5 ms·

UK Conservative Party Offers £1 Million Prize for crowdsourcing platform

20 points by larryfreeman 17y ago

motters 17y ago
Generally I'm in favour of this kind of thing, although the proposal is astonishingly vague. There probably are ways in which the web can be harnessed to facilitate smarter collective decision making and identification of problem areas. However, I'm also wary that political parties often come up with popular proposals pre-election, only to discreetly dump them once safely in government.
- simon_ 17y ago
  Sounds like a reasonably good fit for at least one existing YC startup: http://inklingmarkets.com/ http://inklingmarkets.com/
blhack 17y ago
Things like reddit or HN (or my own website) sound like they could be applied to this. Submit each proposal as a story, then allow people to vote on it, comment on it, etc. etc. I'll sell my site to the UK government for £1 million!
handelaar 17y ago
Interesting. MySociety on the need for the government to figure out how to build a large-scale consultation system that works: http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/07/top-5-internet-priorities-for-the-next-government-any-next-government/ http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/07/top-5-internet-prioritie... MySociety.org on why it wants £1m: http://www.mysociety.org/2009/02/19/why-i-want-a-million-quid http://www.mysociety.org/2009/02/19/why-i-want-a-million-qui...
- ig1 17y ago
  I doubt MySociety is eligible. Tom Steinberg the founder of MySociety is a technology policy advisor for the Conservative Party - this would seem to be an obvious conflict of interests and a clear breach of anti-corruption laws (siphoning public money into a charity run by one of your advisors).
  - handelaar 17y ago
    Tom's also advised the Labour Party. Should that make MySociety ineligible for any government grant or contract for all time?
    - ig1 17y ago
      I'm not an expert, but I believe the Labour Party approached MySociety for advice on a specific project that was related to their expertise. Tom acts an appointed general purpose advisor to the Tory party in a private capacity, which is substantially different. Consider this case: If a defence company CEO advised a political party on defence spending, and recommended they invest in particular types of projects that happened to be his company's expertise, and his company ended up wining the contracts. Would you be happy with this situation ? I'm not say Tom/mySociety are bad guys, far from it they are awesome guys and they've done great work. But we can't hold those we like to a lesser standard than those we dislike.
      - handelaar 17y ago
        In fact Tom helped with relevant parts of the last Labour election manifesto. And now he's been asked to assist the Tories with policy (unpaid). So I'm not really seeing the difference.
  - cabalamat 17y ago
    MySociety have done a lot of good tools (see http://www.mysociety.org/projects/ http://www.mysociety.org/projects/ ). They'd be the obvious people to do somethnig like this.
simonw 17y ago
Anyone seen any concrete information about this competition yet? There's nothing about it on www.conservatives.com as far as I can tell.
gruseom 17y ago
I just hope that if they award the prize, they do so for working software that is already solving a significant part of the problem, and not, say, a powerpoint presentation given by some compelling-sounding guy in a suit. This kind of thing is vulnerable to vaporware.
dpatru 17y ago
If the Tories really want to be innovative, they should just cut taxes, cut spending, reduce regulation, and let people naturally and without coercion figure out what they want and how to get it by cooperation. This is called the free market and it doesn't require a fancy computer program to work.
- foldr 17y ago
  > This is called the free market and it doesn't require a fancy computer program to work. That's right. All it requires is an ideal world.
  - dpatru 17y ago
    An ideal world doesn't have problems. The real world has problems that are messy to solve. "Solutions" often have unintended consequences. The free market, by not relying on coercion, generally does the best job at arriving at a solution that optimally balances the interests involved. For example, the reason we don't have lines forming in front of filling stations is because the free market regulates gas prices. When government intervenes by mandating a cheaper price shortages occur.
    - foldr 17y ago
      FWIW, I find these sorts of arguments unconvincing because (a) there is no particular reason to think that solutions involving little or no coercion will be good solutions (b) there is a vicious circularity in the relevant notion of "coercion" (as pointed out by GA Cohen) and (c) there is no general situation-independent notion of an optimal balance of interests that's worth having. >When government I love how libertarians use "government" as a mass noun, as if governments were formed out of some kind of homogeneous toxic gloop.
      - dpatru 17y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by circularity in coercion. Another example of the contrast of an ideal world with the free market in the real world is stock markets. In an ideal world, there would be no need for a stock market because there would be no uncertainty as to stock value. The free market exists because we don't live in an ideal world. > governments were formed out of some kind of homogeneous toxic gloop. This is not far from the truth. Government that does not draw its power from the consent of the governed is essentially just a very powerful criminal gang.
dpatru 17y ago
One common scenario for government action is that some problem isn't being solved well by market-based solutions, so a solution needs to be imposed by force. A communication technology would be of use here to help determine if a coercive solution is necessary and if so, which solution would be best. For example in the early 2000s, Enron's bankruptcy and other corporate scandals illuminated a problem with corporate accounting. The Sarbanes-Oxley law was passed to fix this problem. Now it seems generally recognized that the law was flawed. The problem could probably have been addressed better if there had been more deliberate and open discussion. Hacker News has a Feature Request page (see the footer). I imagine if there were a feature request that had overwhelming upvotes and no significant negative discussion, then pg could feel confident that such a feature would be good to implement. Something similar could be done with legislation. If there is a particular piece of legislation that has overwhelming "upvotes" over a sustained period of time, and no significant counter-arguments, such legislation could probably be safely passed with the confidence that it has been thoroughly vetted. Legislation that doesn't have these overwhelming upvotes for a long period of time, or has significant counter-arguments, probably shouldn't be passed. So it seems to me that collaboration software could be used to select good legislation for passage.
lordmatty 17y ago
Looking forward to details of the competition coming out. The facebook mention in the article is a good call. Any site of this type could fairly solidly bet that most users will have a facebook login, so why not use facebook connect as an auth layer? Of course, like all good politics, wait for the small print - you will probably be contracted to run the website for the next 10 years on accepting the prize money!
zby 17y ago
Online debates are mostly about disagreeing and polarisation - what I would like to see is a platform that would reward agreeing - saying things that would be acceptable by both of the usually formed sides.

20 points by larryfreeman 17y ago

Generally I'm in favour of this kind of thing, although the proposal is astonishingly vague. There probably are ways in which the web can be harnessed to facilitate smarter collective decision making and identification of problem areas. However, I'm also wary that political parties often come up with popular proposals pre-election, only to discreetly dump them once safely in government.

simon_ 17y ago
Sounds like a reasonably good fit for at least one existing YC startup: http://inklingmarkets.com/ http://inklingmarkets.com/

blhack 17y ago

Things like reddit or HN (or my own website) sound like they could be applied to this. Submit each proposal as a story, then allow people to vote on it, comment on it, etc. etc. I'll sell my site to the UK government for £1 million!

handelaar 17y ago

Interesting. MySociety on the need for the government to figure out how to build a large-scale consultation system that works: http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/07/top-5-internet-priorities-for-the-next-government-any-next-government/ http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/07/top-5-internet-prioritie... MySociety.org on why it wants £1m: http://www.mysociety.org/2009/02/19/why-i-want-a-million-quid http://www.mysociety.org/2009/02/19/why-i-want-a-million-qui...

ig1 17y ago
I doubt MySociety is eligible. Tom Steinberg the founder of MySociety is a technology policy advisor for the Conservative Party - this would seem to be an obvious conflict of interests and a clear breach of anti-corruption laws (siphoning public money into a charity run by one of your advisors).
- handelaar 17y ago
  Tom's also advised the Labour Party. Should that make MySociety ineligible for any government grant or contract for all time?
  - ig1 17y ago
    I'm not an expert, but I believe the Labour Party approached MySociety for advice on a specific project that was related to their expertise. Tom acts an appointed general purpose advisor to the Tory party in a private capacity, which is substantially different. Consider this case: If a defence company CEO advised a political party on defence spending, and recommended they invest in particular types of projects that happened to be his company's expertise, and his company ended up wining the contracts. Would you be happy with this situation ? I'm not say Tom/mySociety are bad guys, far from it they are awesome guys and they've done great work. But we can't hold those we like to a lesser standard than those we dislike.
    - handelaar 17y ago
      In fact Tom helped with relevant parts of the last Labour election manifesto. And now he's been asked to assist the Tories with policy (unpaid). So I'm not really seeing the difference.
- cabalamat 17y ago
  MySociety have done a lot of good tools (see http://www.mysociety.org/projects/ http://www.mysociety.org/projects/ ). They'd be the obvious people to do somethnig like this.

simonw 17y ago

Anyone seen any concrete information about this competition yet? There's nothing about it on www.conservatives.com as far as I can tell.

gruseom 17y ago

I just hope that if they award the prize, they do so for working software that is already solving a significant part of the problem, and not, say, a powerpoint presentation given by some compelling-sounding guy in a suit. This kind of thing is vulnerable to vaporware.

dpatru 17y ago

If the Tories really want to be innovative, they should just cut taxes, cut spending, reduce regulation, and let people naturally and without coercion figure out what they want and how to get it by cooperation. This is called the free market and it doesn't require a fancy computer program to work.

foldr 17y ago
> This is called the free market and it doesn't require a fancy computer program to work. That's right. All it requires is an ideal world.
- dpatru 17y ago
  An ideal world doesn't have problems. The real world has problems that are messy to solve. "Solutions" often have unintended consequences. The free market, by not relying on coercion, generally does the best job at arriving at a solution that optimally balances the interests involved. For example, the reason we don't have lines forming in front of filling stations is because the free market regulates gas prices. When government intervenes by mandating a cheaper price shortages occur.
  - foldr 17y ago
    FWIW, I find these sorts of arguments unconvincing because (a) there is no particular reason to think that solutions involving little or no coercion will be good solutions (b) there is a vicious circularity in the relevant notion of "coercion" (as pointed out by GA Cohen) and (c) there is no general situation-independent notion of an optimal balance of interests that's worth having. >When government I love how libertarians use "government" as a mass noun, as if governments were formed out of some kind of homogeneous toxic gloop.
    - dpatru 17y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by circularity in coercion. Another example of the contrast of an ideal world with the free market in the real world is stock markets. In an ideal world, there would be no need for a stock market because there would be no uncertainty as to stock value. The free market exists because we don't live in an ideal world. > governments were formed out of some kind of homogeneous toxic gloop. This is not far from the truth. Government that does not draw its power from the consent of the governed is essentially just a very powerful criminal gang.

dpatru 17y ago

One common scenario for government action is that some problem isn't being solved well by market-based solutions, so a solution needs to be imposed by force. A communication technology would be of use here to help determine if a coercive solution is necessary and if so, which solution would be best. For example in the early 2000s, Enron's bankruptcy and other corporate scandals illuminated a problem with corporate accounting. The Sarbanes-Oxley law was passed to fix this problem. Now it seems generally recognized that the law was flawed. The problem could probably have been addressed better if there had been more deliberate and open discussion. Hacker News has a Feature Request page (see the footer). I imagine if there were a feature request that had overwhelming upvotes and no significant negative discussion, then pg could feel confident that such a feature would be good to implement. Something similar could be done with legislation. If there is a particular piece of legislation that has overwhelming "upvotes" over a sustained period of time, and no significant counter-arguments, such legislation could probably be safely passed with the confidence that it has been thoroughly vetted. Legislation that doesn't have these overwhelming upvotes for a long period of time, or has significant counter-arguments, probably shouldn't be passed. So it seems to me that collaboration software could be used to select good legislation for passage.

lordmatty 17y ago

Looking forward to details of the competition coming out. The facebook mention in the article is a good call. Any site of this type could fairly solidly bet that most users will have a facebook login, so why not use facebook connect as an auth layer? Of course, like all good politics, wait for the small print - you will probably be contracted to run the website for the next 10 years on accepting the prize money!

zby 17y ago

Online debates are mostly about disagreeing and polarisation - what I would like to see is a platform that would reward agreeing - saying things that would be acceptable by both of the usually formed sides.