Yes, I want to help reform democracy.

I agree with the response by Colin Megill when he wrote that your condescension is unbecoming. But it’s born out of a frustration that I can understand, as someone 16 years into my journey as a public servant, working from within to make better happen. It’s possible to make these same, very excellent points without the ouch factor. When I used to coach people on their “no-brainer” ideas, I would encourage them to think through a series of traps, which is similar to what you’ve give us here. It’s in this spirit that I offer up a “yes, and…”

Yes, and when things are as complex as we know them to be, one can hardly blame others for starting from the point of an idea and trying to work it. It’s human nature to take a stab at the thing you can see and think you know.

Yes, and I understand that we need to stop with the idea fetish because it’s a waste of time.

Yes, and we need a critical reframe so that we seek the problem definition(s), as you’ve described.

Yes, and there is an increasing chorus of innovators and reformers advocating the patience for this problem-framing approach.

And this is where I get to my one yes, but… this is devilishly difficult to do without access to perspective — empathy for both citizens, residents, regular folks, businesses, developers, lobbyists as well as for those within government institutions. And for the people with the idea fetishes who don’t have access to this systems perspective — we need to have empathy for them, too. Don’t kill their enthusiasm. Channel it.

Yes, and…we need people working to fix democracy from within as well as from the outside. We also need people just doing what they do from technology angles completely unconcerned with democracy’s sake or the problem definition at hand, because they’ll probably land on something useful that we can all use to organize ourselves better. There are business models and startups emerging that can make parts of government obsolete, and make the foundation of democracy creak under pressure, just as similar disruption is happening in the private sector. Giddy up.

Yes, and…it’s not just about the technology, and it’s not just doing something quickly and cheaply — that’s a set of tools with a time sequence option. I met the folks at the Social Innovation Lab In With Forward at the NESTA LabWorks conference July 2015. They mortgaged their belongings to spend two years prototyping an approach to serve people before they received grant funding to put them well on their decade long journey to serve the underserved. They write up every single lesson they’ve ever learned in their blog. So yes, and…some people can team up and embark upon decades long journeys that require real elbow grease. See In With Forward’s post Are We Ambitious Enough? where they give a really good run-down of every type of civic innovation and reform out there, and ask if it’s sufficient.

Another gem that I picked up at the LabWorks conference is this handy sheet on the language of systems change. The authors write:

Leading systems change requires a strong sense of PURPOSE and EMPATHY, combined with the ability to HOLD PLURALITY, to navigate UNCERTAINTY and to take a LONG-NOW perspective, based on the understanding that the changes we seek may take years, decades or even centuries to achieve.

The language of systems change authors continue:

The words we chose relate to four kinds of craft:

1. Inner craft- reflecting, connecting, holding

2. Thinking craft — mapping, analysis, conceptualising, illuminating, sharing

3. Organising craft- convening, choreographing, galvanising

4. Building craft- creating, modelling, exemplifying, iterating, manifesting

This is what it will take to think about reforming democracy. It’s not ego; it’s about the humility to look at systems change, see what’s entailed, and have the courage to undertake the ambitious, audacious work before us.

We could use people to join the new GovLab Network of Innovators to cross-pollinate skills related to new methods of collaboration like challenges and prize to open data to data science. GovLab is helping us better understand the skills that are required to innovate in the public right of way and help get that talent in that space.

We need more of the Open Government Partnership working to strengthen democracy around the world — government in partnership with civil society — cross-pollinating lessons from Brazil, India, Mexico, the Philippines, France, the UK, South Africa, and many others. We need the Open Government Partnership to go subnational to network our states, provinces, and cities and the civil society organizations that challenge and support them, because a more open network is a stronger network.

We need more Open Government Partnership like The Bruce Dickinson needed more cowbell. Every organization that calls itself a democracy should be taking up the challenges of upping their game of accountability, transparency, participation, as supported by technology and innovation. Upping our game should be every democracy’s New Year’s resolution.

There are plenty of other pieces to the systems change movement. These are but a few to accentuate the “yes, it’s not just technology.”

For my part, I’m putting on a few panels at SXSW this coming March. First, we’ll have a workshop called Prototyping Democracy: Better Collaboration Design, because Robert’s Rules of Order and Parliamentary Procedure do not manage the complexity of the modern era well enough to render the best policy decisions (if you hold all other things equal — having solved for money, influence, political systems, voting, information dissemination, etc, you’ll still need better collaboration design to get better outcomes). Yet if you go to many community meetings, Robert’s Rules of Order is in our collective patriotic muscle memory. It’s a decisional method where we need to invest more in methods that enable exploration of significant detail and trade-offs, such as a co-creation method might allow. Sound crazy? It might be. It’s a workshop where we’ll be improvising, so let’s see where it goes.

The second panel discussion I’m organizing is called For the People, By the People — the human algorithm. The premise here is the question: How can governments “start with human need” through ethnographic research when faced with the complexity in serving “everyone?” Do we start with big data? Can we use technology AND keep our human focus?

So please considering bringing your game, your critique, your problems, ideas, your lessons, your sharp eye for discernment to SXSW in March. God knows we need it all if we want to reform democracy — that’s humility talking.

To quote my friends at In With Forward, “how ambitious are we willing to be?” Ambitious enough to find our place in the long game of systems change?