[LINK] E-Democracy

[Tom Worthington]

At 11:34 PM 11/21/2006, Stephen Loosley wrote:
>In terms of e-democracy we are still playing around the edges. ...

Peter Chen's PHD thesis discussed some of the issues 
<http://eprints.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000240/>, as has his 
subsequent work: 
<http://eprints.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/perl/user_eprints?userid=16>.

My approach has been to do what might be called "Open Access 
Lobbying": that is to publicly contribute ideas as to what should be 
done in the hope some of it will be incorporated into the policy 
process. Ideally you influence the process before legislation is 
written and get your input to the people in agencies and think tanks 
who write what later becomes policy. I have noticed a bit of what I 
have helped write on IT policy turn up in government policy and legislation.

More recently I took an interest in electric cars and found I had 
become an "expert" (at least to the media) just from a few blog 
positings: 
<http://www.google.com.au/search?num=100&hl=en&c2coff=1&q=%22Tom+Worthington%22+%22electric+car%22+-%22Monterey+Fish+Company%22&btnG=Search&meta=>.

But it is a hit and miss process, for example the ACT Government 
hasn't approved cardboard coffins yet 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/10/cardboard-eco-coffins-not-permitted-in.html> 
nor do we have a battery powered train to Canberra 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/11/hybrid-high-speed-train-to-sydney.html>. 
;-)

>... most proposed legislation eventually appears somewhere on the 
>web, but, why not in one central
>web location with easy-to-use invitations for comment, before debate? ...

It is a bit late to wait for draft legislation. But it would help to 
have the drafts. Politicians will sometimes play games with drafts, 
as the NSW Attorney-General did with Internet censorship in 1996 
<http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link9607/0081.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml