A “new frontier of democracy” in Police

The Police have put out a wiki so that the public can contribute to the drafting of the new Policing Act.  Interesting development, but the rationale – i.e. what Superintendent Hamish McCardle had to say -was even more interesting.  For me, there were 3 key points in the Stuff article :

• “drafting new legislation “shouldn’t just be the sole reserve of politicians”
• “The wonderful thing about a wiki is we can open it up to people all around the world – other academics and constitutional commentators interested in legislation – and make the talent pool much wider”
• “We have been asked if we are worried about it being defaced, but wikis generally haven’t been defaced internationally – people generally are constructive and productive”

Completely spot on.  Of course, none of this is new – we have been reading about wikis, and their potential for government, etc etc for a long time already – but I haven’t yet heard a senior government official talk about wikis with the same sort of naturalness as Hamish McCardle

Of course, the Guide to Online Participation was a policy document that a community of practice in collaboration with SSC had drafted on a wiki as well – and that was probably the first example to date.  But drafting legislation?  That’s a little different.