This was presented at mySociety's TICTeC 2020 conference, which was held virtually on 24th and 25th March 2020. More details on the conference can be found here: https://tictec.mysociety.org/2020

1. Constitutional
revision 2.0
Jón Ólafsson, University of Iceland

2. Iceland: Constitution
• The first attempt: 2009-2013.
Elected Constituent
Assembly — reorganized as a
“Constitutional Council”.
• New draft constitution
proposed. Project indefinitely
postponed by parliament.
• A second attempt (less
ambitious): Revise the
constitution in steps.
Commitment to using state of
the art engagement methods.

3. Methods
• The Deliberative Poll: A mixture of face-to-face
deliberation and surveys.
• The idea: Get statistically significant results about
“considered views” rather than just “raw opinions”.
• Mixed methods: The crowdsourcing exercise provided an
open access platform which supplemented and suported
the face-to-face deliberation.

4. Mission
• Run multiple face-to-face and online deomcratic
innovation with national and local government.
• Train officials to understand and appreciate input made
by individuals and civil society organizations.
• Help understand the difference between special interest
influence making and open (empowering) involvement by
the public.

5. The Epistemic challenge
• Ensuring diversity and inclusion: Participatory projects are
useless if they fail to attract and allow wide and equal
participation.
• Achieving the balance between empowerment and
effectiveness. The myth of the empowered citizen.
• The activist/practicant gap. Can it be bridged?
• Making crowdsourced proposals alive and relevant to
public administration – elected officials.

6. Democratic
Constitutional
Design
A Research project
commited to explore the
meaning of public
involvement in designing
and creating
constitutions.