## Framework Purpose While [transitional civilizational adaptations](https://publish.obsidian.md/opencivics/OpenCivics+Concepts/Transitional+Civilizational+Adaptations) are necessary to mitigate harm and formalize a bridge into the [third attractor](https://publish.obsidian.md/opencivics/OpenCivics+Concepts/Glossary/third+attractor), they are effectively grafting the social DNA of the [ontological shift](https://publish.obsidian.md/opencivics/OpenCivics+Thesis/Our+Critical+Path#The%20Ontological%20Shift) into dead or dying institutions that ultimately require a whole systems upgrade. The OpenCivics thesis proposes that the emergent civic culture of the 21st century will be highly localized, process-oriented, and ecologically contextualized in response to an ethical and strategic necessity to orient humanity’s collective agency to defining, designing, and deploying civic systems that create the enabling conditions for the third attractor. The OpenCivics Innovation Framework is a design philosophy and process intended to support the coordination of [Open Civic Innovation](https://publish.obsidian.md/opencivics/OpenCivics+Concepts/Open+Civic+Innovation). As a minimum viable coordination infrastructure, the framework is designed to maximize the interoperability of civic utilities as well as to foreground a participatory, pluralistic and polycentric approach to creating civic systems. As such, the framework is an infrastructural foundation upon which alternative open civic systems may be built. This “third horizon” thinking is pre-figurative and imaginal while remaining pragmatic and grounded. It opens a design space in which the next epoch of open civic systems may be explored and co-evolved through bottom-up, participatory means. This “third horizon” thinking is pre-figurative and imaginal while remaining pragmatic and grounded. It opens a design space in which the next epoch of open civic systems may be explored and co-evolved through bottom-up, participatory means. The framework emphasizes a modular, interoperable, composable, and inclusive approach to civic innovation that models civic systems on the development of open source software, stigmergic living systems patterns, open standards bodies, the symbiotic intelligence of an artistic or cultural scene, and commons self-governance principles. This approach builds towards the innovation of civic systems as open protocols, the foundational building blocks of open civic systems. A meta-protocol for composing civic systems as social organisms is offered as a pattern language to enable a participatory, pluralistic and polycentric approach. Effectively, this is an open protocol for producing open protocols. Thus, the framework attempts to offer a sketch of an underlying grammar or "logic" for distributed coordination, ie an open civics. This grammar proposes an underlying schema for self-organizing processes and resilient, place-based and cosmo-local infrastructures that provide the enabling conditions for a fundamentally post-capitalist and even post-nation state human civilization. By providing an initial schema that correlates the fundamental categories, functions, and processes of distributed coordination, the grammar outlines a conceptual framework that can be utilized to self-organize a global and local effort to systematically adapt human civilization. By linking the many commons and peer to peer efforts to revitalize the civic design space, this ontological framework provides a foundation for a fully distributed process, governed by those who engage in it. This model is not intended to be complete or final in any sense, rather it offers a schelling point, a point of convergence, and an underlying schema to coordinate the process of systemic adaptation and co-evolution. As such, this framework is intended to be co-evolved through participatory stewardship. Instead of proposing this model as definitive or absolute in its current iteration, it is offered as a necessary **minimum viable coordination mechanism** and continuously evolving scaffolding in support of the emergence and co-creation of interoperable, modular, and participatory open protocols. Its form is ours to shape, through the mechanisms it offers. Embracing the ontological shift into a worldview of interbeing, core societal functions are reframed as nested wholes that provide mutually reinforcing, cascading benefits for the social ecology within which they participate. By reimagining society’s infrastructures, incentives, institutions, interactions and culture through a fundamentally living systems lens, this framework is intended to support a broad societal shift into an ecological understanding of right relationship, reciprocity, and flow. Composing civic utilities in this context, the emergent social organisms that unfold are structured in a universal language of Life which supports the interoperable continuity, holonic nesting, and stigmergic coordination across human societal functions. As an alignment and coordination strategy, composing social organisms utilizing this framework supports a commons process of participatory feedback and learning, allowing social organisms to evolve organically through a cosmo-local process of experimentation, iteration, and co-creation. Civic utilities or civic stacks are composed of the fundamental building blocks or elements of social organisms that are fractal in nature and contain various self-referencing components that can be stacked and composed into living processes. Lastly, the framework contextualizes and coordinates the application of a diverse and pluralistic array of frameworks, mechanisms, templates and tools. These practices for self-organization are then shared through an open knowledge commons. ## Open Civic Innovation Open civic innovation is the collaborative improvement of civic systems that are important for the public good. Civic innovation seeks to restore and renew the spirit of collective responsibility for our commons and communities by providing novel mechanisms for civic stewardship. When our legacy civic institutions fail to provide such mechanisms for holistic well-being and collective stewardship, it falls to us as innovators and as citizens to listen to the needs of our communities and develop new civic systems that directly improve our quality of life. The process of open civic innovation is led by civic innovators, local community organizers and patrons, who choose to collaborate and create the enabling conditions for all relevant stakeholders to be engaged in a participatory process of civic stewardship. **Civic innovators** coordinate the development of civic utilities, coalescing into outputs that are useful for **civic organizers** to deploy in their local communities, funded by **civic patrons** who share an interest in systemic transformation. The participation of each actor is similarly catalyzed by the identification of a gap in their communities, moved by their care and a choice to act. ## Meta-Model The core innovation offered within the Open Civic Innovation Framework is a meta-model for composing civic systems. The meta-model proposes that an open civic innovation mindset is shaped by a shared design philosophy and practice for engaging in open civic culture which supports the creation of open civic systems. The design philosophy is described by three values – vitality, resilience, choice – and defined by four principles – interoperable, modular, composable, inclusive. The practice is embodied in six **activities** – alignment, coordination, collaboration, resourcing, convening, learning – which are manifested through unlimited **frameworks** – like sociocracy, design science, imagination activism, prosocial, etc – and **templates** – patterns, protocols, playbooks and civic stacks. ![[Screenshot 2024-11-21 at 4.20.09 PM.png]] The [[#5.0 Design Philosophy|design philosophy]] of the Open Civic Innovation Framework is best understood through its [[About Thesis|Thesis]] and its [[Theory of Change]] (ToC). The [[#==6.0 Design Practice==|design practice]] of the Open Civic Innovation Framework is best understood through its [[#6.1 Participatory Design Practice|Participatory Design Practice]] and [[#6.2 Assembly Protocol|Assembly Protocol]]. ## Terms & Concepts - [[civics]] - [[civic steward]] - [[civic culture]] - [[civic systems]] - [[civic utilities]] - [[civic protocols]] - [[open civics]] - [[OpenCivics Concepts/Glossary/civic innovation|civic innovation]] - [[OpenCivics Network]] - [[OpenCivics Concepts/Glossary/open civic culture|open civic culture]] - [[OpenCivics Concepts/Glossary/open civic systems|open civic systems]] - [[open civic utilities]] - [[Open Civic Stacks]] - [[open civic protocols]] - [[social organisms]] - [[agent centric]] - [[self-organization]] - [[participatory design]] - [[open civic protocols]] - [[Progressive Protocolization]] - [[Protocol Pattern Language]] - [[Non-Rivalrous Coordination]] - [[Transitional Civilizational Adaptations]]