National versus
regional
Good governance means being close to the people. Even with a good online system gathering
comments from all regions, automation, robotics and strong learning AI, we’ll
still need to engage individuals on the ground, and in many cases, regionally. Most countries are divided in provinces,
states and counties for historical reasons.
It could be of the local people’s language, culture, politics or
tradition. Individuals within those sub
regions are used to or would like to be able to govern themselves at the
regional level to maintain their uniqueness an autonomy. This is healthy simply because it satisfies
communities’ needs to remain cohesive, thus keeping stress levels low.
An online system that gathers comments, requests and suggestions
from the population can easily identify who is adding data to the system and
thus in which region the individual belongs to.
This allows the ministries to understand the needs and desires of
different regions. A good AI analysis
would determine if the content of citizen feedback would belong to a national
conversation or a more local one as well based on content, context and the
responsibility, if any, of the person posting such feedback.
Most ministries would therefore need to have staff, automated
and human, within the different regions that understand the needs of the people
there, at least until we find that the AI empowered system does a better job on
its own without the additional staff.
Optionally, as part of the voting process illustrated previously,
local experts could be selected to represent their own region’s rights, elected
by appropriate experts living there. In
some nations, like the United States who has a large population and very strong
state culture, doing this would likely be necessary to keep the whole nation
happy and productive.
Since the conversation between ministry and the population
would be managed through automation and regional staff would be minimal, it
would even be possible to identify smaller regions with specific culture and
needs to be dynamically created too.
Examples of this could be New York City, as a sub-region of the State of
New York. Aboriginal nations could be
other examples of governed systems in regions that would have their own
regional ministries.
General ministerial
operations
Ministries are meant to be the executive for a nation. The traditional legislative and judiciary
aspects of a nations governance would be the responsibility of the Lawmaking
Ministry and the Ministry of Justice respectively, but they are all there to
execute the will of the people.
The national ministries can work directly with the regional
ministries separating federal and regional responsibilities between each other
according to what makes most sense.
Federal ministries can take care of national matters while regional
ministries can take care of regional nuts and bolts and interact with the
people on a much more personal level.
I imagine ministries being small armies of robots and
cloud-based software, all powered by AI, supporting a minimal staff. The ministry staff have the responsibility to
evaluate the needs of the people, as analysed by the AI system, interact with
people directly and dispatch AI systems where it is needed most. Their primary responsibility though, as
described in the nation’s constitution, is to make sure the basic needs of each
individual citizen is fulfilled without bias.
The ministries would also have special responsibilities based on their
expertise, centered on empowering the population and guiding them towards the
additional of value in society.
They are to facilitate innovation and growth from the
private sector, giving the private sector as much power as possible to resolve
social issues at all levels. This can be
done by initiating bidding competitions, setting up conditional tax incentives,
promoting private options to public systems, etc. Some operations will need to be directed and
executed directly by the ministries to ensure the whole population has what it
needs to thrive and to receive the basics.
But as we’ll see together in the following pages, it will be best to let
a well structured private sector solve problems as they occur and use
competition between ideas to motivate entrepreneurial spirit and give the
population options to choose from.
Make no mistake, an agile, small government is key to keep
costs low, taxes low, and the power in the hands of the people. If we want the population to trust their
government, it must be like an orchestra conductor to a citizens’ orchestra or
unique talents.
Ministerial staff and
transparency
A ministry leader, whether at the national or regional
levels, needs a certain amount of staff to take decisions and act upon
them. To remain unbiased, each ministry
needs to acquire proper staff through a solid transparent process too.
First and foremost, the whole process and candidates would
have to be presented to the public first, along with their credentials. To be expedient and ensure seats are not left
vacant for too long, it is important that the elected leader to choose his top
personnel. I believe AI can also assist
here by providing a list of candidates for each top position for each ministry. The ministry leader would then be forced to
choose a candidate among the AI-selected highest-quality individuals. This likely means the leader is acquainted
with the selected official, but it is unlikely they would be best friends or
family. It is natural among the elite in
any field that they would know each other by name, at least from publications
or reputation. To avoid the family and
friends conflict of interest, the selection system could vet out any staff
candidate that has a close relationship, past or present, with the leader.
Once top officials are chosen, then the ministry can operate,
with information fed by the people directly through our intelligent online
system. Then, all considerations,
projects and discussions, except those considered national secrets by law,
would be made available for comment and feedback by the people in an ongoing
basis. Citizens could easily recommend
new laws, buildings, projects, changes to security at points of entry, new high
school courses, new medical techniques on the platform and the AI would sort
all of these by content and context and direct them to the proper regional or
national ministries for consideration.
Citizens would be able to “upvote” good suggestions and comments on a
continual basis too.
Doing this would allow popular ideas to emerge from the
least popular ones and be segregated by ministry responsibility for digestion
by the ministry staff and AI for consideration and execution based on available
budget, time, logic and inter-ministry discussions or corporations.
Our governance system could have a very lively and engaged
conversation with the population on what is urgent, important or both. We’d get a lot more participation from
individuals in the nation’s governance this way and thus when it comes time to
vote for new leadership, people would be a lot more involved in the whole
process and be more trustful of it as well.
For reference, in Canada, the voter turnout for federal
elections and referendums usually roam somewhere between 60% and 70%.[1]
In the US, voter turnout for federal elections averages out at 65.7%.[2]
With a population frequently engaging
with the ministries, it is highly likely the voting population will be better
informed, more engaged in socio-political issues, and more opinionated. Since our ideal society will have basic needs
covered, our voters would already have a higher probability of participating in
the voting system due to their higher incomes and superior education thanks to
the implementation of unconditional basic income and automation.[3]
A friendly AI assistant can analyse all provided data on a
daily or even hourly basis to get reactions, feedback and suggestions from the
people, putting more weight to the accounts of experts associated with each
ministry to increase the quality of the provided feedback. It is still not a perfect way to go, but this
process means the ministries and people have a constant dynamic discussion on
everything with transparency, and when decisions are made, there is a high
chance a majority of the population will agree with the decision after seeing
the deliberations by their popular peers.
[1]
Voter turnout at federal elections and referendums. (December 2017). Elections Canada. - http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=ele&dir=turn&document=index&lang=e
[2]
Drew Desilver (May 2017). U.S. Trails
most developed countries in voter turnout. Pew Research - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/15/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/
[3]
Martin Turtotte. Civic engagement and
political participation in Canada.
Statistics Canada - http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-652-x/89-652-x2015006-eng.htm#a14
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