Performance-Based System for Electing Better Leaders

This page is under-construction

Related: Citizenship Leadership - Website Functionality

This project is about creating a website that would help modernize political systems around the globe and help people elect better leaders and also enable participation from the general public. Improving governments and leadership systems is a complex problem and requires a complex solution that requires a lot of analysis and will take time to design.

One of the biggest criteria that predicts the success of a leader is the genuine passion and dedication they have for the duties of that role. That is something that cannot be faked and it only usually manifests over time. It is this activity that we want to quantify and keep a track of for a leader.

Problems with the existing Political situation

Every single problem in the world like this one (and millions of other problems currently going on in the world at any time) requires full assistance from skilled, experienced, capable, empowered, driven, honest and hard-working leaders who include not only the president but all government officials at the city, state and national level.

There's no reason to vote for people who haven't shown past success for the role that they're being voted for. Everyone is familiar with the problems with politics. Here's a table talking about some problems in today's systems and here are some examples.

• Lack of a Qualification Process: There's no meaningful qualification process for transforming a citizen into a political leader. The things are that involved in this process are lots of money (example), banners, advertisements, popularity, hype, promises made, public-speaking skills, opinions on existing politics and staff for running the campaign. Are we trying to sell a soda bottle or are we trying to evaluate and elect a leader? As it exists today, the situation is basically a marketing effort and the most important aspect which is a track record of success is not considered. Consequently today people vote for leaders for the wrong reasons because there's no useful information available to help them make decisions.
• Isolation: The public is isolated from the leaders, with regards to what is happening and the decisions they're taking. Due to this isolation, there's no transparency. This isolation also means that people usually think they don't have any power over whats happening. Any new political system has to make it clear that it is accessible to citizens so they can participate.

The Vision

Here's how it could work. We would have a website with the following features:

1. Activity Monitoring: our leaders would be monitored on a regular basis. All their activities would be reviewed and graded in a way that would be accurate and objective. People can easily see who their top-performing leaders are so they would know who to support.
2. Initiatives created by people: People could create initiatives that leaders can work on and they can prioritize their work based on what people want them to work on.
3. Non-partisan Teamwork: The specific political party that a leader belongs to would not have any role on the website since we would vote for them based on their performance in different categories of activities. Nonpartisan cooperation would be one of those categories.
4. Tools of the website:
   • Meetings (Scheduling, Signups, Audio/Video recordings, Documents, Meeting Minutes)
   • Getting stuff from the public (feedback, direction, information relating to decisions)

Another way of looking at it is the fact that currently the only thing citizens can do for participating in their government is going to vote. A very small minority of people go to city halls to voice their concerns. We want to change all that so its easier for a citizen to participate in multiple ways and be able to make a difference in a meaningful and significant way.

Goals of this Project / Requirements

1. Create software for a performance-based system that helps civilians identify who their best leaders are
2. It would help citizens lead their communities at a grassroot level, all the way up to city, state, national and international levels
3. Encourage leaders to work on important initiatives and activities identified by themselves or by the community
4. It should be able to create and maintain a new system of leadership that we are trying to develop
5. The system should also be able to improve existing politics
6. This software should work for every location and country in the world

Main Components

These are the main components of this proposed system:

• Engagement levels / Scope (Neighborhood, City, State, National, International)
• Categories of Activities (Environment, Crime, Consumer protection etc)
• Activity Types
• Evaluation of Activities ... (International Cooperation, Non-partisan Teamwork)
• Training/Education of leaders and requirements
• Rewards for citizens who help out in any way (problem-solving, completing tasks or in any other way)

Engagement Levels

As mentioned in the Goals section, people can be involved in leadership at multiple levels. They would have to achieve success at lower levels before they are eligible for participation at higher levels:

• Neighborhood / Zip
• City
• State/Province
• National
• International

This is the simplest part of designing such a system so at least we have that out of the way. Basically we are trying to identify community and political leaders at all levels of society who work with each other and we want to see the same kind of high-quality, skilled, cooperative, transparent and accountable leadership at all levels.

Things that need to be decided

• Expected activities for each level of leadership
• Guidelines to follow (to be determined)
• Things to be evaluated on

Categories of Leadership Activities

These categories are of the utmost importance. Corporate profits, personal beliefs and the status quo have no power at all over any of these categories.

• Environment
• Preservation of Earth's Resources (including recycling)
• Consumer Protection (maximizing choices for consumers, preventing corporate corruption and manipulation, right-to-repair etc)
• Human Rights - extra points for leaders who work on these initiatives in places where human rights of different kinds need special attention e.g. women's rights
• Crime Reduction
• Healthcare
• Energy (Traditional and Renewable)
• Education
• Parenting - improve the way our children are brought up
• Global Citizen Curriculum- What should students of all ages be taught in schools and universities?
• Science and Technology - initiatives that help support science, technology, research and innovation
• Information Technology Adoption - apply information technology to all aspects of society and make governance and administration more accessible to the public and streamlined and transparent
• Standardization - unifying and consolidating systems between city, county, state, national and international boundaries
• Culture Change - identify and resolve issues with harmful cultures (e.g: Young girls force-fed for marriage in Mauritania | Unreported World)
• Government Reform
  • Transparency - maximize and enhance the pubic visibility of processes and decision making
  • Anti-Corruption
  • Decentralization of power (reducing the power that individuals have and instead transfer it to people and their ideas)
  • Anti-Partisan Efforts (working together with members of opposing; greater stress on resolving issues and less stress on party identity)
• Housing
• Poverty
• Transportation
• Foreign Policy (and cooperation with other countries)
• International Team-work (needed?). Some way of representing efforts made to strengthen international ties, cooperation and team work and creating alliances
• Anything else?
  • Other possible options (taken from a politician's website: Agriculture, Appropriations, Banking and Finance, Budget, Criminal Justice Reform, Defense & Military, Economy, Education, Energy, Environmental, Governmental Reform, Health, Housing, Homeland Security, Human Rights, Immigration, Judiciary, Life Issues, Labor, Medicare/Medicaid, Postal Issues, Small Business, Social Security, Taxes, Telecommunications, Transportation & Infrastructure, Trade, Veterans, Welfare, Wildlife)
  • More Categories from https://airesis.eu/proposals : Internal organization | Social, Sport, Entertainment | Sexuality, Family, Children | Ethics, Solidarity, Spirituality | Minorities, Handicap | Security and Justice | World, Migration | Democracy, Institutions | Information, Communication | Art and Culture | Education, Research | Work and Self-realization | Commerce, Finance, Taxes | Health, Hygiene | Industry, Materials and Waste | Energy, Climate | Urbanism, Mobility, Construction | Territory, Nature, Animals | Water, Food, Agriculture
  • Categories from US Rep's Contact website: Agriculture, Animals, Arts and Humanities, Banking and Finance, Budget and Economy, Campaign Finance Reform, Congress and Elections, District of Columbia--Tours, Defense and Military, Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Federal Employees, Foreign Relations, Government Reform, Guns, Health, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Immigration, International Relations, Judiciary, Labor, LGBT, No Response Necessary, Post Office, Science and Technology, Social Issues, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Social Services, Taxes, Telecommunications, Transportation, Trade, Veterans, Women's Issues, Welfare

This list probably needs a lot of granularity and sub-levels. All these categories can be created and maintained by the community.

Often there's a combination of categories that are involved for a specific issue and sometimes there's a dominant category. Leaders are not required to be good in all categories. People have their own unique interests, capabilities and passions. Its ok for someone to be really good in one category and not have any activity in other categories. However they should not be opposing beneficial initiatives in other categories.

The classification of 'Government Official' can be used to identify leaders and representatives.

Activity Types

Here's where all the work is done:

• High-level:
  • Creating Bills/Laws (one of the outputs of problem-solving). Law-making needs special tools that would (1) help compile information on existing laws anywhere in the world that have evolved over time to deal with various issues relating to the problem being tackled. These laws could be copied and edited as needed (2) We could use software based problem-solving tools to deal with people who keep society back by resisting the development of helpful laws.
  • Supporting or Opposing Bills/Laws
  • Creating Treaties/agreements with other cities/states/countries
  • Problem-solving (Analysis, researching the facts and suggesting solutions)
  • Failure Analysis. This is a part of problem-solving
  • Project management (project creation and task management)
• Others
  • Attending meetings (online or face to face)
  • Public Consensus - learn what people want and need and consult with them, get their feedback and approval
  • Research, Data Collection and Analysis

Role of Citizens

If we have to name only one critical factor on which the success of the website depends, it is the participation of citizens. It is critical for a system like this to receive, process and incentivize participation from the public. The design and functionality of the website has to reflect this and the website needs to be easy to use and accessible. Anyone should be able to identify problems, propose solutions, new ideas, initiatives and be recognized and rewarded for doing so. Leaders will depend on feedback and direction from the public. Allowing and encouraging participation from citizens is not an after-thought. They are as critical to the optimal functioning of society as leaders are and perhaps even more important.

It should be possible for subject-matter experts to declare their areas of expertise so people are aware of the most up-to-date information about any given subject.

Constitution

This section would define a basic set of rules that leaders must follow:

• Maximum transparency and accountability will be of the highest priority
• The importance of core categories shall be maintained under all circumstances. Therefore corporate profits, personal beliefs and the status quo cannot be used to compromise anything related to the core categories. Conflicts of interest need to be detected, declared and completely avoided.
• Science, data and Research need to be used in making decisions

Evaluation of Activities

Activities of leaders in the above categories need to be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Level of intensity of activity e.g. Taking initiative and being a leader, or just supporting something from the sidelines (this needs to be differentiated)
• Level of intensity should reflect what the country needs the most. For example its more important to work on human rights where they are a bigger issue. What each country needs the most can be decided and that is what the leaders have to pay attention to
• Specific tasks for leaders to work on. Let people propose and leaders could work on popular proposals. No ownership of proposals, let community work on them collaboratively before a leader starts to work on them. In case there's any existing proposal-generation websites/tools, draw information from those sources or use those tools directly.
• Decision-making based on Science, Research and Data - Decisions should be based on facts and the consensus of subject-matter experts and not based on personal, cultural or emotional appeals. This is absolutely critical and required
• Track all-time performance as well as Recent performance
• Public involvement - interact with the public, listen to them, understand what they need, incorporate their opinions in decision making
• Consensus building - important decisions need to be based on consensus and not just personal authority
• Innovation - create and support innovative solutions to problems
• Personality traits: Avoid belief in conspiracy theories and anything not supported by scientific data and analysis
• Nonpartisan Teamwork - get extra points for working with leaders of parties traditional seen as hostile to any degree (notice that this list doesn't talk about the color of their party, Red, White, Blue, Orange; none of that). If we are going to vote for anyone, lets vote in a more meaningful way which is their success in these categories.
• International Collaboration - working cooperatively with leaders from other countries. Extra points for working with leaders from countries currently defined as hostile to any degree (mild to strong)

Fake and low-quality reviews on websites are a common problem as we all know, so how can we create a system that provides reliable and objective ratings? Some ideas:

• Create objective, specific descriptions of activity types
• Have a 'constitution' or a set of standards. For example these things will always strengthen the profile/reputation of a leader: the environment, non-partisan cooperation
• Perhaps make evaluation 'anonymous' e.g. when an activity is evaluated, the evaluator will not know the identify of the leader being evaluated.

Training

Leaders need training for how to be effective leaders in all these categories. There needs to be an educational program that educates leaders of all levels. Completing this education and keeping it updated will be required for maintaining acceptable ratings in the system. They may also be asked to retake certifications under certain circumstances.

Law-Making

An effort needs to be made to standardize laws which means re-using laws that have evolved and improved in other places. Its critical to know what has worked before and re-use it instead of trying to re-invent the wheel every time. This includes finding out what has worked in other countries. Having different laws in different places is also something criminals take advantage of. A special software/website interface must be available to facilitate the making of laws (research needs to be done on what tools exists and how they can be improved). Law-making tools also need to integrate into this performance-based leadership system.

Development Plan

The plan is to first design and develop the system to function at lower levels of leadership. There are a lot of reasons why this must be done:

• relative ease of developing the system for lower-level leadership
• people at lower levels will be more willing to try the system
• They will be more willing and open to cooperating with each other instead of fighting on the basis of party and international hostilities
• System has to be proven at the lower levels of leadership before we can expect people at higher levels of leadership to take it seriously
• System development for lower levels of leadership will have many of the components and requirements needed for leadership at higher levels
• We want people to prove themselves as good leaders at lower levels of leadership before they can be considered as viable candidates for higher level leadership. In this way, developing the system from the ground up will also follow the concept of the project.
• Higher leader leadership are not very approachable and have more difficulties and dysfunctions to deal with

So the system needs to be designed and developed initially for lower levels of leadership. That being said, if the final version of the system cannot be used at higher levels of leadership, it will have failed a critical, required and necessary goal of the project. So its a good idea to do occasional evaluations to see how the same system would work at higher level leaders so we are more prepared to deploy it there when the time comes. That means we need to make any necessary adjustments as we go along. Its part of the development process.

Now that we've outlined some of the important aspects of the system, we can start to work on it.

General Design Strategy

• Collaborate/Discuss with team mates
• Recruiting for help: Contact people running for City Council
• When the design is more than ~50% completed, look at existing organizations and solutions to see what we can be inspired from. Some of them can be found at these two links: Apps and Software related to Government and Politics --and -- External Initiatives. Many organizations are trying to do the same. We have to look extensively to discover these possibilities: (1) What we can be inspired from (2) Maybe what we are trying to do is wholly or partly already implemented somewhere else, so our search has to be thorough
• Get additional feedback from other people

Its important to get the design as good as it can be before implementation is started so we can take our time. Analyzing our existing design and improving it will be an on-going process.

FAQs

• Q: What is the purpose of this new system? We already have a system where people elect leaders that they think are the most
  • A: Politicians should be evaluated based on how well they've performed in the past in tasks and jobs related to the role they are running for. This information is currently not measured, compiled or available for the public.

Links

• Apps and Software related to Government and Politics
• Citizenship Leadership - Website Functionality (javul.org)
• https://github.com/unitedstates
• Wikilection (a project with similar goals)
• How a social network could save democracy from deadlock -- Comments: An online tool that can break political deadlock
• Mumbai Report Card - Lists 227 Mumbai's Councillors and their Rankings (the ranking system is discussed on page 164)
• A System to Deliver Political Accountability to America (website by Rand Strauss, a citizen in California)