Tech & Democracy: Perspectives from Argentina, Georgia, Kenya & the Czech Republic

Please join the Institute for the Future's Governance Futures Lab and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in welcoming a delegation of 22 members of parliament from 11 countries for a conversation with civic innovators on the opportunities and challenges posed to democratic governance in a digital world.

These lawmakers and innovators will discuss projects to utilize new voting technologies and citizen engagement techniques that offer solutions to the challenges posed by the rapid pace of technological change. Members of the delegation will offer experience from their countries on the changing world of democratic governance, including the new demands placed on lawmakers by increasingly connected citizens, the impact of transparency on consensus and polarization, and the importance of the role of women and youth.

Welcoming remarks by:

Marina Gorbis, Executive Director, Institute for the Future
Dan Swislow, Senior Partnerships Officer, National Democratic Institute

The discussion will be led by presentations, remarks and discussion by:

Pia Mancini, Founder, DemocracyOS Foundation
Lex Paulson, International Advisor, Democracy 2.1 (D21)
Honorable Tinatin Khidasheli, Member, Parliament of Georgia
Honorable Johnson Arthur Sakaja, Member, Parliament of Kenya
Bettina Warburg (moderator), Public Foresight Strategist, Institute for the Future

5:30 - 6:00pm Drinks & hors d'oeuvres
6:00 - 7:15pm Program
7:15 - 8:00pm Reception with the delegation (for further small group discussion)

More information:

DemocracyOS is an open source app for collaborative decision making and the easy governance of organizations and communities. DemocracyOS' recent TED video received close to a million views.

Democracy 2.1(D21) is a semi-proportional electoral system proposed to replace "one-person, one-vote" systems, allowing voters to four plus votes and up to two minus votes, applicable to voting processes from candidate elections to participatory budgeting processes, and meant to build greater opportunities for consensus and accountability.

This event is part of an exchange program organized by NDI, in partnership with the Institute for Representative Government and the House Democracy Partnership of the US House of Representatives. It is supported by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Leadership in the Digital Economy. The program brings together members of parliaments -- mostly women and young MPs -- from around the world to Washington D.C. and the Bay Area.

Speaker biographies:

Hon. Tinatin Khidasheli was elected a member of parliament in Georgia in the October 2012 general elections. Hon. Khidasheli is a member of Georgia's Republican Party, which forms part of the governing Dream Coalition in Georgia. She serves as Chair of the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Cooperation Commission and has been active with the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership. Recently, Parliament elected her as a Chairperson of the Parliamentary Investigative Committee, investigating crimes committed in the field of mass communication and media freedom. In 2010 she was elected to and served on the City Council in Tbilisi, Georgia and as a member of the Budget Committee. Previously, as president of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association, Hon. Khidasheli played a role in issues including parliamentary election observation, uncovering electoral fraud, creating dispute-resolution programs, and lobbying for the creation of state-run legal aid services for the poor and disenfranchised. She has 20 years of human right experience working as a leader of the biggest human rights NGO in the region.

Hon. Johnson Sakaja is a member of the National Assembly of Kenya and the chairman of The National Alliance (TNA) political party. He also serves as chair of the Kenya Young Parliamentarians Association and as chair of the Joint Committee on National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity. Hon. Sakaja is the founder of Johnson Consultants, which offers financial and strategic advisory services to governmental and private business entities in Kenya. He began his political career at the University of Nairobi as vice chair of the Actuarial Students Association and later became a student leader for Student Organization of Nairobi University (SONU). He holds a degree in Actuarial Science and is currently pursuing a higher degree in Political Economics. He entered national elected politics in 2005 during the referendum and worked on the re-election of H.E. Mwai Kibaki in 2007. In parliament, Hon. Sakaja has presented a number of legislative amendments focused on youth having representation on national issues. Hon. Sakaja served as a consultant in the Committee of Experts (COE) and Parliamentary Select Committee on the Constitution and helped develop the formula for delimitation of electoral boundaries in Kenya.

Pia Mancini is the Co-Founder of The Democracy OS Foundation, a YCombinator backed collaborative decision-making platform. A political scientist by training, Pia is Executive Director of Democracia en Red. She is also a peer and co-founder of Partido de la Red (The Net Party), World Economic Forum Social Media Council representative, member of The World Fix, a community tackling the world's toughest problem: Government. Former Chief of Advisors Deputy Secretary of Political Affairs, Government of the City of Buenos Aires. Worked at CIPPEC, was part of the founding team of Interrupción Free Trade, a non for profit that aimed at building corporate social responsibility, fair trade and responsible consuming projects. Author of Art Bits.

Lex Paulson is an attorney, professor, writer, and consultant in international governance, currently advising Democracy 2.1 and the Office of Karel Janeček. He has also done work for UNICEF, the National Democratic Institute, and the Corporation for International Private Enterprise. Trained in political theory at Yale, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne, he served as legislative counsel in the 111th U.S. Congress, organized on four U.S. presidential campaigns, and has additionally worked as a volunteer attorney for Lawyers for Children America. His work as a facilitator and trainer in the international arena include work with NGOs and governments in India, Egypt, Uganda, Burundi, Niger, Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, Benin, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire, on issues related to democratic engagement and accountable government. Lex is currently professor of rhetoric and political culture at Sciences Po - Paris, leads the "Citizen's Book Club" discussion group on democracy at Paris's Shakespeare & Company bookshop, and writes the "Applied Classics" series for the Huffington Post.

Bettina Warburg (moderator) has a background in global governance and cultural diplomacy. Her interest in engaging the future by looking at the past has led her to projects across the world: she has written for Georgetown University Press on German nationalism, researched the Tamil diaspora, and produced cultural radio shows for NPR in Berlin. Bettina received her MSc from Oxford University and BS from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Governance design, futures thinking, and how to grow the public imagination inform much of her research and project areas at the Institute for the Future, including in launching the Governance Futures Lab. As a Public Foresight Strategist at IFTF, Bettina works on a variety of strategic initiatives that push for foresight in the public realm, including the Future of Philanthropy, the Future of Learning, and the Future of Work. Bettina's current research examines the roles of creative social spaces in developing new models for generating value and systemic change.

Marina Gorbis is a futurist and social scientist who serves as executive director to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), a Silicon Valley nonprofit research and consulting organization. In her 14 years with IFTF, Marina has brought a futures perspective to hundreds of organizations in business, education, government, and philanthropy to improve innovation capacity, develop strategies, and design new products and services. Marina's current research focuses on how social production is changing the face of major industries, a topic explored in detail in her book, The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World. She has also blogged and written for BoingBoing.net, FastCompany, Harvard Business Review, and major media outlets. A native of Odessa, Ukraine, yet equally at home in Silicon Valley, Europe, India, and Kazakhstan, Marina is particularly well suited to see things from a global viewpoint. She has keynoted such international events as the World Economic Forum, The Next Web Conference, NEXT Berlin, the World Business Forum, the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges annual conference. She holds a BA in psychology and a master's of public policy from UC Berkeley.

Dan Swislow serves as senior partnerships officer at NDI, leading the Institute's presence in Silicon Valley and supporting programs related to open government and civic innovation as a member of the governance team. In 2012, he helped NDI and its partners found OpeningParliament.org, a forum for more than 160 civil society organizations focused on the transparency of legislatures in over 80 countries. Since 2013, Dan has facilitated NDI's collaboration with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), and NDI's co-chairmanship with the Congress of Chile of OGP's Legislative Openness Working Group. He has led workshops or been featured as a speaker on open government and civic innovation at international events and conferences on five continents. Dan was awarded a Legislative Fellowship in 2013, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, to support transparency and accountability advocacy to the Congress of Mexico. He holds a master of public policy from the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a bachelor of arts from New York University, and studied international business management at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India.