct stake)

The MTA led by announcing a plan. By default, public input focused on critiquing the plan. Although more than 40 meetings have already been held, controversy is still siwrling and more meetings are planned. This exercise is to show how a structured deliberative process in which the agency fully develops their plans only after openly sharing facts, and listening carefully to public attitudes. After a collaborative process like this, feedback to proposals goes much better.

Slide 11 - FACT

"The vTaiwan task force, kicks off fact-finding phase to create a repository of information so that we can all educate ourselves and build a shared lexicon for discussion"

• talk about shared note taking/tools for transparency/generating receipts
• introduce hackmd (other options)
  • create hackmd with 'freely' editable setting

Slide 12

groups

• MoDA
• MTA
• Department of Transportation
• Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC)
• Industry (e.g. Waze)
• Port Authority
• Subway riders
• Bikers
• Urban planners

Slide 12

"Please pick up your chairs and form into stakeholder groups to find facts. The groups don't have to be exactly the same size!"

Slide 13

"Once in your groups, individually write down some important "Facts" assuming the point of view of the stakeholder group you are sitting in. After about a minute, begin sharing amongst your group, and writing them into the hackpad"

Slide 14

'Notice jargon – any unique words, phrases, principles that may not be universally understood – and explain it in plain language so everyone is on the same plane. We will form these into a "shared lexicon" that will be circulated before we go on to the next phase."

Slide 14

Overview of Feeling phase

Slide 15

tools used - polis
high level overview of polis

Slide 16

Take the survey!
(use bitly)

Slide 17 IDEAS

Overview of ideas phase

• in-person
• livestreamed with chat

Slide 18

Slide 19

polis results + facilitator talks about polis

Slide 20

• stakeholder groups get 5 minutes to put together a presentation using results from polis
• groups present with question time, led by a facilitator (30s)
• explain how it's a cycle with many iterations

academic
government
private
civil society

Slide 21 Decision

Slide 22 Call to Action

Slide 23 Discussion

list of things to-do

• slides
• bring projector
• hackmd with stakeholder groups and links for resources
• L trains polis cleaned up
• polis 'baked' snapshots for ideas phase
  • pick something that allows for discussion
• collaborative note-taking hackpad for ideas phase
• agenda for wall