This is a personal and long post, but it is very much tied to what I believe we are trying to achieve in the web3 world and what Balaji's book is about. My personal goal is to build new institutions, alternative to the governmental ones. Here is a personal background story of how I got here.
When I started Polyteia, a data analytics for Governments platform, I was on a mission to help governments to do their job better. More data-driven and efficient. I envisioned a tool, which humorously was called "The Ultimate Tool". It was a set of sliders, a grand simulation, that could help you plan nearly anything. For example, if 1000 people moved into one of the neighborhoods this year, how would that impact the economy, energy consumption, and tax collection? Do you need to build extra housing and roads? Extra nurseries and schools? It would have had a marketplace of solutions connected to it. With your city data at hand, we could recommend you a provider to install Smart Lighting on one of the streets and calculate the costs and the ROI timeline. So many exciting magical things can be done at the intersection of Data and Governments!
We started by asking the local governments about their pain points and looked for efficiency gains through the power of data. Essentially we were providing an end-to-end data service: consultancy, data engineering, data analysis, and proprietary custom-built data visualisation software on top of it.
A few months later, we proudly presented our dashboards to the stakeholders. Interactive charts and tables shining a light on their own data that previously was trapped inside the legacy software, pdf's and excel files (imagine the effort of unlocking data silos, where the APIs don't exist!!). Sleek interfaces like no one have ever seen in the public sector before.
In a follow-up interview with one of the public servants, I was shocked to hear: "It looks really cool and beautiful, but the data is wrong." Wait, what?! But how? Some calculation errors? Maybe they forgot to provide some excel files with the latest updates? Trying to figure it out, I asked her: "Where is the right data?". "Here" – she said and pointed at her head. She then added -"doesn't matter, these number are anyway just for politics, you know".
That moment crushed my dreams of the Ultimate Tool. Well, not the vision itself, but surely the implementation timeline. It is not just the software issue, you also need to change all of the processes on how people use that software, and more importantly, how they perceive the value of data. Later that year, we pitched our solution at TechCrunch Battlefield, and I named "the mindset" – the biggest challenge we are facing. Since that moment, I have been obsessed with data quality and granularity. Add to that verifiability and ownership of data and you will see where I am going with this.
During the pandemic, I saw it firsthand, German officials were making decisions based on manually collected data in an excel file full of formulas and copy-paste errors. With the beginning of the war, the refugee crisis, and governments' response to it, I saw how public institutions are failing. Private initiatives and individuals coordinating between themselves were making a much bigger impact! Also I saw how political interests are not aligned with people's interests.
We might be able to build cities or even a State this way. A Decentralised State. Of course, there is nothing new about this intention of building an intentional community. There are places like Christiania and they all have their issues, no rosy lenses here. What is new and different – is the infrastructure that the technology can provide. Better tools for coordination, fairer and data-driven decision-making, governance and treasury tools for distributed communities.
My huge concern is how fast it can turn into an anti-utopia, how fast could the system be adjusted to fight all sorts of misuse and speculations. Are we paving the way to a technocratic or a Black Mirror kind of future? All those things are constantly on my mind, but I also think it is worth a try. I tried to improve existing institutions and I can see now that it will take decades. We need to build new ones and we don't have that much time.
This is a personal and long post, but it is very much tied to what I believe we are trying to achieve in the web3 world and what Balaji's book is about. My personal goal is to build new institutions, alternative to the governmental ones. Here is a personal background story of how I got here.
When I started Polyteia, a data analytics for Governments platform, I was on a mission to help governments to do their job better. More data-driven and efficient. I envisioned a tool, which humorously was called "The Ultimate Tool". It was a set of sliders, a grand simulation, that could help you plan nearly anything. For example, if 1000 people moved into one of the neighborhoods this year, how would that impact the economy, energy consumption, and tax collection? Do you need to build extra housing and roads? Extra nurseries and schools? It would have had a marketplace of solutions connected to it. With your city data at hand, we could recommend you a provider to install Smart Lighting on one of the streets and calculate the costs and the ROI timeline. So many exciting magical things can be done at the intersection of Data and Governments!
We started by asking the local governments about their pain points and looked for efficiency gains through the power of data. Essentially we were providing an end-to-end data service: consultancy, data engineering, data analysis, and proprietary custom-built data visualisation software on top of it.
A few months later, we proudly presented our dashboards to the stakeholders. Interactive charts and tables shining a light on their own data that previously was trapped inside the legacy software, pdf's and excel files (imagine the effort of unlocking data silos, where the APIs don't exist!!). Sleek interfaces like no one have ever seen in the public sector before.
In a follow-up interview with one of the public servants, I was shocked to hear: "It looks really cool and beautiful, but the data is wrong." Wait, what?! But how? Some calculation errors? Maybe they forgot to provide some excel files with the latest updates? Trying to figure it out, I asked her: "Where is the right data?". "Here" – she said and pointed at her head. She then added -"doesn't matter, these number are anyway just for politics, you know".
That moment crushed my dreams of the Ultimate Tool. Well, not the vision itself, but surely the implementation timeline. It is not just the software issue, you also need to change all of the processes on how people use that software, and more importantly, how they perceive the value of data. Later that year, we pitched our solution at TechCrunch Battlefield, and I named "the mindset" – the biggest challenge we are facing. Since that moment, I have been obsessed with data quality and granularity. Add to that verifiability and ownership of data and you will see where I am going with this.
During the pandemic, I saw it firsthand, German officials were making decisions based on manually collected data in an excel file full of formulas and copy-paste errors. With the beginning of the war, the refugee crisis, and governments' response to it, I saw how public institutions are failing. Private initiatives and individuals coordinating between themselves were making a much bigger impact! Also I saw how political interests are not aligned with people's interests.
We might be able to build cities or even a State this way. A Decentralised State. Of course, there is nothing new about this intention of building an intentional community. There are places like Christiania and they all have their issues, no rosy lenses here. What is new and different – is the infrastructure that the technology can provide. Better tools for coordination, fairer and data-driven decision-making, governance and treasury tools for distributed communities.
My huge concern is how fast it can turn into an anti-utopia, how fast could the system be adjusted to fight all sorts of misuse and speculations. Are we paving the way to a technocratic or a Black Mirror kind of future? All those things are constantly on my mind, but I also think it is worth a try. I tried to improve existing institutions and I can see now that it will take decades. We need to build new ones and we don't have that much time.
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