This afternoon at the NZ Labour Party conference there will be a new thinking workshop on OpenLabourNZ, Labour’s experiment in developing policy out in the open, involving anyone who wanted to participate.
The workshop will outline why and how OpenLabourNZ came about, what we did, the issues we encountered on the way, outline some of the main ideas that have been suggested and discuss what we do now.
A report has been produced bringing together all the material to date. Here it is. It’s pretty good. I hope you’ll read it.
Because the workshop hasn’t happened yet, I can’t predict the outcome. But here’s the basic premise:
Should government fear being more open and transparent?
Should the Labour Party fear being more open and transparent in the way it crafts policy?No doubt there are some risks involved. But there are compelling reasons for more openness and transparency in politics and the way government engages with its citizens.
One of the most compelling is that while it might not be the natural inclination of government and many political parties to open up, it certainly is the inclination of the people they are elected to represent and to serve.
I’ll update this post later after the workshop. But this is new territory for Labour. It’s outside in policy. I hope we’ll use this experience to develop more policy. And I hope that out of this will come a damn good policy on open and transparent govt to take into next year’s election campaign.
Well, yea.
Any research results, data etc etc paid for by tax-payers should be public-domain – and accessible via the web. We paid for it, we own it.
Any democratic entity that feels that it needs to keep secrets from the electorate is inherently illegitimate.
Re: policy formation – yes, this should be driven by public consultation – but you can’t really do that until there’s a healthy non-corporate, non-governmental 4th-estate, and I haven’t noticed that we have such a thing in NZ.
A winner would be to keep this blog running if you win in 2011 ( or 2014
).
Cabinet manual rules notwithstanding, you should use this blog to as a means engaging with members of the public when in government.
I have to say, this was one of the best things I’ve seen Labour do in years, and I really hope you follow up this level of engagement with the public in other policy areas in the future- it would be especially good to have this sort of online consultation during Labour’s next term of government. If even half of the most popular recommendations are implemented next time Labour is in government, I’ll be really impressed.
What Ari said.
I’m extremely impressed/surprised with Labour following the ‘open’ route
As far as I’m concerned there’s no room for arrogant, closed-door, secret politics any more….full stop.
Nope – that’s just adding unnecessary complexity. One government owned network. It’s the simplest and cheapest option.
If you do it “as a number of pieces of infrastructure” what you’ll get is a lot of local monopolies that you’re then going to have to regulate to death so that they’ll talk nicely to each. In other words, the same problem that you have now that caused you, when you were last in government, to consider regulating the inter-connect agreements and prices.
I’m pretty sure I’ve told you this several times since this blog started up. I’ve said it on The Standard as well and you still don’t friggen get it.
Then start up some local companies to supply that technology. I considered that having a NZ Linux developer (government funded) would be a good idea. Supplies government with a good, secure OS that can be used in every government (Central and local) department, schools, libraries etc and it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than paying, say, MS (probably a few hundred thousand a year rather than a few million) and maintains those open standards that you’re talking about. Freely available for download as well so has direct benefit to the populace.
I found that abhorrent because it was setting up the minister as an elite above everyone else rather than as someone who is merely doing their job. An enforcement of the status quo hierarchy rather than a shift into participatory politics.
Congratulations Labour! Now if you could just publicise it to average Joe who doesn’t go out of their way to follow politics…
Hi Clare,
Just wanted to say the report from this was excellent and a lot of work has clearly been put into it. I look forward to seeing some of its recommendations adopted and the method too for other areas.
Hope you keep it up and would suggest next time more real world advertising to draw more people in.