interop
RFP: Interoperable Deliberative Tools
Purpose: To support new and existing tools for deliberation and governance, and to promote more interoperability between such tools.
Scope: Digital tools that go beyond basic voting and commenting, and provide new capabilities to the governance ecosystem—which may only be one step of a larger deliberative governance process. The processes these tools enable may be used for online community governance, AI governance and alignment, cooperative governance, citizen town halls or assemblies, or other kinds of institutional policy-making or decision-making.
Awards: We expect to give out a total of 200,000 USD in a mix of smaller and larger grants of size between 5,000 to 100,000 USD. These amounts may change.
Interoperability requirement: as a key condition of the grant, all grantees must support interoperability by incorporating a process to publish their data in a flatfile format such as JSON, JSON-LD, or CSV as well as a process to import data into their tool from a flatfile. This requirement is described more fully in the draft specification and rationale accompanying this RFP.
- the full RFP (includes link to application form)
- the full specification
- the application
- the review rubric
In addition to the RFP, there is a part-time role for a Senior Engineer to lead the development of digital infrastructure and standards designed to support the interoperability of deliberative and governance tools. The Senior Engineer will work with the cohort of awardees as well as the engineering teams of major deliberative tooling stacks. Learn more here.
Key dates
- April 3, 2024: Grant application opens
- April 19, 2024: FAQ session #1
- April 29, 2024: FAQ session #2
- May 15, 2024: FAQ session #3
- May 31, 2024: Applications due 10p in your timezone
- July 15, 2024: Grant decisions announced
- July 31 2024, Kickoff date
- Optional: call every two weeks for the cohort of projects to have a check-in point
- October 25, 2024 (tentative): Projects report back (open source repo + blog post or paper).
- Projects may not be finished by then, but must do public sharing by then.
- While the call every 2 weeks is optional, grantees are expected to join at least two calls (3 month mark and 6 month mark) to share progress
- January 31, 2025 (tentative): Projects report back.
About Metagov
Metagov is a laboratory for self-governance on the internet. The mission of Metagov is to cultivate tools, practices, and communities that enable self-governance in the digital age. Our research encompasses both theoretical and applied research, including the development of software and technical standards. On top of our research, we also build research networks and bring together communities through our tools, experiments, and events.
A project of Metagov. With thanks to the Mina Foundation.