Katlas Technology: Levelling up the political discourse

Polling has failed to predict change - Levelling up the political discourse

Recent UK elections have been contaminated by inaccurate polling which in turn has legitimised the ‘positioning’ of political discourse by mainstream media outlets, often referencing Twitter content. This has served the silent majority badly and fuelled the rise of identity ‘single-issue’ politics. Fake news and biased reporting diminishes trust, are divisive and fail democracy. It ultimately causes community unrest.

To this, we add the influence of well-funded national and international non-government organisations (NGOs) such as The World Economic Forum, UNESCO, World Health Organisation, United Nations, The Open Society Foundation and global corporations (Facebook, Twitter, HSBC), and other charitable lobbying. These are hierarchical organisations with centralised data storage subject to political influence. Similarly, the refusal of METRO Bank to offer banking services to a respectable and influential political party I not a ‘good look’ for the home of Parliamentary democracy.

Political decentralization can now be supported using technology that protects the privacy and offers the only way citizens can have a definitive and more immediate say in the governance of their communities and lives. The desire for change in the political landscape is palpable and reflected in the growing voter absenteeism in many nations. The elimination of centralized power authorities would help protect citizens from government overreach, reduce discrimination in the bureaucratic system and improve the speed at which laws and policies are passed. 

Empowering and involving young and old in a new political discourse

Distributed ledger technologies can not only ensure safe voting but also offer a tamperproof governance system for political party members to respond to polls and questionnaires; a new cooperative vehicle for Political Party governance to manage all stakeholders. In doing so, it improves membership administration, event booking and planning, integrates funding organisations and rewards participation in political activities. Most especially it provides a dependable dialogue between members and party research organisations onto one platform.

Personalised Wallets

Too often government is reversing policy soon after announcing it because of poorly informed analysis and predictive capabilities. Wallet technology with the aid of callable smart contracts will help inform both the voter and the polling agency by accessing: 

1. A single customer record, transportable with permissioned access to machine readable data and prescribed questionnaires, for  

2. Analysis alongside permissioned population (membership) data to benchmark opinion and inform policy decisions.

How does blockchain provide the required Trust?

The Political Party has control of the T&Cs for all members and suppliers that join the network, ensuring certification is up to date. The members can share data with analytical engines to reference and benchmark their opinions. All assets, staff and processes can be measured, verified and reported to guide sustainability, standards and compliance KPIs; payments and invoicing can be arranged in real-time with micropayments and split settlement an option; the personalized wallet prevents data being accessed without permission or used by current systems to predict your behaviour without your knowledge, rather you can predict your own behaviour to your own advantage.

In the future political parties can engage with their members more directly and with respect. Data can be shared to facilitate research for the benefit of democratic interest; speed decision-making with access to faster more complete contextual data; manage subscriptions and donations, reward participation and fund events with a tokenized ecosystem; single log-in on one extensible network that can talk with other open APIs to plug-in partnership organisations that improve membership offering and revenue growth.

The art of government is to facilitate and not to boss – collaborative trustless ecosystems will not be adopted efficaciously and to the benefit of UK plc without the much-desired leadership and vision of mainstream political parties.

To read more from #techUKDigitalPS Week, check out our landing page here.

You can also follow the campaign on techUK's Twitter and LinkedIn - #techUKDigitalPS.

To learn more about Katlas Technology, please visit their LinkedIn. CEO, Founder, Edward studied Economics at the University of Leeds and has 30 years of Financial Risk and Data Management in Capital Markets. Ed co-founded Occam Underwriting in 2002.

On Tuesday 5 April, techUK was delighted to host the Cabinet Office and industry representatives for the launch event for the UK Government’s Digital, Data and Technology Sourcing Playbook which was published on 28 March 2022. The DDaT Sourcing Playbook sets out guidance – in one place – as to how digital projects and programmes are assessed, procured and delivered in central government departments, arms-length bodies and the wider public sector. Through the application of what is commercial best practice, the Playbook addresses 11 key policies and six cross-cutting priorities that will ensure government gets things right from the start when it comes to procurement.

You can watch the recording of the launch event in full here:

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