# The House of Expertise
The present system of representation has hardly changed from the time when nation states were largely rural farming societies, when the differences in working practices across nation states were relatively small. Then a division of the nation state into geographical areas could by and large encompass the knowledge and understanding across that nation state. That has ceased to be the case for some considerable time. A geographical constituency structure is no longer adequate to produce a representative understanding in a governing system. In the New Scientist magazine of the 24th April 2010 Michael Brooks reported that out of 650 members of UK parliament, 584 have ‘no political interest in science and technology’. Without interest there can be no understanding, and yet understanding of science and technology is clearly a must for viable government in the world in which we find ourselves.
Understanding within the governing system could be vastly improved by having **representatives of Expertise Areas**. It seems essential to suggest that alongside any House of Representatives based on geographical communities, there also should be a House of Expertise and this requirement should be a permanent part of the structure. Such a House of Expertise should be **elected from communities based on skill and knowledge in working practices**. This would be a second fractal structure in which all citizens play a part. In today’s world it is not difficult to generate a set of constituencies covering the range of skills present in any geographical community and each and every citizen of that community to be registered and to vote in one of those skill-based constituencies, just as we do now for the geographically based constituencies. It seems logical to encompass as far as possible all differences in our representative structure. Trade guilds, and trade unions are examples of **organisations based on skill areas** that have existed for many years.
The House of Expertise is the community managing System 4 (Figures 4.13 and 8.6) as proposed by Beer. **Its purpose is to monitor the environment of the community, learn, and propose changes that it feels are necessary for the survival of the community. It must monitor all relevant aspects of the external environment ecological and social, maintaining necessary external dialogue and trading relations, and proposing changes necessary for survival of the community.** Of necessity, therefore, it should embody all the skill areas of the community and be a **centre of learning and innovation**. It is the higher brain of the community where learning and adaptation originate. Therefore, an integral part of the function of the House of Expertise is the **maintenance of the education system of the community**. My experience of governing secondary schools led me to the conclusion that an educational opportunity is missed in that **students** are not **engaged in the analysis of the needs, current and future, for the maintenance of the community** in which the school is situated. Similarly students of the primary and the tertiary education system could be performing the same function for their communities at the appropriate fractal levels.
A ‘citizen’s wage’, sometimes labelled a ‘universal basic income’, has an educational role to play in enabling time and space for creativity and entrepreneurship, those not immediately engaged can reskill to provide for coming changes, or be available when there is a sudden demand increase signalled from the Community. Such a scheme would maintain redundancy in a community, just as all bee colonies maintain redundancy in order to cope with changes in their environment. Bee colonies are organised in this way so that they can and do operate sustainably.