Building the report

This section describes how the Green New Deal report is prepared and updated.

Audience

The report is written for an open-minded compassionate decision maker. This person is not primarily selfish in their intentions nor do they have any conflict of interest. They genuinely intend to do what is right for society. They are knowledgeable, reasonable, open-minded willing to change their current perception and position on policy and strategy, but is cautious before committing resources to a plan. They are skeptical and want to see that the plan is supported by evidence, has the potential to meet it's intended goals and is politically feasible - can be sold to the general public and key stakeholders.

Quality objectives

The report is written for the open-minded audience with the following objectives in mind in deciding the content, language and style.

• Representative : of broad public attitudes and preferences

• Sufficient : addresses the important questions for decision makers

• Complete : accounts for important constraints and trade-off decisions

• Accurate : meets quality standard - falsifiable, reproducible, supported by evidence

• Accessible : written in layman language for a general public audience

• Concise : Don't repeat yourself. Uses references for detailed elaboration of topics

Writing a section

The report is organized into sections which covers a perspective of how the policy would be implemented. Each section is prepared in an iterative process

• 01 design, planning

• 02 research

• 03 draft

• 04 review

• 05 publish

• 06 feedback

The process begins at the planning stage, where the main premise of the section is decided and the main questions are identified that the section intends to address. Next is the research and drafting stage which is a dynamic process where the first draft of the report is written either as a team or with one person taking a first pass. Once a rough draft is ready for review, a team of reviewers and writers provides input suggestions for quality checks on content and on general editing. Once the open flags have been resolved the section is published and sent out to partners for feedback. Depending on the feedback the process repeats either from the review step or back to the design and planning stage. In some cases the feedback may identify the need for a new section to be created.

There are three main groups involved in the process. Each section has a lead author who is responsible for overseeing the process from start to finish. The author may delegate sections of the report or research to others for help at any stage of the process.

The second group are the writers. The writers perform various functions to create and curate content either as research or for content and editing review.

The third group are partners that either use the material or belong to one of the stakeholders groups affected by the policy and whose inputs are sought for incorporation into the policy report. Partners are have a connection to and are actively engaged with the building of the report, which distinguishes them from the generic stakeholder groups that they represent.

The supporting materials and draft content of the sections during the review phase before publication is maintained in a team drive accessible to the writers. Once it is ready it is published to this Gitbook. All of the version changes are synced to a Github repository and both the Gitbook and the repository are publicly accessible. Check out the project website for more information about how to get involved.