Invitation to 'Democracy 2043'

UK Open Government Network Democracy
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A better future: mapping the journey to Democracy 2043.

Part of the annual Festival of Debate, this free event will be live streamed as well as in-person in Sheffield, UK.

Wed 24 May 2023, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UK time.

Whether you’d like to attend in-person or online, please reserve your place at A better future: mapping the journey to Democracy 2043 Tickets, Wed 24 May 2023 at 19:00 | Eventbrite

Hope you can make it!

Imagine you had 20 years to shape a better democracy…

…what would that look like? And what do we need to be putting in place now to make it happen?

Most people would agree that we need a healthy democracy: one that’s fair, accessible and transparent. It’s easy to point to the ways in which our current democracy is not living up to those ideals — but how can we set it on a new, better direction?

At this free event, our panellists will describe their visions for a better future. We’ll be asking for yours, too.

Dr Kim Foale, Geeks For Social Change
Geeks for Social Change is a small tech studio creating tools and processes for community liberation.

Emma Geen, Bristol Disability Equality Forum
Bristol Disability Equality Forum works towards a society where Disabled people are respected and valued, and fully included in their communities and the country as a whole.

Joy Green, Systemic Futurist
Joy has fifteen years experience of applying futures, foresight and system change methodologies across a wide range of sectors and organisations.

Immy Kaur, CIVIC SQUARE
CIVIC SQUARE is a neighbourhood lab and creative participatory platform focused on regenerative civic and social infrastructure within neighbourhoods.

Louise Crow, mySociety
Louise started at mySociety as a volunteer and spent several years as a developer and project leader before taking on the role of Chief Executive.

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Thanks Myf, Janos (Gawd, we think the same way),

I’m taking notes as I listen to Louise Crow from Mysociety. After 20 years she’s able to distil, in a few minutes as a technologist, everything I, and many observers with an engineering mind, might say.

Louise has her shopping list, and the CEO’s of at least another 50 open.gov type projects have said the same, since the WWW was invented. So the question is, from an OGPer’s perspective about progress, how might the OGP process might be improved to become the International Umbrella for lots of International and Local projects.

i.e. OPEN being the prime philosophy/doctrine which progresses projects such as OPEN gov, OPEN education, OPEN research, OPEN networks, OPEN source, etc.

Let’s face it. All we are talking about is coordinating the timing of similar Commitments - some made in the past, some made today, and some yet to be made.

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Notes/quotes on Louise Crow’s presentation,

*I want a rich democracy ,something that people feel a part of (as opposed to) something that’s done to them. *

UK has a more central political system than anywhere else in Europe.
I’m a technologist. I’m particularly in ‘’ How we make decisions together about what we want our online spaces will look like".

We needs a universal broad Civic education. We are not good at teaching people how to participate in our democracy.
How to vote, etc etc…
*TRUST, Representative or participatory? *

*We need less debate. One side right, one side wrong. Winner takes all. *
We need more deliberation. Recognising the things we can all agree on. Solving common problems.
Again, as a technologist, we should be using digital tools to support all of this.
How do we live together?