A Wiki Government could lead to a true democracy
We claim to be living in a democracy but we have also come to believe in an administrative governance of professional experts is the best (if not only) way to organize decision-making in the public interest. Experts decide on acceptable levels of mercury emissions in the air and the standards for digital copyright laws.
“The justification for this professional decision-making, articulated by theorists ranging from Max Weber to Walter Lippmann, is that while citizens can express personal opinions based on values, they are incapable of making fact-based decisions on matters of policy. For Weber, the complexities of modern governance call for “the personally detached and strictly objective expert.” Only institutionalized and governmental professionals possess the expertise, resources, discipline, and time to make public-policy decisions. And citizen participation is hard to organize and administer, and even harder to scale. It is one thing for 10 bureaucrats to debate a policy and come to an informed consensus; try getting the same result with 10,000 people–or 10 million.” – Beth Simone Noveck’s posted on the Democracy Journal
We are now seeing the voice (screams) of the people all over while we understand that there are available collaboration tools today that can create a huge shift of power from the professionals to a grassroots movement. People have now the opportunity (and want to) to take part in an on-going conversation with their Government by participating more than voting once a year. The future looks like we can produce government decision-making that is more democratic.
The above screenshots of the Proof of Concept for the Collaborative Library Wiki from The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat shows they have begun to explore the use of Wikis and other Social Media tools. Our baby steps continue towards a better connected world.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Hi Marquis,
I totally agree and so does Dr. Darin Barney who talked about the need to create a system to allow citizens to have direct input on policy making in his talk “One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic”. He argues that people not only have to be involved in deciding how policies are implemented – they must be involved in making the ethical and values-based decisions that create policies in the first place. Barney’s talk is part of the great Canadian Voices series at http://www.canadianvoices.org