

David Cameron & Mark Zuckerberg discuss spending initiative on Facebook - d4nt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Bbzi7s1Ko

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motters
What the coalition government is trying to do in terms of soliciting ideas and
having more engagement with the public via the internet is very welcome. There
is a signal/noise issue though and a lot of silly suggestions are made, so I
think that better rating systems are required - perhaps similar to HN.

However, I'm also wary that the previous administration also tried to court
popularity and "listen to the people" during the early years. Everything
hinges upon whether the new government actually makes constructive use of good
suggestions by the public. If they subsequently ignore highly rated
suggestions then there could be a backlash - as there was against Tony Blair
when he built up great expectations of change only to subsequently dash them
later.

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avar
They Reykjavík municipal government headed by The Best Party is using a web
application to solicit ideas: <http://betrireykjavik.is>.

The source is up on GitHub: <http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct-
democracy>

It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. You can vote things
up or down, make arguments for and against proposals etc.

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motters
I think software of this kind is the future of collective decision making
(government), but as you say this sort of thing is very much in its infancy
and it will probably be many years before really compelling systems emerge.

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avar
We already have compelling systems for most things. Open data formats for
things the government produces, version control that could be used for
legislation etc. Just think about how much accountable legislators would be if
they were all forced to use Git, and you could annotate any piece of
legislation.

~~~
motters
Version controlled laws would be a great idea. You could have an rss feed for
each law and subscribe to any changes or make comments on the changes. So all
this sort of technology exists now, and what's to be done is more about
assembling those things into a form which is customised for government use.

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phreeza
I find that extremely unbecoming for a PM. Probably trying to seem down to
earth but I just think its very embarrassing.

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McP
"Adding comments has been disabled for this video." But enabling comments for
the budget deficit won't result in a stream of inane trolling?

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zalew
TLDW: \- thank you, it's great \- thank you, it's great

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kadavy
Get a decent backdrop, Zuck! I can't stop staring at that heating vent.

