OYG makes a platform for communities that gives users access to the political clout of community consensus and the economic power of social organization. Supported by edge technology, adaptable for any language, Own Your Government can work wonders for people in any democratically governed society.

People use a smart phone app to access their own community’s OYG platform. They can connect with others in their community and collaborate to build consensus and use their aggregate political and economic power. OYG does the technological heavy lifting to support them and protects their privacy and the security of their data. The platform supports community cohesion and an open forum for dialogue and information that is salient to their needs. Every community member has access to all resources of the platform, including the ability to poll the community, organize events and activities, build consensus and act on an agenda of common interest.

OYG’s platform provides a safe and protected online environment in which people can develop and use their collective muscle, including their purchasing power and political influence. They can learn to speak with the voice of consensus.

–The aim of democracy is for government to reflect the will of the people–

PROBLEM

In democracy, public priorities are defined by democratically elected representatives. This requires informed voters who are able to let their representatives know what they want. Consensus about what people want differs widely from place to place, however, representatives must represent all of them. Constituents need a way to accurately inform their representatives and a way to determine their consensus, sometimes on complex matters.

Without infrastructure for representatives to inform and determine the will of the people, opportunities arise for special interests to exploit the system with legal campaign contributions as well as illegal payoffs. Understandably, many voters distrust government, grow cynical and stop participating. Providing a way for people to weigh in on decisions solves the problem.

SOLUTION

Give people technology they can use to set the agenda of their government.

Our Team

THE OYG TEAM IS A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATING ENTITIES

OYG began as a collaboration of technology professionals to create software that gives people the ability to influence government decisions that affect them. We are an open, international community with multidisciplinary expertise in the roles of media and the internet in community development. OYG has a for-profit business model based on forging relationships of mutual value and benefit in areas such as UX design, creative media, chat streaming, video conferencing, blockchain, data security, redundant, autoscaling architecture, polling, surveys and enterprise productivity applications.

SOFTWARE DESIGN - 8TH LIGHT

“With deep expertise and experience in software design, development, data, and DevOps, we work with a wide range of clients who are looking to achieve equally diverse outcomes. Whether we’re crafting digital experiences that inform and inspire, energizing and empowering enterprises through technology-driven transformation, or nurturing and guiding internal teams looking to expand their own technological expertise and software-building capabilities, our objective is always the same: to help unlock human potential and spark change.” [Eighthlight.com|

Michael Winn

CEO

Michael Winn is known for innovative integrations of technology. In 1982, his Olympic Plaza project in Los Angeles was one of the world’s first intelligent buildings. His media for Southern California Association of Government was used to sign up all 106 Los Angeles governments in supporti of smog regulations. He wrote Architectronics, McGraw Hill, 1987, a reference book for architects and developers about the impact of digital technology on the workplace environment and communities. He founded Own Your Government to design, build and support technology for democracy in the digital age.

In 2018, Norm Katz began advising Winn about software that could realize Winn’s ambitious vision for an online town council in Point Loma, a community of about 35,000 in San Diego. The vision required an app associated with a community-managed network. Winn formed Own Your Government, LLC with a plan to attract investors, build the necessary software, and engage people that are not typically involved by offering online features that support enterprise as well as consensus building.

Norm had developed backend architectures for web-scale consumer-facing apps and cloud-based scalable web services hosted on AWS and Azure with Kubernetes and Docker Containers. His projects include a patient-centric interoperability platform for health data retrieval, harmonization, visualization and data sharing, subscriber management systems supporting millions of users’ PII and credit card data for identity protection and exposed data matching, a data warehouse with ETL from multiple business units, and a social network for traveling nurses.

Most recently, VP Research and Development at Seqster, Norm achieved success in several companies across multiple markets; including healthcare, consumer products, financial services and defense: Sony Electronics, Orincon, acquired by Lockheed Martin in 2003; CSID, acquired by Experian in 2016 and AMN Healthcare. He provided engineering support for the San Diego Police Department’s New Technologies Unit, and research labs at UCSD and CMU.