Over the last 1.5 years, we have developed an opportunity to start a nationwide process to create a long-lasting vision of the Czech Republic.
From the cost-benefit perspective, we consider reaching a consensus on a stable, ambitious & achievable vision to be really important for the development of our democracy and well-being.
We are now starting to work on it with the newly elected Czech president and his office. He is a non-partisan person, which, we think, makes him a good facilitator of the vision-making process and then carrier of the vision.
We estimate an 86% chance, that enough funds will be raised in the next months from individual philanthropists (with no one donating more than 5% of the budget), to ensure funding for the whole process.
Based on our research and consultations, this process should be, among other things:
- based on wide public participation (civic assemblies, regional events, online platform...)
- based on expert foresight (scenarios, megatrends, forecasting...)
- mostly based on our comparative advantages (center of Europe, safety, good research...)
- apolitical (involving all relevant stakeholders and not being privatized by any political party)
- lasting around 2 years
- very skillfully communicated
- resulting in a "pyramid" (from catchy slogan and 1-6 big priorities to implementation
plans for specific measurable goals), etc.
An example of a successful vision could be E-estonia (digitalization), while we got inspired by visions such as Latvia 2050 or Spain 2050.
Few things we would like to get thoughts on (but feel free to comment anything else):
- which (democratic) nation have done this recently?
- who are the top experts to consult or collaborate with?
- what internal organizational setup is optimal (e.g. how much control to give to donors / business?)
- which methods to use especially for involving citizens?
- how to responsibly introduce AI safety and other EA topics into the deliberation?
- what could go very wrong (to the extent of being counterproductive)?
- what would be a good resulting vision for the Czech Republic from a global perspective?
