Slashdot Mirror
Open Ministry Crowdsources Laws In Finland
First time accepted submitter emakinen writes "The new Citizens' Initiative service started today in Finland. On the Open Ministry website, anyone can present an idea for a law or initiative. If the idea wins enough support, the ministry's volunteer workers will work on it and turn it into a presentable bill for the MPs to chew over. If 50,000 citizens of voting age agree on a bill Parliament has to take it up."
The only drawback there are only 49,000 citizens.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
It was called "common law".
Dog is my co-pilot.
This thing could very likely be used for the purposes of doing a complete patent and copyright system reform in small steps. I personally do not seek to completely abolish either, but I wish to bring both of them down to a maximum of 10 years so that people who patent stuff will actually have to also start utilizing their patents and not just hoard them, and copyrights won't keep on benefiting the creator for several lifetimes without them having to do any work ever again.
Do we have any Finns around here on /. that agree? I'm just curious.
Something similar has been running in Latvia for a while now. People can sign online petitions that are submitted to the parliament if they get enough signatures. The identity verification is done by logging in with your bank details (as there is no official electronic ID as of now). Some of the successful initiatives include tighter tax control for shady offshore companies and stricter control of whether MPs actually obey their vows.
I want this in the US so badly, with numbers adjusted for population of course. In a way we have it now, except it is only for the WhiteHouse, nothing is mandatory, and popular measures get a polite but firm dismissal (as if we were misbehaving children rather than citizens in a democracy).
You can start an e-petition and if you have 100,00 signatures it has to be debated in the House of Commons (Parliament)
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Diol1/DoItOnline/DG_066327
Though they have been know to 'run out of time' to debate on at least one occasion
Watch those corners
The article does not say that the idea for a law needs to be sensible. Only that it needs support.
I was thinking that exact thing. I believe a law that limits taxes to 1% of income would garner plenty of support. But it certainly wouldn't be sensible.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
What if a majority, any majority, decides to vote a law againts the rest of the population?
What if a majority of finns pass a law that only those born in Finland have the right to stay?
What if another majority decides that only they are true finnish citizens and pass a law about only them having the right to vote?
People are stupid and evil. True democracy doesn't work.
I think the term you're looking for is Clientelism.
The most famous definition of politics is as the art and science of who gets what in society. To help understand who gets what many political scientists in the 1970s began to apply the concept clientelism, first elaborated by anthropologists and sociologists to describe
the hierarchical social relations that have long marked the countryside in peasant societies. They found that clientelism, also known as the patron-client model of
politics, permeated contemporary political systems around the world.
The term refers to a complex chain of personal bonds between political patrons or bosses and
their individual clients or followers. These bonds are founded on mutual material advantage: the
patron furnishes excludable resources (money, jobs) to dependents and accomplices in return for
their support and cooperation (votes, attendance at rallies). The patron has disproportionate
power and thus enjoys wide latitude about how to distribute the assets under his control. In
modern polities, most patrons are not independent actors, but are links within a larger grid of
contacts, usually serving as middlemen who arrange exchanges between the local level and the
national center.
tl:dr: Laws have historically not been based on sensibility, only support.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Probably won't be the thing that holds it back. Bank credentials are commonly used for person identification in Finnish official websites (welfare, taxes, etc). So at least that is possible to implement.
The real drawback is that it only takes $250,000 to pay 50,000 citizens $50 each to vote on crazy stuff to put before parliament...
It takes $ 2,500,000 to pay 50,000 citizens 50 each FTFY
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
1) This pre-supposes a reasonable part of the population being reasonably enlightened, and educated
2) This pre-supposes a reasonable part of the population being reasonable interested in the political processes through which they govern themselves
3) This pre-supposes a reasonable part of the population being, in principle, reasonably willed to accept and even defend compromise on important issues
4) This pre-supposes a multi-party, well-oiled democracy, in which partisan fights are background issues
All of which are factors for such an initiative being chanceless in the USA.
QFD
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Stupid and useless initiatives that are popular with a non-representatively small and extremist part of the population get a real chance of becoming laws, like the infamous minaret interdiction in Switzerland...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Sounds like a recipe for special interest groups to dominate politics. The same is true of initiative measures in the United States -- they are largely used by well-funded narrow interest groups to advance their agendas at the expense of the public. Indeed, the whole point of the signature requirements is to keep one person (of modest means) from making a difference. As Olson predicted, these schemes lead to the victory of highly committed, well-organized, resource-rich minority positions over the larger but diffuse interests of the public,
Make cheese not war 8:)
TeliaSonera is not Finnish, it's the product of a merger between Finnish Sonera and Swedish Telia. Their headquarter is in Sweden.
Also, in Sweden "Telia e-leg" is not very popular as an e-id, most people use BankID which is based on the Nexus Personal client software and the service itself is provided by Finansiell ID-teknik AB which is a company co-owned by Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Ikano Bank, Länsförsäkringar Bank, SEB, Skandiabanken and Swedbank.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
In Switzerland, we have what is called a Volksinitiative, and that's actually more powerful: If you can get enough signatures, you can get the country (not the politicians!) to vote on any law. If you want to ban chocolate ice, and you get 50'000 signatures to get it voted on, and then manage to convince 51% of the population, chocolate ice is gone.
Does it work? Yes, quite well.
So I will sign with my banking credentials (pretty much everyone has them here nowadays, they're offered for pretty much any new bank account). You just get a series of links containing "confirm your identity with your bank", click your bank, it takes you to the page of your bank where you enter your banking credentials and confirm that you want to be recognised by that site.
Whole process takes about 30 seconds.
You'd still have to have the idea conform to legal framework so it can be presented before the parliament, and then it has to be voted for and approved.
A friendly reminder: This is not US. Finns, and people of Nordics in general base politics around consensus rather then confrontation. This is a very significant difference which makes many "crazy" and by design confrontational ideas nearly impossible to pass.
Since this quite probably the nearest thing in the world to real democracy - why knock it? I would like the access a Finn has to the policy making of my government...
In Finland, the most right wing party advertises itself as a "champion of welfare state". They're not really, but even they have to pay at least lip service.
We understand what we pay our taxes for. We have one of the most politically stable, safe, competitive and equal countries in the world. US-style unequal society is viewed with derision at best.
In Italy, the constitution (since 1948) allows 50'000 citizens to propose laws to the Parliament.
It has been used sometimes, but the Parliament has *always* shelved the proposals immediately. None has even been discussed. Not because they were awful proposals, but because this kind of tool tends to be used when the Parliament is *already* avoiding making laws on a topic. So, it will continue avoiding it.
Let me add the development of the "Open Ministry" is also open. We welcome all interested developers and pull requests! You can find the source code at https://github.com/avoinministerio/avoinministerio . The tech stack is currently simple Ruby on Rails hosted on Heroku, with few associated tools like MailChimp. At the moment the developers hang out at Flowdock channel https://flowdock.com/, you'll certainly get an invitation by request.
As the service has been just launched we just squash bugs and keep service up and running, and hopefully we'll survive the Slashdot effect (which surely will be toned down by Finnish only website). On the (open) roadmap there are things like
Join us, help us! Hack the law!
I hope they don't ignore the fact that even this process can be abused, if the wrong people (One Percenters or other tyrannical types) get a mind to do so. Need an example? Look no further than the state initiative process in California, United States, which is intended to function and serve the same purpose as this new process in Finland. It's been abused repeatedly to pass laws that had far less chance of being enacted through the traditional process.
'Open' process or not, if people can be successfully mislead or mis-educated into proposing and promoting bad legislation, the democratic and egalitarian processes can still run off the rails. A continuous ongoing "revolution" is the only means of preserving either. The revolution must never stop, because neither does the enemy it seeks to thwart.
"You just get a series of links containing "confirm your identity with your bank", click your bank, it takes you to the page of your bank where you enter your banking credentials and confirm that you want to be recognised by that site.
Whole process takes about 30 seconds."
Sounds like a wet dream of the phishing industry.
In Portugal this has also been launched in the government portal, a few weeks ago. Check it out at: http://www.portugal.gov.pt/pt/o-meu-movimento.aspx (in Portuguese language). The most voted initiative will have a meeting with the prime minister. By the way, the new government portal launched a few weeks ago was otherwise really a bad idea (it just threw out all previous content: a lot of broken links around...).
"You just get a series of links containing "confirm your identity with your bank", click your bank, it takes you to the page of your bank where you enter your banking credentials and confirm that you want to be recognised by that site. Whole process takes about 30 seconds."
Sounds like a wet dream of the phishing industry.
Not really, since the credentials aren't reusable: you have a list of key-value pairs, each used only once, in random order. Moreover, payments require separate confirmation (second key-value match), so even man-in-the-middle attack with identification-only site wouldn't allow stealing your money (well, not that easily anyway).
From a Swiss citizen.
Here this is in place since 1848, but I hope that the adoption of the referendum will grow an a accelerated rate in many countries.
In the US, what would have happened if the public were to opine about Negro rights in the South or Irish, Italian or Puerto Rican immigrants in New York? What would have happened after the World Trade Center disaster to Muslim immigrants?
Public opinion is volatile, easily swayed by raw emotion, religious fervor and yellow journalism, and requires the moderation of level heads before being rushed into legislation.
...omphaloskepsis often...
They've been having this dream for many years now, and it hasn't progressed from "dream" stage. As the other poster points out, it's actually pretty hard system to crack, even with social engineering due to nature of keys being either non-reusable or reusable but changing across a very big chart.
Do note: this is a system that HAS BEEN WORKING FOR YEARS. Not a hypothetical idea for the implementation.
It might surprise you, but I'm kinda certain that such an idea would not get too much support in any part of Europe.
We understood that high taxes (and thus well funded social services) are generally quite beneficial to most low income people...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In Finland, the most right wing party advertises itself as a "champion of welfare state". They're not really, but even they have to pay at least lip service.
This is something I don't think people in the US would understand, from left to right most want the welfare system. What the extreme right is claiming is that certain ethic groups are paying and other ethnic groups are leeching, they want welfare for their own not welfare for everyone. Oh maybe less blunt like making rules so that immigrants and such are ineligible for benefits, but if they could get support for racial discrimination they probably would.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The state is effectively ungovernable precises because of various schizophrenic initiatives put on the ballot.
phishing banking credentials is always the wet dream of the phishing industry. but what happens mostly, is that you're forwarded to a site ran by your own bank, which then asks you for your credentials and the site requesting the confirmation is only told if the credentials check went through or not. that bank log-in procedure usually (with most banks here anyways) includes a one time pass, for which site posing as the bank to acquire needs to have a code for anyways(the site asks for a pair for a code they provide from a plastic card..).
the few attacks done against finnish consumers on finnish online banking have AFAIK included running a trojan on the victims computer which inserts an extra transaction to be done when the user goes to make transactions.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
parliament would still need to pass it. and for being legit, it would need to comply with eu laws etc.
of course if parliament supports anything fully, they can pass it into a legit law in a mere day(as fast as they want provided they have 5/6th of support, the president can veto it but the parliament can override that if they want so the president can merely introduce a delay) if they so choose, if the rest of the finns would go along with that is a wholly another issue though.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I agree with you, but 50,000 people is a very small percentage of the Finn population, my point was merely that it should be rather easy to find that many people who don't share this view about welfare.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
This will be complemented in EU level with the European citizens' initiative starting 1.4.2012:
http://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/public/welcome
The European citizens' initiative allows one million EU citizens to participate directly in the development of EU policies, by calling on the European Commission to make a legislative proposal.
Well, there were enough people to vote in Perussuomalaiset for at least one cycle (their support is eroding now), so the consensus is fairly wobbly. And the top party these days are the supposedly more individualistic centre-righties.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
You don't need Sonera or the banks to do it for you. You can get your own personal X.509 certificate in a chip on a national ID card. I have mine since 2006, though I never used it.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
And that's fine. Another point is that Nordic societies generally base their politics on consensus. This is in direct opposition to anglo model, which bases politics on confrontation.
As a result, confrontational suggestions are unlikely to ever gain significant popular support. Sure, you can get that 1%, it will be put to a vote and shot down in flames. If you manage to make this suggestion non-confrontational, there will be a dialogue, and various options on how to find consensus between popular opinion and this suggestion will be explored and made into a legal package and put to a vote.
In general, this system is enacted to enable to bring grievances directly before the parliament, because in the last election, one of the major jokes was "these people of Arkadianmäki" (the address of parliament building) referring to MPs who were out of touch with reality of voters. Things like that are taken very seriously here, mainly because we're a relatively small country, and if you wanted you could probably meet even prime minister face to face in the mall and talk to him. So the suggestion that they might be out of touch with reality of voters really hit some sour notes with quite a few of top politicians across the spectrum, while social media downright scared some. Which is a good thing, and as this project shows, reminding politicians that while they are elected to represent people they are often out of touch with reality of the people brings very positive results for voters.
Thing is, with the whole EMU mess going on, protest parties are gaining ground across Europe. We're nowhere near the levels of countries like Greece though, where protest parties like ultra left and ultra right are poised to crush established political parties in the next vote. Here, they got 20% and it's receding as more and more people begin to see that they're just that - a protest party.
It's also worth noting that PS aren't anti-consensus. Their argument is centered around the "current approach is wrong, so other parties should join us in our opinion about this because...". I.e. they're trying to build consensus with other parties, not confront them. Confrontational anglo version of this would be to argue in parliament that "you are wrong, and you should resign now" without even trying to find consensus (as they often do in UK parliament for example). That's just not the way politics work around here, even with all the influences from americanized pop culture.
That's true. As a Finn, I feel something akin to scorn for a political system that allows part of its population to go without healthcare. Heck, there are millions of *children* without healthcare in the US, and some in the US are even *proud* of that?!
Deeply fucked up, and worthy of scorn.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Man, I love Finland. If it wasn't dark so much of the year, I would so move there to live. Finnish people are smart and decent and except for the fact that they drink a little too much because it's dark half the year they're very easy to get along with.
I'm not sure what I'm missing about Finland, but I spent a few months there and have been back for shorter trips and it seems like a great place. If they had more temperate weather, I'd probably retire there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I make a big mistake! Sorry for my english.
We do not need the crowd in the US of A, we have ALEC to solve all our ills.
"There is, however, one obstacle that the Open Ministry and the entire citizens’ initiative law is already facing.
The Ministry of Justice should have a website where people can sign the initiatives.
To be legally valid, the signing of an initiative requires a bank identifier code or some other form of accepted online signature to prove the signee is who he or she says he is.
The Ministry of Justice has not even commenced the constructing of such a system.
It will not be up and running before the end of the year at the earliest."
Perhaps the first issue to use this system for is to get the Ministry of Justice to do what they need to do. ....... If only the Ministry of Justice might be able to argue teh vote wasn't valid.
To have "OVERWHELMING" votes for such a verification system (though not verified)
free porn for all (and not that kinky Norwegian stuff either)
Why don't they just use PayPal. That way you can go ahead and send money to the ministry while you're there. Roll all the vital functions into one button!
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I believe in some cases street-racing deaths have resulting in deportations (or at least attempted deportations).
As some one who has done a fair bit of work on business committee (standing orders) of organizations having looked at the petitions on the 90% of them were very badly drafted to the point of being not valid.
For those of you not familiar with parliamentary procedure the SOC is the elected body normally separate from the executive that rules on what motions are valid and where the go on the order paper.
Unfortunately as an ex MP (one those who stood for speaker last time) said the government has a lot more ways of manipulating the order paper - the petitions site was one of those blue sky ideas suggested by inexperienced members of the government (probably some SPAD).
As California shows government by referendum is a very bad idea - its subject to capture by strident single issue groups with fabulously wealthy backers.
Shows like the Cobert Report would have a field day. Also getting 50,000 people to vote to make it illegal to work on a particular day (another National Holiday) would be popular.
A proposal like this was made in Canada, though slightly different, where there would be a mandatory referendum if 3% of the population signed a petition. So a TV show called "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" (Think the Daily Show, but Canada) made a petition to have a referendum to change the name of the Minister who proposed the Bill from Stockwell Day to Doris Day. 350,000 signatures would be required. They got over 370,000. Needless to say this was dropped.
I like the idea, but it seems to be crippled by the same optimistic streak that so many tech projects have. To put it in terms a Facebook user could understand:
Where is the Dislike button?
I admit to not reading TFA, but I've lived in California where a certain number of signatures on a petition puts some incredibly lame ideas on the ballot. Unless there is a way to balance yes votes with no votes (and people take the time to vote no!) you'll end up wasting a lot of time and money catering to the whims of ad hoc minorities while the rest of the population looks on in bewilderment and, ultimately, rejects popular democracy as unworkable.
In California, if there was a way for groups that opposed referendums to get them removed from the ballot (by collecting 4x as many signatures or something) it would be a lot more meaningful.
We still have this at least here in Washington State it's called "initiatives". If you get X votes it shows up on the ballot.
Unfortunately it's used by a single person to constantly screech to a halt all governance in the state. Every time we decide to do something he goes around and finds enough votes to freeze it until voters approve/disapprove it.
Look we have a representative democracy for a reason. You have to be willing to make compromises and barter what you want with other representatives. If you only ever get what you want then you demand schools double their hours but never provide the funding.
We seem to agree on multiple issues here. :-)
Yes, us Finns really see the US of A as a sad, sad place. USA is beginning to look so much like Russia and China that it isn't even funny anymore. Just downright mournful.
The things you guys are doing to your education system will ensure your eventual downfall.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
let's start by testing sopa, pipa, acta and the other blabla first then ... perfect testing grounds
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
As a fellow European I certainly do not want it to spread any further. Have you met the average citizen of your fellow European countries? Or for that matter any other nation in the world.
I don't mind suggestions being brought forward, as long as they can be easily rejected by parliament. The problem with an entitled population, fueled by populist politicians and high-speed communications, is the lack of long-term planning. Why save for a rainy day when I want my shiny new school/hospital/highway today? The population is rarely in a position to make good decisions when they barely know the subject matter let alone have an education in the field.
I'm not a strong supporter of "democracy", the Tyranny of the [populist] majority, it's a dangerously fragile system. I would far prefer at least a modicum of intelligence be involved in the decision making, and I don't think we can trust either politicians or the masses to think beyond their immediate desires. We don't let children decide what to have for dinner.
Plato had some interesting ideas in "The Republic".
Hehe, yeah, but it's only suggestions, they don't have to make them into law. It's only presented to the Finnish parliament.
The key difference between California and Finland is that this is only suggestions for the parliament to consider and vote on. There's no referendum and a populist vote can't make it law.
There's no need for a dislike button because it's more like Twitter. You can write all you like, it's not going to change the world if no one notices.
Things like that are taken very seriously here, mainly because we're a relatively small country, and if you wanted you could probably meet even prime minister face to face in the mall and talk to him.
I've even seen the former president (Tarja Halonen) walking on street with her adjutant just like that. No armored limousine necessary. :) I bet Obama does not have that kind of freedom.