[LINK] Smart enough for the 2020 forum?

[Michael Still]

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 04:23 PM 4/02/2008, Sylvano wrote:
>> I can't help but whince when contemplating the conflation of the many
>> goals in this press release, including the encouragement of ideas, the
>> fostering of discussion and debate, developing policy, formulating
>> strategies and identifying distinct technological implementation plans.

[snip]

> I've been working with an ad hoc group on a strategic planning model for
> just these types of future planning initiatives and it takes much longer
> than a weekend to get anything of worth, no matter how expert the
> participants are. People run out of mental energy after a few hours of
> this level of thinking. They need process time away from the in person
> discussions. And the breadth of these issue topics is daunting, besides
> the range of involvement from policy through to planning!

A worthwhile outcome would be for the government to "learn" who from
these 1,000 people has actual expertise and opinions, and then construct
longer-lived advisory panels from those people. I feel one of the ways
the Howard government went wrong was by being unaware of how the world
actually works (or should work, depending on your perspective).

Examples: broadband policy written by people who hardly know anything
about computing, immigration enforcement by people more interested in
political grand standing than social justice, education policy written
by an economist instead of a teacher, etc.

Mikal