There is a strong link with the [URL=http://www.cambrianh...IVZ1/]WebDSign[/URL] project, and there are numerous other similar applications.

"Unlike existing political tools our product is easy to understand, practical and detailed."

Politics? Easy to understand? whaaaaaa....t!?

As in any good democratic process, it takes participation to make it work, otherwise it becomes the voice of a few people with vested interests. In both the Canada and US there are two main parties (i.e. that would ever have a chance of governing the country). I know in Europe there is a different political arrangement, so there tends to be far more parties gunning for a possible shot at positions of power.

I could see the idea working differently in Europe than in North America, it may actually get some people interested in the political process and encourage higher turnouts at the polling booths on election nights.

It may have more clout in municipal and regional politics, where there are many layers of funding to wade through.

> Politics? Easy to understand?

By this I mean that viewing a contributor's budget will let anyone understand what is important (or not) for this contributor. If he allocates much more (or less) budget (than the real nation) to something you may bet that it is a hot topic for him/her.

> As in any good democratic process, it takes participation

Indeed! The proposed system may help. It cannot be used to assess the impact of allocation changes, but he may reveal something and lead to fun or useful dialogs between members.

Ask to the average person "what can politics do for your kids? For you? For your folks?...". Most replies are disappointing (vague, unclear, neglecting huge tasks ...). Then show his nation's budget to him in an easy-to-grasp way. Many will fall from their chairs. "Wow, 7% for this! Seems too low!", "10% for that! It's pretty high!". By modifying the sums allocated to various ministry he will better feel that arbitration is necessary, that a nation cannot simultaneously pursue many goals. He will have to neglect some ordeals in order to tackle others, he will think about all this, maybe try to explain his choices, dialog with others about all this...

The IRS will love it, as it shows that without any revenue a nation "may have" severe problems.

It may get some people interested in the political process.

> In both the Canada and US there are two main parties
((...))

Wow, I'm not ambitious to the point of creating a new way to govern :-)

In fact my proposal doesn't aim at reforming any government and may resist to official hostility if the site is fun to use.

> It may have more clout in municipal and regional politics

That's a very good idea, thank you!

im not getting it
what would the website do?

> what would the website do?

Let every user devise his own version of the nation's budget, then to compare it to other's and to the real nation's budget.

Users will do this in order to show to others what/why they want the gov do. It may start political dialogs among users, send signals to politicians, let some better understand the problem (or why they are taxed)...

It may reveal trends, offer to any existing party a way to show and explain his applied choices (no theoretical rhetoric but, for example, "how much for education? Why not more for health?")

The website will sell ads and merchandise and offer some prizes (budget closest to the next real one, budget liked by others, budget somewhat "averaging" others...)

What is it contributing to democracy?
I'm not thrilled about the idea
Tomy

> What is it contributing to democracy?

As noted by PeeJayEl "it may actually get some people interested in the political process".

Many political chats between friends lead to nothing fun or useful because they convey too few practical considerations. Participants agree (or disagree) upon 'principles', air is displaced, and nobody learns or changes his mind. By trying to start them upon the "do you think the gov must give more or less money for this, for that...?" I noticed that 'real' opinions sometimes arise.

After completing a form, even partially, each user will obtain a (printable) pleasant 'mapping' of his choices with the current political map, graphically expressing for example "On the military side of things, you are very near THIS politician/party", he will obtain a list of other accounts who answered similarly or radically differently (for those who accept this matching function), and so on...

Don't you think that it may please people interested in politics? That some may even trick their not-so-passionate friends into 'playing' this game, in order to start a chat?

Users should see a graph of their country's current spending/budgets AND maybe another country (or even several others) for reference. Otherwise, it might be too vague and people would provide off the cuff responses that they don't understand and would not stand by after only the slightest reconsideration. Maybe the budget graphs that they manipulate could be compared with graphs of other countries and world distributions. I am thinking of the CIA world fact books here, but Gapminder.com is progressing toward making such information dynamic and highly interactive. The public needs to see all the social data, see how it is changing, and to interact with it via predictive models. Swivel.com is a democratic experiment, but the guidance that Gapminder provides seems neccessary to help large numbers of people to understand the many complex interactions. I hope this helps.

> Users should see a graph
((...))

That's a good idea, thank you!

In fact the user interface (even for input) could be fully graphical (Flash or Java), letting him/her manipulate each item's spending as a bar placed on graphs showing other countries data.

> Gapminder.com

I didn't know this pretty impressive and pertinent site. Wow :-)

All this is very helpful, thank you!

We've been asked to do this in Alberta. Go to a website, prioritize spending, and allocate ourselves. Of course the gov just uses this as a reference, it isn't tallied, averaged and applied.

I personally trust an expert to review the budget and make policy recommendation over my guess that say 42% of budget should go to education. I'm no policy wonk, all I can do is occasionally read a critique saying the gov is spending too much or too little, and go by that if i trust their judgment.

Thank you! I suppose the site is http://www.budgetcon...ultation.alberta.ca/ (please let me know if there is other pertinent material) and will study this. Their 'survey.pdf' summary seems pretty cool.

> I personally trust an expert

... as long as the Crowd can check any relevant material :-)

There are a wide number of political forums already that strongly debate issues.

> political forums

I agree, but as far as I can tell most "lead to nothing fun or useful because they convey too few practical considerations. Participants agree (or disagree) upon 'principles', air is displaced, and nobody learns or changes his mind.", and I think that this approach gives some practical/hands-down/applied material to it, fueling more interesting (even for the non political-minded) and useful dialog.

Could be a useful tool for people really interested in politics and politicians to take the "public's pulse." Where would operational funds come from?

I think this idea would have to rely on the fact that most people care about the political and budgetary process. It may be visited once or twice by the curious, but the hard-core politicos would bookmark it and probably consume the majority of the bandwidth.

Depending on the accuracy and timeliness of the information it could become a popular site for the die-hards.

> Operational funds

The site will sell advertising, probably mainly to political parties and media (even websites) centered around political problems and maybe through some advertisement-serving service.

> most people care about the political and budgetary process

Many care about their tax money and this project aims at leading them come check (the big picture of) how their and various other nations use it, then balance their own choices and priorities. The user's "applied political map" (showing which parties and nations had similar choices) produced by the site after he completes a budget, at least at the macro level, may be of particular interest for many.

Information accuracy and freshness will not differ to any other similar source, because most material will be published by official bodies (Finance ministries) and the rest from classic time series (CIA World Factbook and similar) the site will have to present only pertinent data, along with its sources, in a pleasant and useful way. This may be the major challenge

This is a great idea.

You have more or less described the Swiss system of democracy which has worked very well since the foundation of the Swiss Confederation in A.D. 1315.

Budgets and expenses are voted on from the village level upwards.
For example even the cost of painting a white line on the road is approved by the village residents at weekly meetings.

This has resulted in a free democracy which has lasted 800 years, low taxes, a very wealthy country and little need of their president nor politicians.

Your idea to promote a similar concept via the net is in my opinion excellent.

The downside is, it will displease most of your useless politicians as they will become redunant Lol.

Good Luck.

I think it might be interesting if you could see some macro level chart of the actual budget, and then make and justify changes. Or maybe have the budget itself listed, and have a way to identify waste, some sort of voting or polling system.

Anyhow it got me thinking, which is worth a vote.

> Swiss system

This project is only aiming at letting visitors play with all this 'budget' stuff, not to replace any existing political system. But its fundamentals are effectively very 'direct democracy'-inspired, and Switzerland is a good model (BTW I'm French, live in France and visited neighboring Switzerland)

> useless politicians

The Crowd will decide :-)

> macro level chart of the actual budget, and then make and justify changes

Charts (at various zoom levels): indeed!

No one will have to justify changes, albeit this will probably be very useful in triggering dialogs.

> some sort of voting or polling

Yep, the Crowd will periodically "elect" winners/champions/... :-)

The summary charts on the Alberta page are great.
http://www.budgetcon...ound_info/index.html

They should summarize the voting and show the difference between how the people voted and what the government actually did. (The government doesn't want to show this?)

Also:
Show the changes over time (animation like Gapminder).
Allow interaction with the data to show segments of the population or to model prediction (I think Gapminder does some of this too)

> changes over time

Not easy to implement, but indeed very useful

> interaction with the data

Even more difficult... and useful

Thank you!

people are a head of you on this one
if simple, or not simple, simulation is the goal:
http://www.delib.co....roducts_and_services
http://www.econedlin...dex.cfm?lesson=EM306

tlyden: I was not able to not found those, thank you! How did you find those?

This puts an end to this project, as 'Delib' is more powerful.

Thank you!

delib: the alberta poll certainly wasn't that flashy. But neither... i dunno I think unless there's context for each number shown to the user its all fairly meaningless. I can say "roads are more important to me than clean water", and I can push a few dollars over from one column to the other, but I don't see how the user is making an informed decisions.

Its certainly democratic, but in an informed-voter way. As citizens are pulling $s from one column to another, then prioritized items need to appear and disappear from each list, so once say 1 mil is removed from transportation the X St and Y Ave intersection won't get upgraded.

Or pull money from the Crime Prevention, and X # of cops are pulled off the street.

If that level of detail could be communicated, then I think such an approach would be very beneficial.

(And I realize Natmaka has decided this idea's been done, but I still find it an interesting problem which I think ultimately needs higher aspirations in conveying information.)

Documenting 'effects' (intersections upgraded or cops in the streets... or not) may directly lead to classic distortions tied to direct democracy: people willing to pick their choices in the various projects ("X and Y intersection: don't care, but W and Z must be done! I live there!") and neglecting long-term budgets not tied to immediate or 'accountable' benefits (better buy some cranes/shovels in case of frequent intersections upgrades, better build a police academy if you want more cops...). That's why I thought that every 'budgeter' will be invited to somewhat explain his choices.

I thought that enabling users to compare the respective proportions of various existing budget items (education, defense, ecology...) among real similar locations (districts, regions, nations...) may, given the fact that many travel and are more-or-less well-informed and interested in some 'foreign' locations, lead to comparisons ("how comes that nation X, very similar to mine, spends much less for Y? Do they neglect it? Are we over-spending?..."). But the reactions show that I'm not considering all this as most do.

There is even no point in developing a generic software because the 'Delib' offering seems to already cover this space.

Am I misleaded?

Dynamic graphing will bring the data to life. I will try to locate it later, but Gapminder has at least one model you can interact with and see the graph change. Actually, it might be a report of data; though, I seem to remember that it extrapolates into the future.

People will play with this as a toy and move on. Others will use it to promote selfish interests. But, the real magic lies in its utility to include and educate many, and to hold the powerful accountable.

Economists can develop models for how to pay for government functions, but politicians will have much more incentive to follow good advice when the public are playing with those models and can see the effects of their manipulations.

http://www.gapminder...ent-trends-2005.html

Interactive presentations; human-development-trends-2005: Lower right corner at Gapminder.org.

Intuitive presentation for better understanding the world on so many different levels
Objective presentation of data for democratic policy making and allocation of resources

Hans Rosling is becoming an international hero but I think it will take people within many other countries (Canada, France, US, and on and on...) to educate the people about disparities and how to best allocate resources to improve living conditions.

"Gapminder World 2006
This website, powered by Trendalyzer, enables you to explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries by the indicators you choose. "

http://www.gapminder...nloads/applications/

The 2005 presentation(s) of data introduces this mode of graphic display and exploration. The 2006 software lets you work with the data more independently. It is a fun toy, and much more than just that.

Summertime: I agree that there is something to do, either by proposing some enhancement of Gapminder and such (this may prove difficult to do!), or by referring to them.

However I not anymore convinced that many like this very idea, to put it mildly (read my message just above yours) :-)