Wiki Government: How Technology can make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, & Citizens more Powerful
Alienation from government processes is endemic. This sense of distance explains the growth of populist movements targeting "big government" as the source of social problems.
The great Marxist Ernest Mandel argued decades ago that socialism would simply utilise, indeed revolutionise, many of the capacities developed by capitalism and allow citizens to control society.
Beth Simone Noveck, the US deputy chief technology officer for open government, argues for the potential to use one such information technology — and unwittingly exposes its current weaknesses.
She begins by recounting one successful use by the US Patent Office of the interactive technology of Web 2.0 in the Peer-To-Patent Initiative. Noveck directed this project when she was a professor at New York Law School.
Peer-To-Patent provides government officials with better information when they are making decisions. This information comes from the online collaboration of relevant volunteers who participate in Peer-To-Patent.
Each team member rates the team's findings and the best are provided to the US Patent Office in an Information Disclosure Statement. In this way, the team influences, but does not make, the decision of the US Patent Office on a patent application.
Another e-government example is the US government website
Noveck envisages transforming such sites so that citizens become better informed by reading others' comments, collaborators build on the inputs of others, and experts criticise and respond.
She foresees developing further internet-based applications. One proposal is for a "bubble up" system for determining questions for the US president to answer in regular media sessions.
In such a system, participants submit questions, the questions are rated by other participants, and only the best are presented to the president. Wiki Government tells of similar systems being used with the politicians in other countries, and television personalities.
The obvious question that arises is: who has the time and the motivation to participate in such initiatives? Noveck touches on this, and unwittingly reveals the issues of class, power and manipulation inherent in our society.
The screens in successful systems are designed to "respect users" and give feedback in such a way that contributors feel that they are "part of a community". The systems are also designed to quickly weed out "frivolous" communications so that "meaningful participants" feel they are speaking with others of similar stature.
And getting knowledgeable volunteers and specialists to spend their free time continually returning to an internet site and commenting on issues? No problem for Noveck: use "public-private partnerships". Many participants in Peer-To-Patent were employees of the major sponsoring corporations!
Noveck cheerfully reports that Peer-To-Patent is a great success. She then looks beyond this and recommends a number of ways of building other web sites to link laws and people for purposes of finding social justice through social networking.
Such methods of electronic communication are one path on the road to having a truly collaborative democracy where the government receives input and direction from real people rather than just from "the chosen" and representatives of pressure groups.
Noveck is oblivious to questions of the nature of the society wielding this technology. But as an example of a technocratic view of the world, it's a good read.