1. What are proposals?

A proposal is the formulation of a goal that is to be achieved. This can be a variant of an association’s statute, the extention of a party programme, but also proposals for general issues, such as favoured election posters or the location for a planned summer party.

Users have the possibility to set up their own proposals, as well as to discuss and rate proposals of other members. The framer is able to determine if his or her proposal can be edited by other participants ans thus being advanced collaboratively in a democratic way.

Interaction between participants mainly occurs via comments, which consequently cause a course of discussion on a particular proposal.

A good example for the usage of Adhocracy with these basic functions is the Munich Open Government Day of the city of Munich (>>verlinken), where citizens could make proposals for Munich’s future of digital management.

In a rather complex configuration, such as the one used by the enquete-commission “Internet and digital society“ of the German Bundestag provides additional options to alter and add current working papers. In this way, both a general description of a proposal’s objectives as well as its realisation can be developed jointly in detail.

Other participants have the opportunity to discuss these variants and make alternative ones.

Thereby, the current grounds for a decision of a group, such as party programmes, budgets or in case of the enquete-commission the current state of guidance that is going to be laid before the Bundestag, always serves as base for discussion.

If a variant obtains the majority in a poll, it automatically replaces the previous resolution and thereby becomes the new Status Quo, which determines the topic’s grounds for decision. However, Adhocracy always saves the older versions of a resoloution in terms of a history, which makes amendments more comprehensible. This also applies for proposals, variants and comments.