I love this—with all the talk around, surely some more concrete action in reform can be taken that can benefit the community long term.
I like the idea of an “Governance, Transparency, and Reform Contest” contest. I don’t think the prize would have to be so high to garner entries, as I think there is a lot of passion around this to motivate people as well. To raise the stakes, the competition could state something like “At least a portion of the proposal of the winning 3 entries would be enacted in some way by xxxx” or something like that. Obviously we don’t know what decision making processes, community things or institutions would be suggested, but I think people would be incentivised to write if they thought it could lead directly to concrete action, however small.
Love that you fronted up with a bit of “skin in the game” too, very cool.
One big question is what exactly could be reformed and who would sign up to the reforming? Willingness to participate in this kind of process would be necessary from CEA at the very least, then perhaps other orgs could voluntarily sign up to be part of it too.
I’m sure a number of people would write if they sufficiently believed there was a good chance of implementation/impact for their idea. Indeed, this is the best possible motivation—it would attract people (like myself) for whom money is not much of an incentive. However, that requires some means of credibly signaling to would-be writers that there is a good chance of implementation/impact. One can view the promise of financial compensation as a means of mitigating the writers’ risk—by guaranteeing that the writer won’t be left with no impact and nothing else to show for their work, it motivates people to write even if they have a lower level of belief that their idea will be implemented.[1]
Promising some degree of implementation would definitely drive interest, but one downside is that the implementing organizations would (understandably) want a heavy role in picking the judges and would probably make some classes of proposal out-of-bounds for selection. You might be able to mitigate that by offering a higher prize if the judges concluded that a winning idea wasn’t implemented—that would guarantee the winners receive at least impact or a decent chunk of cash without requiring organizations to commit to implementing winning proposals in advance of seeing them.
I have a mental list of reform proposals I’d like to see explored, but the choice not to discuss specific proposals (unless I needed a concrete example) was deliberate. Summarily listing them wouldn’t move the discussion beyond where it has already gone, and anyway the point is to encourage exploration of ideas the community feels are worth exploring. I could write a 300-500 word sketch on half a dozen ideas I think are worth exploring, but that loops back into whether there’s enough reason to believe it would accomplish anything.
As for who would implement the ideas, that depends on the idea—many of the ideas floating around would require implementation by one or more existing organizations, while I feel that some really need to be housed in a new independent organization. In the latter case, the proposal is seeking to gather information on whether there is enough interest to fund and staff such an organization. To be a little more concrete, things like a conflict-of-interest panel, certain forms of whistleblower support, support for organizations to adopt governance best practices, and funding of further reform proposals couldn’t (in my opinion) be well-housed in an existing organization.
I think the need for an additional incentive is particularly acute where one of the usual motivators—status and recognition—is attenuated or absent. A number of people have expressed concerns that promoting significant reforms would adversely effect their careers, so I imagine that a number of writers would chose psuedonyms or would view the status/recognition effects as a mixed bag.
Another intermediate approach would be to guarantee that the (or an) appropriate organization would at least read the top-rated proposals and write a meaningful response (even if it explains a decision not to proceed at this time). It’s really hard to use the hope of impact as motivation to write if you doubt anyone with the ability to move the proposal forward will ever read it.
I love this—with all the talk around, surely some more concrete action in reform can be taken that can benefit the community long term.
I like the idea of an “Governance, Transparency, and Reform Contest” contest. I don’t think the prize would have to be so high to garner entries, as I think there is a lot of passion around this to motivate people as well. To raise the stakes, the competition could state something like “At least a portion of the proposal of the winning 3 entries would be enacted in some way by xxxx” or something like that. Obviously we don’t know what decision making processes, community things or institutions would be suggested, but I think people would be incentivised to write if they thought it could lead directly to concrete action, however small.
Love that you fronted up with a bit of “skin in the game” too, very cool.
One big question is what exactly could be reformed and who would sign up to the reforming? Willingness to participate in this kind of process would be necessary from CEA at the very least, then perhaps other orgs could voluntarily sign up to be part of it too.
Thanks, Nick!
I’m sure a number of people would write if they sufficiently believed there was a good chance of implementation/impact for their idea. Indeed, this is the best possible motivation—it would attract people (like myself) for whom money is not much of an incentive. However, that requires some means of credibly signaling to would-be writers that there is a good chance of implementation/impact. One can view the promise of financial compensation as a means of mitigating the writers’ risk—by guaranteeing that the writer won’t be left with no impact and nothing else to show for their work, it motivates people to write even if they have a lower level of belief that their idea will be implemented.[1]
Promising some degree of implementation would definitely drive interest, but one downside is that the implementing organizations would (understandably) want a heavy role in picking the judges and would probably make some classes of proposal out-of-bounds for selection. You might be able to mitigate that by offering a higher prize if the judges concluded that a winning idea wasn’t implemented—that would guarantee the winners receive at least impact or a decent chunk of cash without requiring organizations to commit to implementing winning proposals in advance of seeing them.
I have a mental list of reform proposals I’d like to see explored, but the choice not to discuss specific proposals (unless I needed a concrete example) was deliberate. Summarily listing them wouldn’t move the discussion beyond where it has already gone, and anyway the point is to encourage exploration of ideas the community feels are worth exploring. I could write a 300-500 word sketch on half a dozen ideas I think are worth exploring, but that loops back into whether there’s enough reason to believe it would accomplish anything.
As for who would implement the ideas, that depends on the idea—many of the ideas floating around would require implementation by one or more existing organizations, while I feel that some really need to be housed in a new independent organization. In the latter case, the proposal is seeking to gather information on whether there is enough interest to fund and staff such an organization. To be a little more concrete, things like a conflict-of-interest panel, certain forms of whistleblower support, support for organizations to adopt governance best practices, and funding of further reform proposals couldn’t (in my opinion) be well-housed in an existing organization.
I think the need for an additional incentive is particularly acute where one of the usual motivators—status and recognition—is attenuated or absent. A number of people have expressed concerns that promoting significant reforms would adversely effect their careers, so I imagine that a number of writers would chose psuedonyms or would view the status/recognition effects as a mixed bag.
Another intermediate approach would be to guarantee that the (or an) appropriate organization would at least read the top-rated proposals and write a meaningful response (even if it explains a decision not to proceed at this time). It’s really hard to use the hope of impact as motivation to write if you doubt anyone with the ability to move the proposal forward will ever read it.