2018-04-27 vNetwork Toronto: Weekly Hangout

Date: Fri, Apr 27, 2018 @ 1-3pm

Location: Civic Innovation Office, Toronto City Hall

Participants:

• patcon
• alex

 Notes

• Feasibility of pilot vnetwork project for Toronto
  • Brainstorming potential partners and issues #TODO
    • Recalling interaction with MLS (Municipal Licensing and Standards)
    • patcon: we didn’t have a concrete and shareable pitch deck when we presented to MLS. there was interest, but no easy way to share concepts outside our meeting and conversation
      • #TODO ? create a pitch deck for the project, in pursuit of partner
      • project can use vTaiwan as a heavy template
      • Might this mean less research, more direct "porting"?
      • patcon: public servants, being risk averse, value seeing the "someone else has done it and it went well" really early in conversation
      • alex: should mention context of project early in convo, in terms that address their needs and desired
        • ie. not waiting until the end after explain vtaiwan in order to allude to the local project effort
• Reflections on beginnings of vTaiwan (consultation for closely held company law) and "filters" that set the initial project up for a fertile exploration of what public consultation can look like
  • closely held company = like an LLC here, i think -- patcon
  • closely held company legislation scope = setting up companies online vs old way of forms
  • super accessible topic -- eg. many people have experience incorporating companies
    • in contrast, regulation around digital vendor procurement might be digital, but not accessible to general public, so maybe a non-ideal start
      • If topic has risk of being inaccessible, there would need to be some thinking around what would bridge that need for expertise/technical knowledge with the general public access
• Discussed ideas of community development
  • run project and allow community to develop through creation process?
  • feels like how it went down in Taiwan
• patcon: feel digital issues are really important piece of pilot
  • alex: agreed! part of what makes a consultation appealing/legitimate is that the intermediary offers expertise 
• Emphasis on collectively imagining the project pilot itself
  • informed by civic tech culture and insights
  • politically feasible in terms of institutional interaction? likely yes
• Placement re: larger vNetwork and Civic Tech spaces. Make discoverable, collaborative
• Public vs private Trello?
  • patcon: potential for complication with private->public if there needs to be a switch down the line
• moved to Starbucks
• first principles community guidelines
  • https://bunz.com/standards
  • https://www.recurse.com/manual
• patcon: re: humane transparency
  • default to transparency
    • thing from gov, but can we adopt it here
    • alex: allows us to be more intentional about how we’re engaging with the process itself
      • hope to contribute to a bigger public good
      • if you want to be here, you should 
  • g0vNYC/hub#3
  • https://talk.pdis.nat.gov.tw/t/principles-for-handling-official-visits-to-digital-minister-audrey-tang/70
• alex: defaulting to jargon is very similar
• patcon: should we make intention to have a less process-curious, to have more neurodiversity?
  • alex: I’m actually normally the "DO" person, but re: this project I see a lot of value in erring on the side of process.
    • with more neurodiversity I will often be in-between on "spectrum" with a bigger group
  • alex: re: vtaiwan. process itself should be self-reflective by default. what allows for variability needs to be consistent. the reason for variability can’t be whim, but self-reflection.
• is vtaiwan-building process a social justice process?
  • do we exclude all stakeholders or include them all (eg. property developers vs low income tenants) 
    • above is in relation to "building vtaiwan process", not running an iteration of it
    • patcon re: alex’s concern that stakeholders will be too numerous to reasonably include whole: there are number of very explicit stakeholders that must be brought into project if we decide to include. 
    • alex: thinking in terms of input and output... can’t "choose" to selectively involve specific stakeholders at the exclusion of others (e.g. consulting marginalised group A but not [less marginal] group B). Any attempt at external input must aspire to include all relevant parties because anything else would thwart neutrality.
      • BUT social justice aspect is already readily seen where we’re able to highlight access barriers and their impact on visualised output. If marginalised group A turnout was proportionately lower than group B’s, this is something that can be made explicit with display of output.
        • patcon: occasions where with vTaiwan consultations, lack of certain stakeholder participation rendered those results inconclusive
• Going through online platform config for vNetwork Toronto
  • Notes for people that want to dig deeper?

Emerging Questions

• Is the vTaiwan-building process a social justice project? Does it strive in it’s creation and iteration try to include lots and be really open to all interested? Is it a small group?
• Re: early success of vTaiwan that helped get it off the ground and develop into a movement--what elements are "exportable"? What of the founding circumstances should be adapted to Toronto’s version of vNetwork to improve chances of success?

 Action Items

• Trello