‘Gi‘ in Greek means earth. OS is for operating system.

The ‘i‘ could be interpreted as a hint to the impact Apple has had on the generation of devices and services that have so widely impacted our society today. 'I' can also be seen as a way to honor the importance of individual participation of individual people in our social and political reality today.

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Project GiOS was further enabled with the help of some incredible developers at Apple, who I, Paula Schwarz, had the priviledge to meet at Burningman this year.

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So, what exactly is GiOS?

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GiOS is an operating system, designed specifically to improve the relationship of states and citizens, built to improve the social and political participation of people around the world.

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The GoBot – A new generation of tools for government services:

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Please try to google the first apps on the itunes store.

They were games, although you won‘t find much information about them online anymore.

The devices of Apple are designed beautiful pink, purple, green and yellow colours. They are lifestyle devices.

 

They were never designed to improve our social or political participation today.

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It’s like were are trying to make soup in our water heater. We can do it, but since our water heaters were never created as a tool to help us make soup, the experience won‘t be great. It‘s also hard to imagine an entire generation of ‘soup making water heaters‘ –

it‘s much easier to use a different device.

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If there is no such device and our vision is so clear…well, then time has come to create governmental water heaters (this is a joke).

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The widely used touch screen further promotes the ‘gaming‘ character of almost all devices we use today.

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Again:

 

iPhones, and even iOS, were never designed to significantly improve the coordination of state and citizen services.

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Today we face different problems, problems that Steve Jobs did not foresee and unfortunately for us all he‘s been dead for a while — so I open the stage for an new baby generation of innovation to serve humanity, to simplify GovTech, and to improve social and political technology.

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A more detailed description of GiOS:

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GiOS is an operating system that was created solely around the idea that the communication between citizens and states, as well as between states, employees of a state and also of course between citizens of states must urgently be improved and simplified.

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The reason why we need a different type of device is also that no one should own this type of technology, also as a way to prevent the amalgamation of too much power by a group or an individual.

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Would you allow a person to buy an atomic bomb?

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We need to see that technology and systems should be usable by and for all of us — regardless of their social, economic or cultural background. We are building this tool to be publicly accessible, and we are working on a new type of ownership structure for it.

So much for the philosophy behind the ownership of Gobots – on which GiOS will hopefully run rather soon.

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Additionally, the rapidly approaching, exponential increase of manmade innovation that is unlike anything we have ever experienced speaks in favor of the introduction of a new, shared generation of devices — we must collectively learn to create for the wellbeing of us all. Peaceful, transparent creativity is the new form of education of our generation. If we achieve this, we will be able to solve many more problems in less time and at much lower cost than was possible ever before.

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Empirio

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Empirio is a type of digital distribution platform for state services and citizen contribution.

Think of it a bit like a marketplace, or like the iTunes store.

Now, just like our traditional business models distinguish between B2B (business to business), as well as B2C (business to customer), and C2C (customer to customer) models, Empirio distinguishes between G2C (government to citizen), G2G (government to government) and C2C (citizen to citizen) services.

On Empirio, so called ‘Gateways’ (governmental and citizen participation services) are organised and offered in a form that resembles our current ‘apps‘.

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The right to launch a governmental service remains with the individual state (member states will be invited to contribute based on a launching licence). Citizens can offer social participation services as gateways.

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What do Gateways do?

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Gateways optimize the appearance of displayed data. Besides providing continuity of functionality over different types of devices, gateways will also enable immediate file synchronization between the citizen and the state.

The usability of gateways is different from current governmental and social services because both the functionality and services offered are less ,gamified‘ and the distribution of specific services for now remains in the hands of the state.

States must organise their services independently and will be invited to organise and curate their offering of their services.

As Empirio is inspired by the format of an online store, users can browse through different Gateway (aka. app) categories, and view information about each Gateway, such as reviews or ratings by other users.

As Gateways are inspired by apps and are curated by their creators, an approval process precedes the introduction of a prospective gateway on Empirio upon its submission.

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First Gateway Examples On Empirio – Running on GiOS

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• Voting Centers

• Taxation Centers

• Virtual reality based emotional Intelligence programs for citizens to fight racism and discrimination (unconscious bias)

• Job Centers

• Public Insurance Centers

• Police Gateways (e-Officer Program)

• Healthcare Centers (e-Doc)

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