Provision - A Commoning Space

The Problem

The COVID-19 crisis and its unexpected challenges cause many already established systems to struggle with delivering their services and adapting to the various new needs that emerge in face of the rapid, radical changes. So has the Coronavirus pandemic led to lockdown measures all over Europe, which resulted in many previously unthought-of needs, such as alternatives to traditional schooling, new models for public health or psychological support during isolation. While this problem is decentralized, communication barriers and the competitiveness of marketplaces hinder the ability of local groups and individuals to generate context-specific solutions from the bottom up and find the adequate human and physical resources to implement them. There is a wide consensus across scholars that social resource networks and cooperation are key to effective disaster response. Jones and Faas even go as far to state that "Exposures to hazards become disasters in large part as a result of relational patterns in societies, and our responses to disasters (...) are likewise facilitated and obstructed by variations in coordination and support between networks of actors” (2017, p.3). What is more, we can already see that many people want to help during the crisis, but simply don’t know-how. In a nutshell, we need a platform on which needs can be expressed, project ideas discussed, and solutions matched to enabling resources.

The Solution

Provision is a social network and matching platform which facilitates an exchange of resources, skills and ideas to enhance our ability to collectively satisfy our needs. Thereby, the WebApp empowers individuals and local groups to organize locally for solitary or collective action. To allow users to express their meaning in action, project ideas can be proposed and monitored, favors can be requested and resources offered. Provision enhances our individual freedom, while enriching our relationships and interdependence.

Features

Our Web-App has three features: The Commoning Space, the Project Space and the Profile Page.

The Commoning Space

Proposals are visible to everyone on a commoning streamline, while for people that are signed up, proposals are adjustable as well as commentable. There are three kinds of proposals:

Favors Favors are placed, with a concrete time-span and, if needed, location attached (they can be online favors too). For example, an old lady in quarantine that needs someone to go shopping for them can call for it. Optionally, one can also attach a specific required skill/expertise, like a nurse or an electrical engineer.

Resources Next, resources such as materials, tools or facilities, can be offered or requested. Due to lockdown measures worldwide, a lot of materials became redundant or facilities unused, which could be, however, valuable for other projects. For example, the cotton bags intended to give away at a cancelled conference, could be sewn into masks in the conference hall by a local project. The offers or requests that are placed, contain a description of the materials or tools of interest. Moreover, one need to indicate if the resource is available for temporary or indefinite use.

Project Ideas People can propose project ideas, which they can directly take the lead on or leave it for others to implement. Under each idea there is a discussion ground for collectively finding solutions to problems.

The Project Space - A subspace of each project idea.

The “Project Space” is a subspace of each project idea on which required resources per category (materials, tools, facilities, skills and number of people) can be entered. For each respective resource need there is a resource recommendation based on natural language processing and spatial nearest neighbor matching. With each resource, skill or availability match the respective users on both sides get a notification and can arrange their exchange via the chat. Apart from that people can choose to participate with the approval of the project lead through an established link, which requires entering a small message. All team members are presented on the page. Next, a small forum-styled chat and a space for adding external links allow participants to implement and monitor their projects.

Profile Page

On the User’s Profile Page you can see the interests, skills and location which the user can choose to show publicly. Moreover, the set of recent activities and posts of the user(s) themselves is listed and linked. To foster trust, recommendations can be given to users by others based on their experience. Moreover, repeated interaction is encouraged to improve trust relationships.

Current Technical Structure

Provision is a web application written with react for which the communication with a mongo database is done through an API written with python's flask. The app uses react's convenient components for overall maintainable structure and hooks to provide efficient asynchronous loading. Currently, the main components are a user feed updating the user about projects in the area and a project managing page for the user's own suggested projects. Future plans are to expand the filter possibilities to search for matching posts, add social features such as a chat, and more extensive project managing tools. The application is served from a VPS using nginx and there is no security in place yet to safeguard the server or its communication with clients. In addition to adding security in the communication, the application should be properly password protected.

Future plans are to expand the filter possibilities to search for matching posts, add social features such as a chat, and more extensive project coordination tools. These project coordination tools have a convivial character, meaning that they allow people to have access to the design and knowledge needed to create the tool; it allows creative adaptation to one’s circumstances, and it is appropriate in the specific local context. Convivial tools are important because we shape our tools and later our tools shape us. We use project coordination to collaboratively self-determine the terms of exchange among all interacting partners involved. As a result, they can choose to meet people’s needs for free or at lower prices than charged on the market.

Provision project coordination tools enable forms of interrelated stewardship of resources which are life-enhancing and strengthen relationships — with each other, the nonhuman world, past and future generations, and the common good.

Business Model

We aim to become a crowdfunded Social Enterprise, which offers free membership for the general services and premium memberships at low rates for a small number of people and organizations for extra project monitoring tools and anonymized data analytics. We need funding, first to complete and polish up the Software and establish our organization with legal support. In the long term we plan to finance the likely exponential server costs, maintenance, marketing, and service expansion with the revenue of the premium memberships. Moreover, our expectation is that the software is useful to a large number of people, especially those in need and those with time and ideas so that the user base will grow exponentially.

Impact on the crisis

With Provision, more needs will be met, more solutions generated and implemented from the bottom up and more resources used where they are at value. In other words, there will be a more effective local adaptation to the changing circumstances, improving the quality of life of everyone involved. With neighbors helping each other and those affected by the crisis putting forward local solutions, crisis mitigation efforts will thrive. Thereby even those problems faced only by individuals or minorities can be finally voiced and addressed. Next, the systematic overview of emerging needs, local initiatives, and available resources can help governments and organizations to plan on a more granular level.

The value of Provision after the Crisis

The Web-App fosters a do-it-together culture of trust, pro-active problem solving and social responsibility. Thereby, Provision gives solidarity a platform to scale for many purposes. As there are more unfolding crises to solve collectively, such as climate change, poverty or demographic change, there will be a continued urgency to use Provision. Beyond crises, Provision is a tool for human potential realization. Its features offer a bottom-up complementary role to the established order of EU systems. We intend to engage members in a sandbox-mode where we can not just provide resources, skills and implement ideas, but also test new norms of exchange, initiative and care while collectively learning system-thinking.

Let us grow from bottom-up and reach our potential as individuals and as small-scale communities, while still being connected to larger institutions and a shared sense of solidarity.

Jones, E. C., Faas, A. J. (2017) Social Network Analysis of Disaster Response, Recovery, and Adaptation. Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann.

"Tools for Conviviality" -Ivan Illich. A book which described a vision of a world in which a community of users develop and maintain their own tools. Using convivial tools — a term that we extend to technologies, infrastructures, and processes for provisioning — is about enhancing our individual freedom while enriching our relationships and interdependence.