Group State makes decentralisedorganization possible, because entities and groups can be autonomous/self governing, while also being deeply integrated into larger networks and partnerships via agreements held in their state.
Group State makes decentralised organisation possible, because entities and groups can be autonomous/self governing, while also being deeply integrated into larger networks and partnerships via agreements held in their state.
Group state is also fractal, with Roles and Tasks also having state, which rolls up into Cell states, and Cell states rolls up into DAO state. In this way, the entire network can be understood simply by looking at the the different group states that it is made up of.
Background
The concept of group state is borrowed from computer science. We use “state” to describe the current configuration of an entity at any point in time.
Entities having a clearly defined and interpretable state is fundamental for decentralised coordination to occur. It allows an entity or group to have a coherent accurate view/description of itself that others in the network can engage with.
An entity’s state is a secure, (ideally version-controlled) up-to-date description of the intentions, agreements and activities of an entity that provides a mechanism for others to coordinate with it - e.g discover it, trust it, partner with it, share resources with it etc
An entity or group must maintain its own state. This allows the structure of the system to emerge as a network of small autonomous teams, rather than relying on state to be maintained (and dictated) by a centralising structure in the organisation.
From a technical perspective, state will consist of a basket of attestations that make explicit the commitments and agreements that are foundational to a Role, Task or entity.
For example, a task or role contains the agreements about the nature of the task and agreement by the person or entity who is being assigned/accepting the task or role. For a Cell, the state contains the shared agreements held by the core team and also commitments that the team makes to entities outside the Cell. And for a DAO the state is defined by the community agreeing on how the DAO is to operate.
Elements of Group State
A simple articulation of this state could be covered by the following categories:
- Purpose: what is the goal of the entity, role or task? - What is it trying to achieve and how does this relate to the other entities in the network and the network’s overarching purpose?
- Practices: How will it achieve its goals? - Who is in it and what roles to they have? How does it make decisions? How is money and other rewards/compensation managed? How is the work of the entity managed?
- Progress: What progress has been made? - where are plans, timelines etc and progress through these recorded? Where can outputs, documents, artefacts etc be viewed?
Expressions of Group State
- OpenCivics has created a similar approach to project legibility in their OpenCivics Collaborative Initiative – Specification Template