Following the massive financial collapse of 2008, Iceland has bounced back into the headlines with a world first: crowdsourcing their new constitution across social media channels. As in any crash of social and organizational nature, the 2008 meltdown formed the stepping stone to rewrite the rule book and start anew. The previous Icelandic constitution was entirely based on the Danish constitution, adopted in 1944 when Iceland earned its independence from Denmark. In other words, Iceland is taking charge to write its own rules for the first time.
The entire endeavor for a new, radically changed constitution started last year. 950 randomly selected citizens were invited in to basically brainstorm and discuss the changes that needed to be made. Instead of the typical practice of forming up a set of rules and ask for validation through national voting in the end, it was agreed that the public should be involved throughout the entire process. In November 2010, a committee of 25 people were elected to guide the new process whereby the constitution would be collectively drafted as an open crowdsourced digital project across all digital channels. They are reaching out to Iceland’s 320.000 inhabitants, one of the world’s most computer literate populations, through Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Regularly since April this year new clauses for the constitution have been posted on the website for consideration and comment. An open and iterative process. The work in progress constitutional document is a live evolving document
With its small population, Iceland has always formed a perfect petri dish of social and cultural experimentation. Taken into perspective, the Icelandic government’s decision taps into a much more general question, one faced by every brand or organization that wants to innovate in the advent of networked social media and recent financial crisis. Adopt a transparent, digitally enabled strategy of co-creation or carry on with the existing old school approach to business? The first option sure begets risk, but stakeholder ownership and digital democracy offer a higher chance of real innovation and long term survivability. The second option may have worked well in the past, especially for elitists who tend to overlook the untapped power of the crowd as “mob rule”, but it’s clearly on a downward spiral.
It’s a similar case on social media networks: whereas there may be internet trolls splashing their self-serving nonsense on forums, at the same there are accomplishments such as Wikipedia, which offers tons of quality information assembled by intelligent people who were given a chance to make their world a better place. Governments, corporate structures and businesses have been historically suffering from the exclusivity of a tight top-down structure, so now it would be a perfect opportunity to leave our inhibitions aside and make the shift. It’s worth trying, and it’s worth seeing.
By Dimitris Kritsilis, Creative Developer in Dialogues Incubator
