Softlaw: The End of Bureaucracy
“The state must be Corporation so long as the Corporation wishes to be state.” — Hegel to Marx ☺
It’s an easy story.
Men and women of the people, feel a calling, courageously step forward into the public space, and victorious in election, loved by their supporters, walk straight into the buzzsaw of bureaucracy.
How? Why? WTF?
Said simply, the handoff between legislation and implementation, is a handoff from the will of the people to the will of their servants.
See Healthcare.gov. See VA Scandal. See 21CT.
This nightmare can and will end, because in the future, “softlaw” will be so cheap to produce…. and reproduce.
Softlaw is a term I just made up to describe law that is software coded before it is passed.
When “software eats the world,” it also eats the law… make no mistake, all laws will be softlaws.
Insourced softlaw is the future of govt. Outsourcing technology is a relic of the past.
Softlaw will almost always be conceived from specialized knowledge but built in just hours by any motivated government employee or politician. Tested anytime, by any citizen who wishes on their own devices. Discussed on social networks. Analyzed by news organizations. Forked and improved. Campaigned on. And then passed into law.
BAM!
Ten seconds later, the code — the softlaw “beta” has gone gold. Citizens begin to use it legally before the Executive has handed off the pen to the softlaw designer in a photo for distribution on Twitter and Facebook.
“But, but, but…” sputters the bureaucracy, “we have nothing to implement.”
Exactly.
Man your dashboards boys and girls, the citizens are using the softlaw, and you have incoming workflow.
“But, but, but…” cries the city manager, “we have to RFP the solution!”
Softlaw solutions RFP themselves.
Stakeholders in the public and the private sphere will have multiple vendors offering industrial DIY softlaw platforms that allow free beta deployment.
The interested parties make their choices, build their softlaw, and everything about it, including the price per citizen, is known.
Grassroots political movements are citizen / users screaming, “Why can’t I use this app I already KNOW works to do X,Y,Z?”
Good softlaw can’t go over budget, because the working solution has a price tag (per citizen) before it is approved/purchased by the executive, legislature, city council, county commissioner, etc.
Bad softlaw, can not only be replaced/updated quickly, but the company and the stakeholders who built and championed it ARE PUBLICLY RESPONSIBLE.
The best elected officials become the best at deploying softlaw.
Think-tanks conceive and build their own softlaw solutions for A/B testing against the control, rather than do studies and write reports.
There’s always a great reason to be cynical about government, but softlaw empowers citizens, elected officials, and constituent stakeholders to combat bureaucracy and cronyism in ways unimaginable until today.
