To form the prototechnate, non-profit organizations (NPO) present in the world today are helped to join up into a structured cooperative in which the NPO themselves, according to a specific design, take care of coordination, adhering to technocratic principles and standards. This is a voluntary membership structure that offers to simplify attaining goals trough the effects of synergy.
The holonic structure of the technate provides the theoretical basis for the organization of a fully functional technate, however there is an obvious gap between what it suggests and the current state of organizations in the world today. This article attempts to better define the transition of the current society to the technate, thus defining the structure of the prototechnate.
Non-Profit Organizations are basic building blocks of the prototechnate. Their inherent structure makes them the most suitable entity in today's society for making up a technocratic network. This is because they are:
Autonomous - once established they operate under their own set of rules
Non-profit - although they can and usually do generate profit it is not their goal, just a means to an end
Goal oriented - they have specific goals that they try to achieve through their projects
People can choose and join a NPO on their own accord. The NPO internally arranges itself into workgroups that work on their projects, they internally arrange to ensure they follow their goals and are willing to adopt whatever they can use to achieve them.
While different nations around the world have different laws regarding the NPO, the general definition of a successful NPO is that is is an independent organization who's members are not motivated by profit and who's goals are defined, adhered to and not changed during the lifetime of the organization. This is also what makes them appropriate for membership in a prototechnate.
These NPO are assisted by coordinators (see below) to join together to form a cooperative, in which they would coordinate their activities to assist each other in attaining of their goals. To simplify cooperation between NPO from similar areas (either geographically or by branch of technology), the NPO in a prototechnate are also be grouped separately, into a hierarchical holonic structure.
In this structure, a NPO is a holon atom, which cannot be broken down into smaller holons. As described in the article “Holons and Holonic Society” by dr. Andrew Wallace PhD, in a holonic structure each holon may be a member of a larger holon, which is a group of holons. These may then further group into even larger holons, etc. Each of these holons would have a coordinative organ.
So far we have defined the prototechnate as a cooperating holonic structure of NPO. It has been stated that these NPO are supposed to cooperate. But just NPO, each working at their own goal may not automatically form a cooperative or even cooperate well. This is where the coordinative organ comes into play. The coordinative organ is a person or a team of people or a NPO, all experts in their field of coordinating organizations, who will support the people in their holon and help them cooperate.
This role is not as much official as it is personal. The coordinative organ must work closely with the people within the holon it is responsible for. A coordinative organ may be an outsider by expertise and must thus be in an interactive relationship with the people it is responsible for, to ensure that what it is doing is helpful and is having an effect. This is the nature of support jobs and is comparable to the role of secretaries, IT departments and the like.
A coordinative organ's job includes for example:
Gathering information - collect and process data about what NPO do and how they do it
Supply and demand - communication between those NPO who provide and those NPO who require goods
Counseling - providing Principles according which the NPO would operate and cooperate optimally and help maintain Standards (see below)
Predicting future trends - the data that is gathered is also used to create simulations and propose actions based on them
In the structure of the prototechnate, each holon has it's own coordinative organ. This means that in the structure, each holon, regardless of whether it is an atom (an actual NPO) or a group (of NPO, which being holons already have a coordinative organ each), has one person or team of people or specialized NPO, responsible for cooperation within the holon. Due to the nature of the coordinative organ's task, it is very likely that these would seek to link up and help each other.
Let's look at some examples:
In a typical scenario, we have a local group holon of several local NPO and it's local coordinative organ is an atom holon, a NPO specialized in the area of coordination. It helps the NPO in the local group holon cooperate with each other. Many such local group holons then group together into a regional holon, which has another atom holon, another specialized NPO for coordination. This regional coordinative organ helps all the NPO within it cooperate, and does so in concert with the local coordinative organs.
In a smaller-scale example, we have a group holon of two or three atom holons, it's coordinative organ is a person otherwise working in one of the NPO.
NET is a coordinative organ and may be viewed as the collective of all coordinators, since it is beneficiary for the coordinators to work with each other on all levels.
Already mentioned above as one of the tasks of the coordinative organs, standards and principles represent the most important part of this design because whatever they are defines how the design behaves. Standards are principles are defined by coordinators, experts of working with organizations.
Principles are rules defined in cooperation with the NPO, which are simply recommended to the NPO to help them optimize their activities. A NPO need not adhere to a principle to be part of the prototechnate, but it is desired that they do and should be assisted towards by the coordinative organs. Most rules in the prototechnate should be principles as the level of adoption of a principle tells us how helpful it really is. ISO standards are something similar to principles.
Standards are more theoretical in origin and adhering to them is a requirement for participating in the prototechnate. Standards are be defined by the basic rules of technocratic theory. Standards are a rule on the basis of which the prototechnate would decide to initiate cooperation with a NPO, however if an organization would deviate from standards later, other organizations would be advised not to work with them (this could be a principle or standard). Laws are something similar to standards.
Examples:
Principle: Organization should document their activities
Standard: Organization should not advocate racial discrimination
The prototechnate, defined in this way, is a collection of NPO working together with the assistance of coordinators and their principles. People may choose and join any NPO and it is the NPO's internal responsibility to arrange these people and use their work to achieve the it's goal. The coordinative organs, the prototechnate's method of expansion, only help NPO to increase efficiency trough principles and thus help it attain it's goal by providing access to a synergistic structure.
Standards provide a more strict framework and may serve as the coordinative organ's mechanism of control, while at the same time ensuring stability.
Holon and Holonic structure:
Non-Profit Organizations:
http://friends.s5.net/tina/VRSTE%20IN%20OBLIKE%20NEPROFITNIH%20ORGANIZACIJ.ppt
Non-Profit Organizations and law: