Edits and updates to the policy platform

We have a really open and awesome policy process in PPAU. It’s why we’ve been able to write 30,000 words of evidence based, deep policy over the past three-and-a-bit years. Every few years, though, there comes a time when we have to review the platform from top to bottom. Over time, issues start to accumulate as bits of the platform get out of date, or become hard to read due to the volume of text, or cop criticism and feedback in the marketplace of ideas.

Hence, one of the things the PDC has done this year is to comprehensively review the platform. This is different from a normal policy motion. No policies have been added or expanded. No policies have been dropped. What has been done is a deep edit to make sure the material is as current and sharp as possible, and as accessible to the public as it can be.

One of the things that has been done is to change the layout a little bit. Policies like civil liberties have had material added every congress, and have become enormous and hard to digest. At the same time, issues like privacy have been shredded over multiple policies, with separate parts in civil and digital liberties. This has made it hard for people to get a sense of our full stance. To deal with this, the material in civil and digital liberties has been laid out differently, with a split into individual civil liberty issues like privacy. Other policies that had also grown very long have been split into more readable sections.

Where policies have a thematic link to each other, they have been grouped under larger headings.

The policy has also been laid out in a single platform document. This makes it easier to read: before, you had to click to get the preamble and then click again from the preamble to read the policy.

Parts of the policies that were out of date have been trimmed and the rest has been reviewed for readability.

You can see the new layout and edited text here.

For a description of the tweaks and updates in each individual policy, refer to the motion text here, where it’s all listed.

There will be Congress motion to vote on adopting the new layouts and edits. Over the coming days, please feel free to have a look and if you spot any issues, or want to propose any changes of your own (or changes to the changes) drop a message in here and we’ll work it out.

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