Open Civic Operating System
Use forecasts to test policy consequences. Keep values, rights, and lawful authority democratic.
An Open Civic Operating System is not one government app. It is a public method for connecting seven layers:
| Layer | Public job |
|---|---|
| Rights | Protect the liberties and limits that no market may trade away. |
| Identity | Give each eligible person one democratic voice without exposing more personal data than the decision needs. |
| Evidence | Publish options, assumptions, data, uncertainty, and contrary evidence. |
| Decision | Separate democratic setpoints, conditional forecasts, and the accountable authority's choice. |
| Service | Execute the authorised intervention through existing public institutions. |
| Appeal | Let affected people contest process, data, eligibility, and lawful decisions. |
| Learning | Resolve outcomes, score forecasts, observe resident effects, and improve the next cycle. |
The system stays open when each layer has a named owner, inspectable rules, and an appeal route. It fails when a vendor, market operator, or identity system quietly becomes the government.
The Protocol
In one line:
citizens set values → proposals qualify → conditional forecasts run
→ authority decides → action executes → outcomes resolve
→ calibration and resident evidence return
The three powers must remain distinct:
- Democratic voting says what matters. Each eligible citizen has equal voice over the setpoint and protected constraints.
- Forecasting estimates consequences. Money, play money, reputation, or tournament scores may reward accurate estimates. They never buy a vote, citizenship, a right, or access to an appeal.
- Lawful authority decides. Elected representatives retain legal and budget responsibility. If they depart from the forecast signal, they publish their reasons, evidence, and review date.
Roles And Authority
| Role | Responsibility | Must not do |
|---|---|---|
| Citizens | Approve the setpoint, protected constraints, and review mandate. | Sell or delegate their equal civic voice through the forecast market. |
| Affected communities | Define subgroup harms, accessibility needs, lived-outcome measures, and kill signals. | Be treated as a statistical average or consulted after the contract is frozen. |
| Elected representatives | Authorise the pilot, appropriate funds, decide, and explain departures. | Transfer legal responsibility to a market score. |
| Public servants | Qualify feasible options, procure delivery, publish data, and execute the lawful decision. | Tune the forecast or resolution rule to favour a preferred option. |
| Forecasters | Estimate the conditional outcome of each qualified option. | Set public values, conceal conflicts, or trade on protected non-public information. |
| Independent operators and auditors | Run the mechanism, verify identity and market integrity, resolve outcomes, and publish calibration. | Operate without conflict controls, reproducible rules, or removal powers. |
| Appeal bodies | Review eligible process, privacy, access, data, and legal failures and order available remedies. | Re-run the political choice merely because an appellant dislikes the result. |
Civic Safeguards
Pass the Civic Decision Readiness gate before opening a forecast.
- Equal voice: one eligible person, one values vote. Use independently audited eligibility and anti-Sybil controls.
- Access: provide accessible interfaces, assisted participation, translated material, phone or paper alternatives, and a staffed offline route.
- Privacy: collect the minimum identity data, separate eligibility from forecasting records, prohibit secondary use, set deletion dates, and publish breach procedures.
- Minority rights: freeze protected rights and subgroup kill signals before proposals qualify. A majority and a profitable forecast cannot waive them.
- Market integrity: publish liquidity support, position limits, anomaly rules, manipulation monitoring, settlement logic, and operator conflicts.
- Fair participation: use play money, reputation, subsidised liquidity, or forecasting tournaments where money would exclude residents or trigger gambling and financial-market law.
- Appeal: name routes for identity, access, privacy, data, procurement, planning, and the final public decision.
- Reversibility: stage commitments, prefer pilots, cap exposure, and preserve a practical route back to the status quo.
- Emergency stop: give a named independent officer power to pause the market or delivery when a right, data source, integrity control, or kill signal fails.
Accessibility is not a help-page feature. It changes who can govern. Liquidity is not legitimacy. A well-traded market can still answer an unlawful or exclusionary question precisely.
Copyable Pilot Canvas
Complete this before choosing technology:
decision: ""
jurisdiction: ""
beneficiaries: []
democratic_setpoint:
outcome: ""
measures: []
approval_method: ""
protected_rights: []
options:
- status_quo
- ""
- ""
- ""
forecast_contract:
question: "If option X is authorised on DATE, what is the probability and expected value of each setpoint measure on RESOLUTION_DATE?"
participation_model: "tournament | play-money | subsidised-liquidity | regulated real-money"
publication: ""
resolution_source: []
authority:
legal_decider: ""
budget_holder: ""
published_departure_rule: ""
appeal_route: []
review_date: "YYYY-MM-DD"
kill_signal: []
readiness: "READY | HOLD | STOP"
The stable output contract is:
decision, jurisdiction, beneficiaries, democratic_setpoint,
protected_rights, options, forecast_contract, resolution_source,
authority, appeal_route, review_date, kill_signal, readiness
Do not open the market while any field is unknown. HOLD means repairable
readiness gaps. STOP means the decision should not use this mechanism.
Worked Pilot: Auckland And Copenhagen Housing
This is a design comparison, not evidence that futarchy improves government. The shared decision is:
Which bounded intervention should the city test to reduce housing-cost burden while increasing completed, accessible, low-emissions homes without unacceptable displacement?
Residents first approve a multi-metric setpoint and protected constraints. Qualified teams then submit at least three interventions plus the status quo. For example:
- infrastructure funding tied to serviced, accessible homes;
- accelerated approval for low-emissions infill with affordability and anti-displacement conditions;
- acquisition or public-interest development of land near frequent transit;
- status quo.
An independent operator forecasts every option against the same dated resolution sources. The elected authority decides and publishes its reasoning. The result resolves on preset dates. Forecast calibration and resident outcomes return to the next democratic review.
Evidence ledger
| Dated claim | Jurisdiction and legal state | Confidence | Contrary evidence and subgroup limit | Pilot consequence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland Council's governing body and local boards have distinct statutory roles under the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act; central planning, transport, housing, and funding rules still constrain local action. Source checked 2026-07-23; law current to 2025-08-27. | Auckland / New Zealand; enacted law. Act and governance structure. | High | A unitary council reduces regional fragmentation, but not central-local or infrastructure dependencies. | Qualify only options with named central and local authorities, appropriations, infrastructure dependencies, and delivery owners. |
| Auckland local information, meetings, reasons, and Ombudsman review sit under LGOIMA; resource-consent objections and some Environment Court appeals remain available. Source checked 2026-07-23; LGOIMA current to 2026-01-15. | Auckland / New Zealand; enacted law and current council procedure. LGOIMA and consent appeals. | High | Appeal eligibility and remedies differ by decision type; fees and time can restrict practical access. | Map each pilot complaint to its real statutory or administrative route; fund independent navigation for affected residents. |
| Auckland publishes official planning, housing, consent, and climate monitoring, but administrative counts do not by themselves show affordability, accessibility, displacement, or household experience. Source checked 2026-07-23. | Auckland; official administrative evidence, not a causal evaluation. Auckland Plan progress report and climate progress snapshot. | Medium | Region-wide averages can hide renters, disabled residents, Māori, Pacific peoples, newcomers, and neighbourhood displacement. | Resolve with both administrative supply measures and consented resident/subgroup measures. |
| New Zealand's Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Act creates rules for accredited digital identity services; it does not require a civic pilot to use one national app. Source checked 2026-07-23. | New Zealand; enacted framework. Act. | High | Accreditation does not remove exclusion, device access, identity-error, or privacy risk. | Offer minimal-data, audited eligibility with offline and correction routes. |
| Copenhagen's Municipal Plan 2024 sets local spatial and housing direction, while Danish national law and funding frameworks continue to bound municipal action. Source checked 2026-07-23. | Copenhagen / Denmark; adopted municipal plan under national law. Municipal Plan 2024 summary. | Medium-high | A plan states direction; it does not prove that homes will be affordable, completed, or accessible to newcomers. | Qualify options against both municipal competence and national approvals or finance. |
| MitID is jointly owned by public-sector and financial-institution partners and offers non-app alternatives. Digital Post also records exemptions. Source checked 2026-07-23. | Denmark; operational national infrastructure. MitID and official usage statistics. | High | High adoption can hide residents without credentials, language access, stable housing, or digital confidence. | Reuse identity infrastructure only with paper, assisted, delegated-access, and exemption-compatible routes. |
| Statistics Denmark records permitted, started, and completed dwellings from the Buildings and Dwellings Register and exposes municipal breakdowns. Source checked 2026-07-23; tables updated 2026-05-13. | Denmark and municipalities; official administrative statistics. Construction activity. | High | Completion counts do not establish affordability, accessibility, low emissions, or who was displaced. Reporting delay and register revisions affect resolution. | Freeze table IDs, extraction dates, revision policy, and resident outcome measures in the forecast contract. |
| Copenhagen's 2035 climate strategy includes housing energy use and the municipality's authority roles. Source checked 2026-07-23. | Copenhagen; adopted strategy and implementation programme, not proof of achieved reductions. CPH Climate Strategy 2035. | Medium-high | Operational and embodied emissions can move in opposite directions; city averages hide building and tenure differences. | State whether the contract measures operational, embodied, or lifecycle emissions and publish tenure-level effects. |
Same protocol, different design
| Design question | Auckland pilot | Copenhagen pilot |
|---|---|---|
| Coordination problem | Can an advisory market expose central-local, infrastructure, appropriation, and sequencing dependencies early enough to improve one lawful council decision? | Can strong digital and statistical infrastructure improve one municipal housing choice without hiding affordability and access disparities? |
| Identity risk | Fragmented eligibility evidence and unequal digital access. | Overconfidence in a highly adopted identity channel. |
| Outcome risk | Consents or zoned capacity may be mistaken for completed, affordable homes. | National or city averages may hide newcomers, renters, and waiting-list access. |
| Minimum subgroup read | Renters, owner-occupiers, Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled residents, newcomers, income bands, and affected neighbourhoods. | Renters, cooperative and social-housing applicants, newcomers, disabled residents, income bands, household types, and affected neighbourhoods. |
| Authority statement | Name the Governing Body or relevant committee, local-board role, central dependencies, budget owner, and appeal routes. | Name the City Council committee, municipal administration, national dependencies, budget owner, and complaint or appeal routes. |
Neither city is declared READY here. Readiness belongs to a specific,
fully-scoped decision. The Country Scorecard
measures whether the experiment is governable. The
futarchy method chooses
the forecasting mechanism. Neither decides what citizens ought to value.
Proof And Review
Publish four receipts:
- the approved setpoint, participation record, protected rights, and subgroup objections;
- the option dossier, forecast contract, trades or submissions, conflicts, liquidity, and manipulation review;
- the authority's decision, reasons, appropriations, implementation owner, and departures from the forecast signal;
- the dated resolution, revisions, forecaster calibration, resident outcomes, harms, appeals, and next decision.
A successful pilot does not mean the market's favourite option won. It means the decision was lawful and legible, the forecast was resolvable, excluded groups could participate and appeal, harms stayed inside the frozen bounds, and the evidence improved the next public choice.
Stop when rights are contested, lawful authority is unclear, outcome data can be controlled by an interested party, material harm cannot be reversed, or an affected group cannot obtain a practical appeal.
Next question: which one bounded housing decision can both cities describe precisely enough to pass the readiness gate without pretending the two legal systems are the same?