What does digital democracy mean?
I have always been unsure exactly what the term digital democracy meant. Voting by internet? Streaming Parliamentary proceedings? Providing policy documents for download? Members of Parliament twittering? None of this seemed very radical or indeed participative.
But I am greatly taken by Joss Winn’s WordPress based Write to Reply site. Joss has produced a site which allows commenting in depth and discussion on policy documents. The site is presently hosting a discussion on the UK Jisc’s Strategy Review, 2010 – 2012. I particuarly like the ability to discuss each others contributions and comments on the policy review and also the granularity of the comment facilities. If Jisc take seriously the discussion, and there is every sign they will, given they are sonsoring the development, this promises to develop both a better strategy documents but also and most importantly to involve the wider community in a process of knowledge maturing. And that, for me, is what digital democracy is about.
Technical note – I very much like that users can add comments without registering for an account and using the wordpress front end. One of the issues I have found with wordpress is that non experienced users struggle to understand the difference between the front end and the dashboard.
