Can a crowsourced feedback orchestrated by governments work?
Difficult to answer without much more information of what went
wrong. I guess the failures might show that the platform is not
enough. You need resources to handle the conversation.
On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:15:29 GMT
In Another crowdsourced government bites the dust » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism
At
http://owni.fr/2010/08/26/another-crowdsourced-government-bites-the-dust/In the UK, the crowdsourcing experiment was meant
to take place on this website: Programme for
Government.
The British coalition government (also known as
ConDem, for those of you that are misinformed, its
Conservatives + LibDem) were elected on a mandate
to introduce ‘a new era in politics‘, which was to
begin by austerity measures and cuts aimed at
reducing the astronomical public debt.
The coalition pledged to ‘crowdsource’ their
policies via the named website so that citizens
(more like netizens) could have an impact on the
issues that affected them, especially the cuts
which were (and still are) to affect the welfare
system, and which laws should be abolished. The
website covers issue from A to Z, from banking and
civil liberties to transport and Universities.
This measure could have provided the answer to the
21st century post-ideological world. It could’ve
empowered the people to precisely have a say, a
greater say, in their government’s doings.
What instead happened is what many had predicted:
the status quo prevailed. Though 9500 comments
were posted on the Programme for Government
website, none of them were deigned with an answer.
All of them have been binned an ignored.
This is not the first episode of its kind. The US
government has been experimenting with
crowdsourced urban planning for a while. This
experiment being less ambitious and bold than the
one proposed by the UK government, it is still
ongoing.
Websites like mySociety have introduced similar
participation-enhancing tools, but they are
independent.
Information-sharing technologies allow for a new
institution that can break the barrier between the
individual and the government. This vision can be
taken even further, by publishing government data
and promoting transparency, openness and
--
Karl Dubost
Montréal, QC, Canada
http://www.la-grange.net/karl/
Locked
