I have been working for the past few months on the idea of charter innovation. Much of this has been in connection with considering innovation in municipal technology–stuff like water systems, communications, cable, energy, and transportation. This sort of technology is interesting because it can involve nearly everyone, is often subject to municipal codes (and therefore has force of law, and inertia of law, rather than of market choices and inertia of market choice), and there is an added layer of interest at the level of municipal government with regard to whether there should be change. If a municipal government is making money on permitting, for instance, then it may not have much interest in considering changes that would reduce or end that stream of revenue.
The idea of charter innovation has to do with how a group of people establish the common authorities under which they will manage technology in systems.
Think of charters for cities, for a moment. In California, a city can be formed by establishing a charter, or it can be incorporated under California general law. The difference is that a city charter can trump state law on the same matter when it comes to “municipal affairs”. Mostly this means conduct of elections, zoning regulations, and the like. Some discussion of the California situation is here.
What if such charter establishment were extended to municipal technology? Where state law dictates model codes for technology, for instance, this would mean that a city innovation charter could provide local control of those codes. What’s the difference? It comes down to whether a majority at the state level can impose technology on a city that otherwise does not want or benefit from it, or whether the citizens of that city can decide technology matters for themselves.
Nothing is easy, this living with other humans. There’s a great desire out there to lay things out for people one way and stick it to them uniformly. Technology systems invite this sense of economy and efficiency. Pick one way, and make it that way for everyone. That gets you widespread uniformity, but it also makes it really hard to innovate–that is, to work outside the system rather than vibrate here and there to improve in little, slow ways what one has got. Eventually one gets to the point where enough people are satisfied with whatever there is that they don’t even want disruptions to stuff that doesn’t work so well, because they at least know how those things aren’t working, have accommodated these somewhat, and may even be fond of the problems, as they may be a source of, say, a livelihood. Once there’s a professional organization to support the folks charged with the care of a technology defect implemented uniformly across a state, well then innovation is not merely a matter of better technology–whole careers are threatened! It is all very understandable, but it’s not good for innovation in technology. Nor is the alternative, of making changes that drive whole careers out of work but themselves carry huge uncertainties.
Technology standards for systems, however can offer variations at different points in the system. Take electrical power, for instance. Model codes dictate how electrical wiring has to be in a house. One rationale is that this wiring is connected directly to the grid, and therefore must conform. But if houses used the grid to charge a set of batteries, and the batteries provided the power used in the house, then the distribution system’s code interest could end at the interconnect to the storage system. It wouldn’t matter what the voltage and other characteristics of the distribution system were. It wouldn’t even matter if the distribution power were interrupted from time to time (wind storm, brown out, whatever). Furthermore, the interior systems could however one wanted. Perhaps a 12v marine system for lighting. Given how much of what we use by way of power is now 12v and 5v, imagine 12v/5v DC power in the walls rather than such mostly useless 110v AC.
It may well be that folks are happy with their 110v AC in the walls and will choose it repeatedly. But it’s a huge jump from that to argue that local variation should be difficult if allowed at all. Perhaps by shifting the points of variation in a technology system, charter innovation could be a tool to open up new markets and new flexibility in municipal technology systems where now it’s just too difficult to make a change that gains enough critical mass and popular support to sustain a marketplace.
One might see in charter innovation a different route toward diversification, toward new market development, and local control over technological systems. While driving on the left vs right might not change, it may well be that cable feeds or waste water management might vary from city to city to take advantage of local conditions and opportunities. One might also see how this concept, moving from municipal technologies into open markets, could build on open architectures to create social standards from technology–a group might charter how it expects to manage, say, cable television content. With sufficient size, it might represent a market force that would actually be worth accommodating. Say, a group of 2 million folks said, we want a plan that charges $10/month for the connection, and each channel is $1/month, and these can be ordered up one month at a time, and get us a lot of channels to choose from. Like an app store, but for cable channels. Right now, there’s not much way for anyone to signal a change in the technology. It’s seen as a proprietary product definition not as a matter for charter. But from an innovation viewpoint, why should there not be a way to for popular definition of the product, with companies working to those design specs to deliver?
There appear to be three key elements to get innovation charters going. One is to create an investigational use exception to existing code, much as is done in drug development and testing. The second is to create an investigational standard of care, so experimental changes, even if authorized, do not create significant public harm. The third element is to confirm that technology innovations that prove out in testing have a place in model codes governing municipal standards, so they can be adopted as desired anywhere.
That’s the idea, anyway, that we could charter technology systems much the way we have in the past come together to agree on a new city. But now the cities are made of technology platting rather than land platting, and the use of that technology requires both experimental and standardized use to respond to changes in local conditions as well as in technology.