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Gregor Hackmack
Cyberspace’s Community Organizer
Gregor has created an impartial online platform enabling direct, public dialogue between individual citizens, their
elected representatives, and journalists--holding politicians accountable, giving citizens easy access to political
information, and enriching media coverage. Through his two online gateways, Parliament Watch and Candidate Watch,
Gregor casts light on the often hidden business of parliamentary politics by giving citizens the ability track the actions
of politicians over time with access to speeches, contributions to parliamentary debates, and voting records—and
creates forums for unaccustomed interaction between politicians and constituents.

THE NEW IDEA: Building Society Together

Gregor Hackmack’s vision is one of a world where politicians and people to cooperate in
self-governance. In the context of his native Germany, that did not mean changing
attitudes--it meant building a web-platform able to intervene in a cycle of mistrust. Gregor
and his team changed the rules of German politics.

THE PROBLEM: Mutual Mistrust, Lack of Information, Apathy

In the first years following the millennium, German citizens were apathetic and alienated
from reliable information. Common life was characterized by non-participation, and the
only thing politicians and citizens had in common was mutual mistrust. Gregor’s insight was
this: the affairs of governance seem distant and abstract, but they needn’t be overly
technical dialogues restricted to experts. Politics is just about people.

THE STRATEGY: A Forum for the Information Age

In 2004, Gregor founded Campaign Watch to give citizens the option to elect
people rather than voting along party lines. Shortly thereafter, he founded
 Parliament Watch to help hold these elected people accountable.
Gregor and his team knew the key to fulfilling their vision was to get cynical
politicians to use the site. Since the funding structure, rules of decorum, and full
time moderators kept the discussions professional, politicians had nothing to lose
and everything to gain. The site became a popular feature of campaign strategy, as
it offered politicians visibility and the chance to describe their positions unfiltered
by the media.
Citizens trust Parliament Watch as a mediator of political information because by
design, it incentivizes politicians to be both honest and responsive. With both
both citizens and politicians participating, the site functions in the digital age like
the Roman forums or town halls of old--enabling citizens and officials to build
society together.

THE PERSON:
Gregor was born with a passion for political participation. In 1990, at the age of
13, he joined a protest against nuclear pollution in his Western German
hometown. Though grassroots movements were instinctive to Gregor, he learned
an appreciation for well-meaning authority. Before attending The London School
of Economics, he spent a year in civil service in Scotland serving as a caretaker for
a 16 year old and a 17 year old with mental disabilities. After university, Gregor
returned to Germany, where he used a website to mediate between educational
authorities and a student movement for free education. Having realized the
power of the web as a platform for change and mediation, Gregor used another
site to change the structure of government in Hamburg from a system of
top-down hierarchy, to one of bottom-up cooperation. Inspired not only to
create ways for citizens to participate in government, he created Campaign Watch
and Parliament Watch in 2004 to provide meaningful ways for them to do so.

Is Gregor really creating substantial social change?

• 21,500 views/month; over 90 government responses in one day.
• 95% of government officials have responded; some questions have over 1,000 people
awaiting responses.
• The mainstream media uses the site as a news source. When one politician, the grandson
of a Bismark, was unresponsive, his work was investigated and he was dubbed ‘Germany’s
laziest MP.’ Four months later, he resigned.
• Rumor has it that Parliament Watch was instrumental IN preventing politicians from
raising their own salaries.

news & http://knowledge.ashoka.org

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knowledge whose cutting-edge ideas promise to better inform,
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