By Becky Hogge
Late last week, the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was the first UK government department to put its policies out to the people - literally. It launched the first wiki hosted on a government website in the UK, meaning any citizen (of any country) could edit the content that was hosted there - an "environmental contract" between citizens and state.
Perhaps David Miliband, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, had read Hossein Derakhshan's piece on Wiki-ocracy published a year ago here on oD. In it, the Iranian blogger known as Hodder advocated the drafting of a new constitution for Iran through using a wiki.
I myself have doubts about the format as a viable tool for deliberatiev democracy. In my opinion, wikis don't work if their contributors do not share goals. They're no good for funnelling the opinion of a bunch of people who disagree vehemently about a topic, as the banning of anonymous and newly registered users from editing the George W Bush page on Wikipedia is testament to.
Further, wikis aimed at amassing a statement of action on behalf of all citizens should have at least a critical mass of people editng them. Right now, from the look of the people who have identified themselves in the comment stream, it's just sustainability experts who are doing the editing.
But it's still early days, and the DEFRA wiki could well prove me wrong. At any rate it's a step forward for government to be using collaborative tools to engage with citizens, and I'll certainly be watching the DEFRA wiki closely.
