Increase civic participation.

National Relive ground pressures by offering mediated

Aspirations channel to Gov / Parliament

Create tool that can be used across Ministries,
Statutory Boards and Grassroots Committees,
for ground sensing, citizen engagement and
policy making
Allow Singaporean stakeholders (Gov, Citizen,
Academia, Private Sector, Civil Society) to gain
familarity with civic technologies
 Mission
CIVIC.SG AIMS TO FIND COMMON SPACE AMONG
DIFFERENT GROUPS IN SINGAPORE. WE BELIEVE
OUR CONVERSATIONS SHOULD START FROM A
PLACE OF COMMONALITY. WE LOCATE SHARED
VALUES, NOT WHAT DIVIDES US. THESE
CONVERSATIONS MUST BE TRANSPARENT, FOR
TRUST TO TAKE ROOT AND GROW. WE WILL CREATE
A SAFE SPACE FOR PARTICIPANTS TO SHARE THEIR
OPINIONS AND TO WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE AN
IMPACT.
 Common Ground
Guiding Values
Transparency

Trust

Safe space to express

freely

Participation to Impact
feedback loop
 Meet the civic.sg Team

KENNETH BOK MIC TAY JENNIFER LEWIS ADRIAN LIEW

Evangelist Design Advisor Community Engagement

Technical Process Moderation Lead Technical

 Participation process

TOPIC DELIBERATION POLL OFFLINE IMPACT

GATHERING Topics which pass a specific The poll will be launched and DISCOURSE The impact will be shared back to the
threshold will be discussed by the marketed across relevant channels to participants on the platform
Any participant may propose a topic The findings from the poll may be
Civic.sg core team. During this drive participation. Unlike the current
of discussion after logging in (there channeled to an offline discussion,
process, the team will consult with pol.is interface, Civic.sg will provide
will be an authentication feature). fielded by participants from the
stakeholders and frame the topic in a templates to help participants
different groups. These individuals
way that will help participants find provide sharp and effective
will flesh out the lived experiences of
common ground. For example: statements
the different groups, and humanise
How might we balance the needs recommended phrasing if the
the results of the graph.
of a sustainable Singapore and statement is very similar to an
ensure good jobs for all? existing statement. This will
How might we ensure 377A does reduce the need for human
not leave any NUS student feeling moderation.
excluded?
What is pol.is?
Pol.is is an AI-powered conversation platform
Combines quantitative and qualitative methods
to function as a state-of-the-art social research
tool
Allows for participants themselves to submit
statements that others vote on
Statements can be moderated
 Pol.is has proved effective in finding common
Why Pol.is ground / consensus amongst groups of different
opinions
Case study: Uber in Taiwan

Pol.is was used as part of the vTaiwan open

consultation process to deliberate a multi-
stakeholder problem between taxi drivers,
taxi passengers, Uber drivers, Uber
passengers, Uber, Taiwan Taxi, Ministries of
Transportation and Communications,
Economic Affairs and Finance.

Outcome: Compromise acceptable to all

parties was found and new regulation came
into effect Oct 2016
 Facebook certainly already allows Pol.is presents a visual cluster
Social media for airing of views and ground
sensing, but..
map of participants by
sentiments
vs it is not done in a unified / Sentiments are aggregated

Pol.is
organised way
Users have to scroll through
multiple comments to
understand the key issues and
the different groups of opinions
within the discussion
Excessive length leads to
difficulty in processing
sentiment
Trolls
Sybil attacks (setting up
multiple accounts)
from participants’ voting
patterns on statements, each
of which are designed to
express just one
idea/position
Participants may only vote
Agree, Disagree or Pass on
statements
Participants may not
comment on each other’s
statements - nullifies trolling
 Self-sustaining ‘civic tech foundry’ capable of supporting

Product / agencies desiring to utilise civic tech tools

Output Public facing platform with participation tools and

content

Pol.is will be a key feature, with dev for Singapore

context:
Core functionality maintained
Refreshed UI with customisable modules and
embedding options
Auto-tagging of statements for improved moderation
Enhanced user data protection

Civic.sg will reengineer pol.is as opinion sense-clustering

engine
 Tech development Mission-aligned organisation

Nature of Civic.sg will need technical expertise Civic.sg will need staffing to operate

set-up to adapt and modify the pol.is

source code, and to re-design the
the platform, moderate discussions
and support offline discussions.
interface. It will also require
development work in building in a NUS student union - they are
comments and upvoting function for better placed to rally their peers
participants to submit topics for to participate, instead of a top-
discussion. down directive from the school
NUS Enterprise - the development admin
work might be taken up by a Thought Collective - they can
start-up within their fold. facilitate difficult conversations
Pigeonhole - the pol.is and know how to push the
functionality will be a natural boundaries of discussion, towards
upgrade of their current product. a positive outcome
Possible
Collaborations
Possible
Applications
The National Youth Council
embedded pol.is as pre-sensing
for a dialogue with Min Grace
Fu, organised by the NTU
student union, to help
participants understand the
sentiments of their peers,
ahead of the dialogue for an
informed discussion.
Possible
Applications
Case study: “Scoop” newspaper
in NZ

https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-case-
study-temperature-check-
a02dff7cc838http://www.scoop.
co.nz/stories/HL1612/S00001/no-
sugar-coating-what-should-we-
do.htm?source=post_page-------
--------------------
Possible
Applications
http://talkto.tw/

Taiwanese talk show which

used pol.is for public
interaction and participation
Authentication
National Digital Identity / SingPass

Grab

NUS

Organisational

Other 3rd Party PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

Next Steps / Requests
Introductions to relevant agencies / organisations

Synergies with existing campaigns

Financial assistance with grants

Other relevant legal / policy advice

Appendix A: vTaiwan
https://www.technologyreview.com/
s/611816/the-simple-but-ingenious-
system-taiwan-uses-to-
crowdsource-its-laws/

https://civichall.org/civicist/vtaiwan-
democracy-frontier/

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/xyhft
/download
Appendix B: pol.is conversations run
by NYC

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z-cdGbxwITRjzpLlcvZUl9ef7-
leWzC0J_3t8fDdkyk/edit?usp=sharing
Appendix C: civic.sg meeting notes

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LU6i_rPX7Kp
n-vKxUrQaxLqVkjkzIIstCt_IM8uO0-w/edit