Open law-making increases transparency
The Ministry of Justice in Finland opened a law reform to the public to participate in. The law, called the Association Act, governs the management of associations and civic initiatives. A working group is gathering people’s views on how the current regulation should be improved. There are two ways in which the public can participate in the law reform online: The online questionnare is open 3.5.-16.6.2019 and an online conversation based on the early feedback from the survey is open 24.5.-16.6.2019. Senior Adviser Jyrki Jauhiainen from the Ministry of Justice tells about the project.
Goals
To gather information and views from the public on how to develop the association law via open online crowdsourcing. We are aiming to reach also unorganized communities such as Facebook groups in order to find out how their operations could be improved, for example allow banking and not require heavy accounting.
We want to make the lawmaking process as open as possible and encourage diverse conversation and evaluation.
Background
Everything that I have done in regards of community laws during the past six to seven years, has included crowdsourcing in some way. The system needs to work in such a manner that people generally can run associations mostly on their own, without the help of a lawyer.
We are constantly following the field. This current initiative is based on feedback from the field as well as internal evaluation.
Process
The ministry’s working group will conduct the process and it has just begun. During the spring season we will gather information on citizens’ hopes and needs, and in the fall we will focus on the societal viewpoint and how these two could be combined. The information gathering phase will continue until the end of year and by November/December the new law proposal will be outlined. The proposal will be ready by October 2020 when a final report will be published and submitted to public hearings and other public feedback on an online platform. After this phase, the official law proposal will be prepared for the government.
There will be public hearings throughout the official preparation as well. The plan is that the government could deliver the bill to the parliament in fall 2021 at the earliest.
Participation
The process has just begun. The online questionnaire was opened late April and already nearly 700 people have participated, without almost any promoting. We expect around thousand participants by the end of June.
Technology
The online questionnare was made with Webropol survey tool. The content came from ministry advisers. Platform for the online conversation will be confimed later.
The ministry team uses internal online working space Tiimeri.
Contribution to democracy
Through openness and continuous interactive inclusion of the public in the law making process, the lawmakers are better aware of peoples’ needs and the impacts of different approaches. Inclusive lawmaking challenges traditional means of lobbying, while introducing new ways of making an impact.
Openness and inclusion increase trust in the lawmaking process and also make people more invested, which in turn streamlines the implementation of new laws.
Lessons learned
It is too early to say for the current initiative, but I have learned a lot from previous crowdsourcing projects.
Making people aware of the possibility to make their voice heard, is key. Successfully communicating this requires building trust through openly showing people, how the promise of inclusion is being fulfilled. Continuous societal inclusion teaches citizens to participate and also to expect to be given the opportunity in the future.
Platform design and user experience are also very important. Since we are asking people to use their time, we need to first give them something. One cannot just order ”subjects” to take part in crowdsourcing. On a crowdsourcing platform the main role should be played by content made by peers, not by authorities. Seeing comments from peers encourages taking part. The online environment should be made to appear familiar and easy to approach. For instance when crowdsourcing condominium law, we used a platform called IdeaScale and modified its functionality and even coloring to remind Facebook.
Crowdsourcing gives an opportunity to analyze if a problem is due to bad wording, rather than content of the law in preparation. Same rule can be interpreted in various ways. By reading the comments from citizens, we have understood that it is worth communicating in different methods to different target groups.
Challenges and solutions
So far our biggest challenge has been that most NGOs and civic events are not used to such inclusive methods. Associations are actually rather “undemocratic” in many ways, and normally members do not have many possibilities of participation. It has been a surprise to some of Finland’s biggest organisations that we are not looking for their formal take but instead are interested in hearing all members’ views and opinions.
Also NGOs often operate in a slow pace and it has been challenging to fit their timetables to our information gathering phase and communication. This is due to many organisations being run by volunteers, so they do not necessarily have the possibility to react very quickly.
Open lawmaking is such a new phenomenon that people might find it hard to believe that they have an actual chance of making an impact.
This time we are using new methods of reaching citizens; we are attending for example summer events and festival and investing in social media marketing in order to reach out to different groups and communities.
Next steps
We are trying to find procedures to all lawmaking processes, this is not a one-time experiment. We aim to implement a way of thinking that target groups and stakeholders should naturally be included in the lawmaking from the very beginning.