Comments on: How about a citizens’ agenda for the European elections?

By: Mathew Lowry’s Tagsmanian Devil » Blog Archive » Introducing the Brussels Bubble to some of its denizens (RTFB!, part 2; updated)

Sun, 13 May 2012 16:27:29 +0000

[...] Applying the NYU/Guardian Citizens’ Agenda approach to the next European elections [...]

By: Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:50:40 +0000

Mathew, please read my answer to your last comment you made 31/12 about #MDAD here :
http://citizen-in-europe.blogspot.com/2011/12/manifesto-for-agile-development-of_30.html?showComment=1325756825174#c5390423243060748444

Sorry for the 5 days delay for writing my answer

Have a great 2012 !

By: Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:15:57 +0000

Thanks Mathew for following the debate with relevant questions about #MDAD. Please read my answer here : http://citizen-in-europe.blogspot.com/2011/12/manifesto-for-agile-development-of_30.html

By: mathew

mathew — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:23:32 +0000

Yep, they’re part of the solution – never pretended they were the entire solution. The EU online public space is an ecosystem, not a single project, manifesto, website or EU programme. You’ll find other parts of the solution elsewhere in this blog, and beyond.

Anyway, thanks for pushing your manifesto in my face. It leaves me perplexed for two reasons.

To begin with, you claim it values “Individuals and their discussions … democracy and citizenship … Collaboration with the citizens” and so on more than anything else. But was it actually created through a democratic, collaborative process with citizens, or just dreamt up by you in your bedroom?

Secondly, I use Agile development at work to build opensource websites, and I don’t really see the link between it and your Manifesto. You use some agile language when you talk about optimising for democracy (“policies with high added value for democracy … Agile political processes harness change for the citizen’s advantage … Define evolution of a real democracy with a frequency of several weeks”).

However, you don’t propose any indicators, nor measurement methods, nor arbitrators. Who is the client? Who is the project manager?

Your manifesto’d be hijacked by undemocratic interests in months, if not weeks.

By: Bruno Paul

Bruno Paul — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:11:00 +0000

Web 2.0 media, civic journalism, all these are just part of the solution.
The real starting point is to engage citizens in discussing political issues. We have written a Manifesto for Agile Development of Democracy to explain this : http://citizen-in-europe.blogspot.com/p/manifesto-en.html