Introducing DemDash Actions

Today, we're releasing an alpha version of DemDash Actions. We've created a few so far, including one on breaking up the banks, one that came from a speaker at the most recent TEDMED regarding a bill to create a federal Department of Peace, one on the controversial White House deficit commission, one on ending the Bush tax cuts, and one on chemical safety. You can see these on your homepage dashboard on the right hand side if you're logged in, and notifications as citizens sign them will appear in the timeline.

An obvious question is why the world needs yet another actions tool, and we agree, there are a number of fine solutions out there. However, we still see a gap for something that's lightweight, simple, multi-group aware, and flexible in what kind of organization you can target. Not to mention for a solution that only takes one click! It drives us a little crazy that a decade into the 21st Century, it's still more difficult to provide basic democratic feedback than it is to order a book from Amazon.

DemDash Actions are certainly lightweight. In fact, all they do right now is count users and groups. But as Willie Brown puts it, learning to count is the first rule of politics. They're quick to set up and can target any of our group types, from individual representatives to caucuses to party organizations to commercial entities. So the next time Congress does something to drive you crazy, think of us, but also think of us the next time a big company does something evil. DemDash Actions are, at their heart, a general tool for applying democratic pressure to any organization or process.

There are three other benefits that we think are worth mentioning, one that's built in to the current design, and two that are coming soon:

First, DemDash Actions are user-focused. They're not solely for list building. We love both partisan and nonpartisan organizations and we want them to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. However, the sheer volume of organizations out there clamoring for resources has resulted in a kind of tragedy of the commons, where the commons is the aggregate attention span of the citizenry. If you've ever hesitated before sending a group money or signing up for their email list because of the deluge of requests for attention and money you know it will trigger, then you're familiar with this problem. We hope that by building a channel for the great work these groups do, we can increase (hopefully greatly) the number of people they reach, and that by gently managing the data flow between groups and individuals we can both lower the cost of participation and better manage the attention commons. In a sense, DemDash is a bit like a VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) tool for democracy.

Second, better reporting. While we don't have the reporting available publicly just yet, since we know what political districts our users reside in (which we have to do to build out the Civic Profile page), we'll be able to build reports based on any districts that signees and groups are in. So if an office that's being targeted to wants to see just the signees that are voters in their district, they'll be able to, whether that district is a county or city district or a congressional district. We strongly believe that any elected representative should consider themselves responsible for listening to any citizen who cares enough to provide input on any decision they're making, but we understand that they need to know where that input is coming from. So as well as making it easier for citizens, we're making it easier for the offices of our elected representatives (and their long-suffering staff) as well.

Third, better feedback and results tracking. Think of all the actions you've signed: what ever happened with them? Too often, these things get lost in the shrouds of time. They aren't live yet, but we're already working on better tools for targeted groups to respond with, as well as tools for tracking the history of issues.

Sometimes we describe DemDash as an "organizing platform," although this description isn't very helpful unless you have a working definition of what "organizing" constitutes. We see organizing as the process of persuading someone to deepen their level of commitment to the democratic process. So the future of Actions will be all about augmenting any kind of democratic participation that anyone takes, from making a contribution to reaching out to a neighbor to creating a piece of art to marching or engaging in any kind of direct action. This is often called the "ladder of engagement." In reality sometimes it's more of a zig-zag than a ladder, but whatever people's paths to engagement are, we want to give them a way to both broadcast and remember their hard work. This is at the core of the design for DemDash; in fact it was the first thing I wrote down in the design of this version of the system that crystallized in 2008, shown in the image at the right.

While Actions are live on the site now, we don't quite yet have the tool for creating them up yet. That will be coming soon. In the meantime if you have any idea for a quick action or group and you'd like to promote it, or if you have general ideas how these should work, don't hesitate to get in touch via email at feedback at demdash dot us, or through the feedback link inside the site.

Thanks for your interest, and we're looking forward to taking action to expanding participatory democracy with you!