Response to Politicians and Web 2.0
Responding to Trev’s comment in the Larvatus Prodeo blog, what you have described is about politicking, which is valuable in its own right. What I am interested in is allowing the same sort of interaction between public servants and the broader community in policy development. I think in New Zealand, the new Police Act was developed through a public wiki. But from what I can work out, In Australia politicians are making use of social media because they get benefit from it, but are blocking public servant access to it. As someone who would like to contribute from the outside to policy development, I am frustrated that government agencies cannot interact with the outside world except through the government’s media office. This is stifling the flow of ideas and information, and limiting democratic input into policy development. Most government departments block all social networking tools. This is such a shame, but seems to be driven from the desperate need by the politicians to control their message.
litfuse – I would love to try a public wiki as a way of developing a bill. I’ll give that idea some thought. Penny
Penny, let me know when. I’d be willing to help
Litfuse and Penny, have you already ideas on this?
I’m a civil servant in Amsterdam and wonder what the limits are.
In Amsterdam I have talked to people who just don’t trust the municipality anymore when they come to ask for their opinion. Maybe because my collegues have tried ‘new methods’ in an old fashioned system. Is the (political) system felxible enough to allow new styles of developing a bill? And truly cooperating with public servants (that’s a new word to me. Is it the same as ‘civilians’?)
Who knows whether the political system will be flexible enough Anne-Claire. Politics in western countries seems to be more and more about control, particularly of a “message” that po0liticians might want to get out to the public. The disadvantage of getting the public involved in public discourse and development of bills is that the community then owns these bills and there is less risk for government that they will be seen as the source of all problems. It becomes democratic in the true sense of the word. The disadvantage is that as a politician, you might not get what you want in the bill.
(Public servant means the same as civil servant)