Stap isi

Local government, the internet & community engagement online

26 July 2009

Learned on-line discussion - ptufts (Flickr)

Hansard for commenters

A NSW public service manager made this comment on The Hon Penny Sharpe MLC’s blog post about NSW Public Sphere:

Transparency and access are both 2-sided. Somewhere, it would be great to see a discussion about how departments avoid being tied up by citizens who get new, ever more public channels to push their own grievance? Particularly when there is no underlying basis, as sometimes happens. This small percentage of people can consume large amounts of time at current levels of access and transparency. Look at how some are adept at getting issues into the media which is, after all, interested in stories that get attention in preference to injustice and inequity per se. The number of stories in the existing media is disproportionately weighted compared to the total volume of public administration, large parts of which are both efficient and equitable. Esp the more sensationalist media. Its the side to access that we don’t like to talk about much. What happens when these citizens participate?

I like the Guardian’s community features and particularly the way comments made across the site are aggregated and displayed on a page generated for the user.

… just as every guardian.co.uk author gets a contributor page in which their contributions are archived so that their participation can be explored across topics and over time, so should our users. — Meg Pickard, 19 August 2008

There are technical challenges – you’re publishing across multiple platforms (website, satellite sites, proprietary backend systems) and you’d want to consider extending aggregation to collect contributions from constituents’ own spaces.

But if we agree that OpenAustralia is ‘a good thing’ then we should start looking at the other side of the conversation.

Your comments stand as a public record of your participation on the site: think Hansard, for commenters. — Guardian Community FAQ

— b3rn   , , , ,    Jul 26, 10:44 AM   #

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