Institute For The Future

MEDIA ADVISORY

IFTF Hosts ReConstitutional Convention: Social Inventors Wanted!

Palo Alto, CA, April 25, 2013—Over 200 years ago, 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention gathered to envision a new system of governance for what would become the United States of America. Now, on April 26-27, the Governance Futures Lab of the Institute for the Future (IFTF) is inviting social inventors from around the world to reinvent the practice of governance for the 21th century.

The system of governance envisioned by the 1787 Constitutional Convention sustained the United States though the Industrial Revolution and the rise of many large institutional structures, both public and private.  But that system wasn’t designed for a world of open data, where citizens can capture and monitor global information. It had no way of anticipating today’s human-machine partnerships and real-time analytics tools that provide feedback loops on everything from governmental budgeting to energy footprints. It was built for a time when news traveled over months by ship, not milliseconds by satellite. And no provisions were made for platforms that can aggregate thousands or even millions of citizen opinions to contribute to decisions that impact people at every scale of engagement, from local neighborhoods to global networks.

Today’s governments are stuck using 18th century tools to solve 21th century problems. As IFTF Research Director Jake Dunagan suggests, “It is now necessary to re-constitute our societies for life in the age of planetary challenges and human responsibility, this so-called Anthropocene Epoch.” The Governance Futures Lab hopes to find a better way.

On April 26-27, the Lab is hosting a ReConstitutional Convention. This gathering of world-class social inventors and futures thinkers will reinvent the frameworks for thinking about the core questions of governance: How should resources be managed? Who has a voice? How do people make decisions together to secure their individual and collective well-being?

Government is already being reinvented by necessity in places like Detroit and six other Michigan cities currently under emergency managers. It’s being reinvented when Congress fails to pass measures that 90% of the public support, such as background checks for guns.  In more hopeful experiments, it’s being reinvented in places like Iceland, where efforts are ongoing to crowdsource a new national constitution.

Participants in the ReConstitutional Convention will include over 50 leading experts in social and political change, including Jane McGonigal, James Fishkin, Stephen Duncombe, James Dator, Micah Sifry, and many others.  Using the Institute’s design toolkit for reinventing governance, they will investigate the core challenges that lead many to believe today’s government institutions are failing. Then they’ll rethink the foundational frameworks for new governance systems, create new designs for governance, and prototype ways to make governance work.

An example is App4Gov, a project of the Governance Futures Lab. It’s a prototype of a free and open-source tool that allows elected officials to systematically delegate decision-making to constituents through a suite of online participatory democracy tools:

Because diverse design inputs make for a more resilient future, the ReConstitutional Convention will involve participation from nine global nodes: 

• Birmingham, AL
• Chicago, IL
• Honolulu, HI
• London, UK
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Singapore
• Washington, DC
• Yangon, Myanmar

IFTF, the Governance Futures Lab, and the City of Palo Alto invite the public to an event at 6:15pm on Friday, April 26, at Palo Alto City Council Chambers. Mayor Gregory Scharff and IFTF Executive Director Marina Gorbis will host a panel presentation of the expert social inventors’ new governance designs, followed by Q & A.  Join us in person or track the action on Twitter (@GovFuturesLab #ReConCon) or Facebook as we take one step in a long journey to ignite the American and global public to reinvent governance for our time.

About Institute for the Future

IFTF is an independent, non-profit research organization with a 45-year track record of helping all kinds of organizations make the futures they want. The core IFTF research staff and creative studio work together to provide practical foresight for a world undergoing rapid change.  www.iftf.org

About Governance Futures Lab

The Governance Futures Lab is a new IFTF initiative that brings social inventors and futures thinking to the challenge of designing better systems of governance. www.govfutures.org

Keywords:  governance, government, design, participatory, citizen, politician, representative, democracy, game, social, invention, toolkit, reinvent, politics, decision-making

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