Roles:

Administrators

• Part of the GovThePPL organization
• Operate/maintain the website and tools that allow it to function.

Facilitators

• Need not be part of GovThePPL organization
• Help to guide a problem through the process to resolution
• Perform high level management of a single discussion
• Have the ability to put out surveys
• Help to provide initial Chat App questions
• Reach out to government agencies to receive government liaisons
• Find subject matter experts

Moderators

• Need not be part of GovThePPL organization
• Enforce rules as written
• Help to keep the discussion relatively tame and on topic
• Respond to reports and proactively issue determinations

Subject matter experts

• Outside the GovThePPL organization
• They provide information about the topic under consideration
• May be industry professionals who have knowledge of industry practices
• May be legal advisers with legal knowledge and experience in the problem area

Government liaisons

• Represent government agencies
• Are able to speak competently about the agency’s function and policies

Users

• Discuss and give their opinion on issues
• Follow the rules

Tools:

Polling and chat app (Candid)

Users may need to swipe on some position statements in the chat app before they can participate in other ways. This can discover underlying interest groups and see what their policy preferences and values are. It allows for one-on-one conversation between people that disagree outside of the public eye such that they can gain greater understanding of each others positions in depth without performing for onlookers. This also allows for someone’s “ideological co-ordinate” to be discovered. This is used to represent how ideologically similar they are to others. It also can categorize a number of groups with similar interests. These groups and coordinates are used elsewhere.

Discussion Forum

This is organized similarly to reddit, with hierarchical comment threading. It incorporates users ideological coordinates for comment prioritization and prioritizes back-and-forth discussion between people of different views. Higher prioritization is given to comments that are less polarizing and gain some acceptance of members of other groups. Users may tag the need for a subject matter expert or liaison to give input on a specific issue and these people are notified. Comments by liaisons and subject matter experts are differentiated visually from comments by normal users in order to indicate their increased authority to speak on the issue.

In Q&A, questions are posed to experts and government liaisons to answer. Multiple may answer, and questions may be upvoted on the discussion forum. Answered questions are separated from the normal posts. Questions and answers may be linked elsewhere in the site similar to the knowledge base, but they will be referenced with a number referring to the question. This also creates a pop-over for the user to read in place.

In the Issue Discovery phase, users may submit an Issue Proposal. The Proposal must include a number of Whereas clauses to describe the contours of the issue and a Rights and Societal Interests Analysis. Issue proposals are separated from general discussion and Q&A.

In the Opinion phase, users may submit a Solution Proposal. The proposal specifies how each dimension of the problem is to be addressed and includes a Rights and Societal Interest Analysis for all identified rights. The Solution Proposals are separated from general discussion and Q&A.

Knowledge Base

The knowledge base contains explanations of civic and legal terms and concepts. It also explains our recognized rights, including what type of right (fundamental/basic). It also is where experts interpret and explain the current state of law. Each term or concept is explained in at multiple levels: the title, a short description, a paragraph explaining it in basic terms, and a more in depth explanation of the topic. This procession allows people to gain an understanding of the issue to the level of depth they’re interested in an feel comfortable with.

Additionally stores documents pertaining to the history of the issue including video meeting recordings, notes, and transcripts.

When a user includes one of the terms in the knowledge base in a comment on the website, the term is highlighted and tapping it displays the short description in a pop-up, along with a link to the full article on it. This helps to spread understanding of civics and the issue under discussion among normal users that would otherwise be unlikely to read documents.

Rights and Societal Interest Analysis

Each implicated right is enumerated, the standard to impinge on it is identified, and the competing societal interest is identified. Explanations and descriptions of how the right is implicated are submitted by initial poster of the item requiring a rights analysis (such as an Issue Proposal or Solution Proposal). Potentially implicated rights may be identified with AI to require response.

Video chat

Video chat panels consist of three sections and the public:

• The people (representatives from each underlying group) or others that attend
• Government liaison and subject matter experts
• Facilitator who manages discussion
• Observers who may comment in a chat room with their group or as a whole

Face sheet

The face sheet is a summary of the different Groups’ priorities in each dimension of the problem. It takes information from the Solution Proposals. It is arranged like a table with each dimension of the problem identified as a row with a response from the proposal. Each right implicated has a row with a description of how the solution affects it and how it meets the standard to impinge on it if required.

Petition

A petition is a collection of signatures (people’s real names) in favor of a specific proposal that has been created through the following process.

Stages

1. Proposal

Issue Discovery

Tools:

• Discussion Forum
• Chat app

A number of “subcommittees” exist. Each subcommittee is dedicated to a specific category of topics, for example “Environment”. Users submit specific “problems” for consideration in the discussion forum and and have the ability rank up to 5 problems (or some other number). Each problem is further specified with “whereas” clauses which describe the contours of the problem and the rationale for being it being chose for legislation.

The top 5 problems (or some other number) are then voted on, ranked choice, retaining relative ranking from the previous step. Users may rank all 5 problem statements.

The top problem from each committee is chosen to proceed, resulting in one problem from each committee. Users then may rank all of the problems from each committee and select the one problem to move through the legislation process.

Consensus statements may appear on the committee’s page to inform people’s thoughts.

Preparation

When the problem to be considered is found, a facilitator is selected through some fashion. The facilitator should be engaged and knowledgeable about the process but not overly preferential to a point of view.

It is the facilitators job to:

• Guide the proposal through the process
• Coordinate outreach to subject matter experts and government liaisons
• Moderate in person discussions
• Identify stakeholders in the issue (those affected by it) and coordinates outreach
• Work with SMEs and liaisons to generate initial set of questions for Candid

Subject Matter Experts and liaisons:

• Create knowledge base articles
• Explain relevant terms
• Explain current law
• Produce infographics

All of these must be easy to understand by the public

2. Opinion

Tools:

• Question and Answer
• Polling and chat app
• Knowledge Base
• Discussion forum

With background information available, the public comment period is opened. This is the primary phase of engagement for most users.

They post questions on the Q&A, chat and post opinions, and otherwise discuss the issue.

3. Reflection

Tools:

• Video Chat
• Knowledge Base
• Face sheet
• Rights Analysis

The facilitator, subject matter experts, and representatives of the people hold a live and open discussion to determine if public discussion of the issue indicates that it is ready to proceed to the legislative phase. They consider the current state of the discussion and whether there are outstanding issues ore dimensions of the problem that have yet to be fully explored or where some degree of consensus is yet to be reached.

4. Legislation

Tools:

• Knowledge Base
• Petition

The government responds.

• If the change can be implemented by a government agency without legislation, they implement it or state why they will not
• A member of the legislature submits a bill written to implement the changes
• Signatures are gathered and it goes to a ballot measure