M-cognocracy: A Solution To Participatory Democracy With Mobile Technology

m-Cognocracy: A Solution to Participatory Democracy With Mobile Technology José I. Peláez Department of Languages and Computer Sciences - University of Málaga - Málaga 29071 - Spain [email protected] Jesús M. Doña Department of Languages and Computer Sciences - University of Málaga - Málaga 29071 - Spain [email protected]

David L. La Red Computer Science Department - Faculty of Exact Sciences - National Northeastern University Corrientes – Argentina [email protected]

Carlos R. Brys Computer Science Department - Faculty of Economics Sciences - National University of Misiones Misiones – Argentina [email protected]

Abstract For many people, practice of democracy has become synonymous of elections, an event where ordinary citizens only participate in politics the day of polling, once every four or five years. This is causing the decline in civic participation around the world, causing what has been called the crisis of political parties.

mobile technologies and operators of aggregation OWA providing a new model for citizen participation in city governments. Keywords: Participatory democracy, egovernment, citizen participation, municipalities, participatory budget, electronic voting, weights of the vector of the OWA operator.

The use of ICTs and new forms of participation in city governments by the practice of the Participatory Budget, it shown as an effective means to reverse citizens’ apathy. But for these new forms of participation to have the desired effect it must have two characteristics. The first is to reach the greatest number of citizens, which in a simple and safe way can exercise such participation, and the second, that synthesizes citizens’ preferences into results that are representative of the same.

1. Introduction

This paper presents a new form of civic participation called m-Cognocracy, using

The percentage of citizen participation around the world has been reduced from 68% in the

Increasing quantities of “white” votes and electoral abstention in the elections, support the conclusion that many people do not perceive politics as a constructive dimension of civic identity, but as a ritual that results to be not theirs (“e-Government and Election Process”. Executive Secretariat for Integral Development (ESDI). Organization of American States (OAS)).

mid-1980’s to 64% after 1990, and according to the data that has being recorded, from the year 2000 that participation continues to decline [6].

The following table and figure show the decrease of the participation in the European elections. Year % Participation 1979 61,99 1984 58,98 1989 58,41 1994 56,67 1999 49,51 2004 45,47 2009 43,01 Table 1: European elections (European Parliament1).

Figure 1: European elections (European Parliament).

Apathy for participating in the elections shows a growing estrangement between citizens and the political class. At present the use of new technologies has propitiated the appearance of new models of human relationships, for example through virtual communities that use the Internet as a communication media [13]. It is encouraging that in many places of the world, researchers, sociologists, politicians, citizens in general, are questioning the traditional methods of citizen participation, because they have not been adapted to the technological and social changes, and new ways to achieve the peoples’ government are subjected to debate, and the participatory methods using new technologies 1

European Parliament, 2009.

[6].

Within these studies on citizen participation, we can establish two essential aspects to the new model of participatory democracy be initially considered as valid. The first would be referred to the form of participation, which must involve the universe of the population, so the system should be easy and safe to use, in addition to be within reach of more people, so that they can cast their opinions or preferences regarding projects to be undertaken, and the second referred to the way of weighing these preferences to achieve a result that show the opinions of citizens, it is desirable that such weighting is independent of the values of the alternatives and dependent of the position they occupy. This ensures that any process of voting weighted equally to the alternatives, independently of the preferences expressed by the citizens, thus reaching two objectives: one of equality between all the votes, and a second, a filter for pressure groups since it ponders position and not preferences. Several researchers have attempted to give an answer to the above conditions in a global or local way. For example Moreno-Jiménez in [12], proposes a global solution to the problem of participatory democracy through the ecognocracy, a new model that combines direct participatory democracy with the representative democracy, and that is supplemented by use of electronic voting via the Internet. To carry out this process, Moreno-Jiménez makes use the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) [17–19], so that the political class establishes the hierarchy of decision criteria of choice and possible alternatives (projects), and are citizens who set preferences in a single voting round, using the Internet [13]. But this method presents the problem that makes a participatory exercise in a technologically mature society, where all citizens use Internet as a usual resource, inform themselves and learn through the network, and cast their votes in electronic form, so the practice of this kind of democracy is limited to a

very specific social stratum and can become exclusionary of society in general. In addition to this problem, using the AHP method implies that citizens express their preference for comparisons between pairs of alternatives, and because of the quantity of judgments that must be emitted, a computer or mobile devices are needed that are not available for the whole population. The second aspect for a method to be considered valid, is referred to the weighing of alternatives. Some operators designed to carry out the weighting of the position, independently of content, are called OWA operators (Ordered Weighted Averaging). Defined by Yager in [21], and implemented in a multitude of areas such as neural networks, fuzzy logic controllers, vision systems, expert systems and multi decision aids. This paper proposes an alternative model of citizen participation, which makes use of mobile phones together with the OWA operators, and matches the two main aspects to a system of citizen participation to be considered as valid. This paper has been organized as follows: Section 2 provides an introduction to participatory democracy through participatory budgeting and analyses their problems; in Section 3 it presents the m-Cognocracy, as a new form of practice participatory democracy using electronic voting with mobile devices, for which we present how to build-up the knowledge, it will show the technological paradigm, will treat safety aspects and finally will present the way to weight the alternatives through the OWA operators, and finally we will show an example and compare the results with other methods; the fourth section presents conclusions. 2. The Participative Budget. Problems One of the contexts where there have been success stories of citizen participation, is in the application of the concept of participative budgets, an idea that emerged in Porto Alegre (Brazil) in 1989 [22], and is replicating ever

more frequently throughout the world. This concept can be simplified in the following idea: the city administration, rather than deciding for everyone, invites neighbors for they themselves to determine which should be the projects that the city should invest public money in. From the study of a number of practical experiences of participatory budget (PB) [3,15], we conclude that the procedure, generally takes place in three stages: in the first, neighborhood assemblies are conducted where neighbors are trained in formulating projects; in the second, the projects are formulated by the ideas that the neighbors contribute, and the projects that neighbors established through voting according to their priorities are selected; in the third phase, the projects are adopted and implemented by the municipal authorities. One can infer from the three stages that the second is the most important where neighbors formulate and vote on the projects to be carried out. According to an analysis conducted in different participatory budgets, it was seen that the project priorities are set by the political class in a subjective way and not by the opinions of citizens or neighbors. In this scenario, it is desirable that these priorities be determined by the citizens themselves through their preferences. 3. m-Cognocracy The general definitions of what the electronic government is, limits it to the delivery of public services to citizens using Information & Communications Technology (ICT). This definition, although it is the simplest, is the most popular [2, 4]. If one looks at how the Internet has evolved, we can see that the web has become interactive and focused on the involvement of the user in a concept called Web 2.0 [14], and where connections are becoming increasingly wireless. In the Information Society, people with capacity to participate in decision-making have become more participatory, are better informed, they are more analytical, less submissive and are much more

demanding about their political administrations [8]. Today young people handle more communication and technological resources than the political class that governs. There has been a generational gap in the capacity to manage knowledge. It is a fact that citizens while maintaining their support for democracy, respect the authority increasingly less [7]. However, there is a seemingly contradictory situation. The numbers show an alleged lack of motivation and desire to participate in the traditional way, but the experiences in which the citizen can see himself as an active element through his direct participation in public affairs, show high levels of satisfaction and the desire to participate more often in making decisions that affect their future [20]. These facts do not go unnoticed by the political class, which perceives that something is happening to the citizens, and believes that one way to legitimize its mandate is to improve the processes of citizen participation. But this is not an easy task, for the simple fact that no one knows how to do it. In this scenario governments must adapt to new technological paradigms, it is necessary to adopt new methods for making decisions and rethink alternatives to exercise democracy. To define this new paradigm the term “mCognocracy” is proposed, a new model of participatory democracy where “e-citizens” build knowledge in consensus to make the community proposals, and decide for the best alternatives voting at the time of their choice, anywhere via their mobile communication devices, in electronic form and also remotely [16]. To illustrate how this new participation model is, it will be shown how to manage the knowledge construction, it will present the technological paradigm, and the authentication system. 3.1. Knowledge Building In the technological context proposed by this paper, the knowledge required for the process of the decision-making community, is built from an initial group of e-citizens with skills in managing various resources in technology and

communications, that capture a set of ideas and makes popular initiatives. These ideas are argued and enriched while transmitting through various communicating media, with increasingly greater mass participation and scope, as shown in the next figure.

Figure 2: Knowledge Building Process.

In short, in the practice of m-Cognocracy few people use a blog to socialize an initiative. Others take these ideas to the forums and in a wiki build the proposal. The proposal is sent to nearly all by e-mail by an electronic newsletter. Everyone participates in the assembly for discussion of the alternatives. Finally, among all they vote using SMS (Short Message Service) from their mobile devices to determine which are the best proposals and get the prioritization of projects that best represent the interests of the group.

3.2. The Technological Paradigm The development of ICT has created a technological context where access to communication with mobile devices is global and universal. The communication resource most available to the population is cellular telephony, a resource exploited through SMS messages.

According to Informa Telecoms and Media2, with a inter year growth of 18%, penetration of cellular telephony is close to 50% of the world’s population. It is alleged that in 2009 the penetration will be 60%, and in 2012 it will reach 66%. The next table and figure show the penetration of the movable telephony (MT) in respect of the fixed telephony (FT) and the penetration of the movable telephony (MT) in respect of the Internet3.

Country World European Union China United States India Japan Brazil Germany

MT / FT 1,72 1,96 1,25 1,35 3,34 1,84 2,58 1,56

MT / Internet 2,13 1,87 2,85 1,12 2,77 1,16 2,35 2,18

Table 2: Movable Telephony / Fixed Telephony; Movable Telephony / Internet.

technology [9–11]. This means that eventually people will be able to exercise their civic duties using a mobile device. 3.3. Security and Authentication One of the aspects that we can argue in the hypothesis of this paper is the security level that cell phone voting can provide, although it is important to bear in mind, it is not the object of study of this work. Fortunately, today’s technology others solutions to reliably ensure the identity of the person who votes, through the electronic signature infrastructure in the mobile [5]. From the standpoint of implementation, in order to use the system, the user must apply for a digital certificate for his mobile phone which will allow them to certify his authenticity and sign electronically through an SMS message. For security, the digital certificate is not stored in the mobile device, but it will be installed safely on the SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module). 3.4. Weighting of Alternatives As mentioned earlier, the second aspect to be considered as a valid method, refers to the weight of the alternatives being desirable that the weighting being independent of the values of alternatives and depending on the position they occupy.

Figure 3: Movable Telephony / Fixed Telephony; Movable Telephony / Internet.

These facts define a paradigm where the technological media of citizens communication, are cellular phones and not the Internet, therefore it is not wrong to think that services will be developed on the basis of mobile 2 3

http://www.informatm.com CIA. Factbook 2008. USA.

This ensures that any voting process will weigh equally the alternatives, independently of the preferences expressed by the citizens, achieving in this way two objectives: one of equality between all the votes, and secondly a filter for the pressure groups, as it ponders the position and not the values. To carry out the weighting, this paper proposes the use of the OWA operator along with BordaKendall’s method [1] for determining the weight of the operator. An OWA operator is defined as a function of

dimension n of the type F: possessing an array of weights associated W = [w1,...,wn]T , where wi [0, 1], = 1, to aggregate a list of values {p1,...,pn}. Also,

(1) where bi is the ith largest value of pn. The vector of weights W is obtained by using Borda-Kendall’s method, so that:

each citizen votes using their mobile phone with the following procedure: they send a SMS text identifying the projects in the order of their preference. Table 3 shows that voting along with the absolute frequencies of the order of preferences for each project. Project A B C D E F

1st 3 4 6 6 0 1

2nd 3 5 2 2 4 4

3rd 4 5 3 2 3 3

4th 3 2 2 6 4 3

Table 3: Votes received for projects A-F.

)

The vector of weights which is obtained using Borda-Kendall’s method (2) is:

Therefore, the operator would be defined as follows: (2)

So: vij is the absolute frequency of voters who placed the alternative j in the position i of the ranking (j = 1,..., m); and wi is the relative weight of importance corresponding to i place in the ranking (i = 1,…, n). The total account of each project Zj is an aggregated utility that is defined as a linear function of the relative weights of importance. Once the weights are determined, in the exploration phase the projects are sorted according to their total accounts. In (3) we observe that the weights are related to the positions in the ranking, and not to the order of the votes. 3.5. Numerical Example A group of 20 residents of a neighborhood has drawn up a list of projects A, B, C, D, E, F, that the municipal government will finance. Among the neighbors they must choose which are the most important projects for the neighborhood,

W = (0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1) Applying the aggregation equation (3) with the vector of weights W we obtain aggregated values for each project, as seen in Table 4. Project A B C D E F

1st 1.2 1.6 2.4 2.4 0 0.4

2nd 0.9 1.5 0.6 0.6 1.2 1.2

3rd 0.8 1.0 0.6 0.4 0.6 0.6

4th 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.6 0.4 0.3

Count 3.2 4.3 3.8 4.0 2.2 2.5

Table 4: Counts for projects A-F using the vector of weights of OWA.

Arranging the column Count that represents the aggregated values of each project the following list results:

BÆDÆCÆAÆFÆE If we compare the values of Tables 3 and 4 we can see that if it had applied the method of choice for a single project by a simple majority (column 1 of Table 3), projects C and D would have won with equal importance (6 votes). But this method does not consider the different magnitudes of preference which may be had by the neighbors as to other projects.

However, using the method of aggregation with the vector weights OWA, the magnitudes of preference of all the projects are counted, and is obtained that project B is the most representative of the interests of the citizen group. 4. Conclusions This paper presents a new form of citizen participation called m-Cognocracy, that using mobile technologies and operators of aggregation OWA they provide a new model for the civic participation in the governments of the cities. For that, the way how to build knowledge has been presented, the technological paradigm that is based on the use of mobile phones using SMS has been established, it has raised the security scheme that allows using digital signatures to cast the votes from the mobile communication devices, and finally, it has proposed a new way of weighing alternatives which weights the position, using OWA operators, and has proposed a new way of determining the weights of the operators using Borda Kendall’s method. Finally, it has compared this new form of weight with other methods and has shown how this way of weighing addition to weigh the position and not the content; it takes into account all the votes in all magnitudes of preference. 5. Acknowledgements This work is supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain. (Project TIN2006-14285).

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