Design - Influencing Government

There are three replacements for the vote: committees members, special temporary advisors, and direct influence.

Every position in Expert Government, both local and national, is filled in a similar way that a job would be, based on the merits of the candidates. Each is filled by one of multiple independent appointments committees. Demonstrating expertise in the concern of the committee is the main requirement of a candidate, along with experience, commitment, intelligence, knowledge, maturity and honesty. Positions are held for a minimum of 1 year and a maximum of 4 years. Flexible but constrained tenure agreements provide more people with the opportunity to take part, while limiting their ability to dominate, damage, or corrupt their role. It is important to provide limited, flexible, predictability to enable more people to become committee members, but also provide continuity in the committee as positions change.

Where a particular issue merits expert knowledge but for such a narrow area that it does not justify a committee of its own, even if it meets infrequently, special temporary advisors may be sought to offer detailed advice to a committee. Such positions are advertised are reqiured.

Specialist committees are required to listen to opinion from the populace. Anyone wishing to influence policy has an easy and direct opportunity to have their view heard.

The methods used to submit views should be as simple and accessible as possible. Those submitting have the right to track the progress of their submissions. Naturally, similar views may be collated and submitted to the committee by their researchers in a summary, rather than individually. However, all facets of all submissions should make it to the committee for consideration, and the responses be sent to the submitters. A simple registration process, traceable to the individual is required.

The deliberations of committees, and how they address submissions, are made public using the most widely accessible mechanisms. This information should be searchable for previous deliberations, so that people wishing to submit a view can find if it has been considered before, and have the chance to state what has changed in the interim.