This Democratic Capabilities Gap Map is intended to track the work required to improve representative deliberative democratic processes (see the about page for details). It is a database mapping relationships between: Dimensions, Capabilities, Resources, Goals, Research Questions, and Product Gaps .
How does the map work?
This map is broken down into the high-level dimensions that describe key outcomes of deliberative processes, for example, that participants become informed. Within each dimension is a subset of capabilities that contribute to delivering these outcomes, for example, that one can curate the context needed to sufficiently inform participants. Not all of these capabilities will be relevant to every deliberative process. Rather, this is intended to be a relatively comprehensive set of the capabilities likely to be necessary.
What do the ratings mean?
We’ve adopted the following common assessment criteria from other similar endeavors:
- Maturity: How good is the current practice compared to what we think is required?
- Importance: How much would the overall quality of deliberative processes suffer if this capability did not mature?
- Neglectedness: To what extent is this capability lacking resources and attention?
- Opportunity: To what extent can additional resources (people, attention, funds, etc.) improve maturity?
- Transnational: How well can this currently work for a global/transnational process?
We’ve also rated the Product Gaps:
- Impact: How much would the overall quality of deliberative processes improve if this product was built?
- Scale: The size and amount of resourcing required to build the product.
These ratings are designed primarily to help with:
- Prioritizing: Making decisions about what needs to be done first (all else being equal).
- Roadmapping: Understanding where we are now and what needs to happen to get where we want to be.
There are also “Urgent” tags on some capabilities, goals, research questions and product gaps. We’ve allocated these based on our assessment of what needs to happen first, in say the next 6-12 months to ensure that the deliberative democracy ecosystem can move at the rate needed.
How do we decide what to include in the map?
The AI & Democracy Foundation team manually curated the content and went through a round of review before publication, including with subject matter experts where needed.
Many contributors across a variety of fields and backgrounds provided suggestions and expertise.
All of the core content was manually written and curated by subject matter experts. AI has been used for quality control, database management, copy editing, and web development.
How did we make these assessments?
Several key contributors drew on their deep experience with deliberative democratic processes across governments, AI organizations, public utilities, and peacebuilding. We estimated the threshold representing “good enough” across key dimensions and capabilities such that stakeholders would be sufficiently bought-in and that processes would be capable of successfully operating in high-stakes scenarios.
These are subjective assessments — we don’t have consensus on them even within the AI & Democracy Foundation. They are intended as starting points for debate, not definitive judgments. We think making an opinionated call on these ratings is useful for all stakeholders and in the spirit of Cunningham’s Law, we welcome feedback.