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What the coalition government is trying to do in terms of soliciting ideas and having more engagement with the public via the internet is very welcome. There i
by motters 16y ago
What the coalition government is trying to do in terms of soliciting ideas and having more engagement with the public via the internet is very welcome. There is a signal/noise issue though and a lot of silly suggestions are made, so I think that better rating systems are required - perhaps similar to HN.
However, I'm also wary that the previous administration also tried to court popularity and "listen to the people" during the early years. Everything hinges upon whether the new government actually makes constructive use of good suggestions by the public. If they subsequently ignore highly rated suggestions then there could be a backlash - as there was against Tony Blair when he built up great expectations of change only to subsequently dash them later.
- avar 16y agoThey Reykjavík municipal government headed by The Best Party is using a web application to solicit ideas: http://betrireykjavik.is http://betrireykjavik.is. The source is up on GitHub: http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct-democracy http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct-democracy It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. You can vote things up or down, make arguments for and against proposals etc.
- motters 16y agoI think software of this kind is the future of collective decision making (government), but as you say this sort of thing is very much in its infancy and it will probably be many years before really compelling systems emerge.
- avar 16y agoWe already have compelling systems for most things. Open data formats for things the government produces, version control that could be used for legislation etc. Just think about how much accountable legislators would be if they were all forced to use Git, and you could annotate any piece of legislation.
- motters 16y agoVersion controlled laws would be a great idea. You could have an rss feed for each law and subscribe to any changes or make comments on the changes. So all this sort of technology exists now, and what's to be done is more about assembling those things into a form which is customised for government use.
- GBKS 16y agoThis very much reminds me of the "America Speaking Out" initiative by the Republicans at http://www.americaspeakingout.com http://www.americaspeakingout.com. As you are saying, simply letting anybody say anything doesn't produce results or encourage intelligent conversation.
- motters 16y agoThe main problem, just like on HN and other forums, is finding good technical rating mechanisms which allow the good stuff to rise to the top and the noise to be ignored.
- shasta 16y agoPrediction: the highest rated comments will be extremely naive and rightly should be ignored. Go look at a Digg or Reddit... or YouTube.