Despite my pessimism, it appears that the Governance stream came up with a worthwhile eDemocracy Big Idea – a government portal to be called www.your.gov.au (or maybe www.yourgov.gov.au, but that looks clumsy when you write it down). According to Kate Crawford, who apparently submitted the idea, the portal will give access to all government documents and allow citizens to submit ideas to the cabinet.
It’s not exactly a new idea. This submission (PDF 190 KB) of January 2005 to the Victorian Parliament’s Inquiry into Electronic Democracy is a reasonably comprehensive manifesto of what The National Forum has been trying to achieve. It’s three years old, and I wouldn’t do things quite this way anymore, but it advocates a portal, and a lot more.
One of the major risks of a project like this will be “bureaucratic capture”. That’s one reason that our project hasn’t got any further than it has. The public service doesn’t like scrutiny, or accountability, which is what the proposal should be all about.
If bureaucrats get their hands on any such portal it is likely to be low-risk and boring. At the least it will get what Stephen Coleman calls the “aesthetics of engagement” wrong.
It needs a new structure, and a new type of administrator who is part public servant, but also part journalist, publisher and editor. We describe the ideal structure as an ABC of the Internet, but it’s not a job that the ABC could do.
Anyone who wants an example of what I am talking about only needs to look at the 2020 Summit websites which were about as inviting as filing cabinets.
We’ve been pushing the idea since 2001, so it’s gratifying to see it seriously get onto a list with an Australian government, and we’ll be happy to bend anyone’s ear about it.