International Law

e-democracia, Brazil?s Wiki Legislation Forum. What about Indonesia? (Wikislation)

Wikislation is the term I used to describe bottom-up law making process using wiki. This has been implemented in one of Philipine?s region. Recently, Brazil came with the more sophiticated Wikislation idea through its website, e-democracia. 

The Techrepublic explains:

The program is a kind of crowdsourcing for legislative purpose. In particular, the e-Democracia website attracts and draws together the diffuse participation of individual citizens and minority groups. The main goal is to permit easier access to the decision-making process by citizens who are not associated with strong interest groups or corporations that usually lobby for access to the center of power in Brasilia where the national government is located.

e-Democracia is driven by a belief that the lawmaking process can benefit from the convergence of political representation and citizen participation in a virtuous cycle in which one model strengthens the other. The backbone of the initiative is its website (www.edemocracia.gov.br), which provides multiple participatory mechanisms with which citizens can:
? Share information about a problem that needs to be addressed by law;
? Identify and discuss possible solutions to the problem; and
? Draft the bill itself.

I argued in my 2006 article that crowdsourcing legislation will benefit from reduced information asymmetry and reduced cost for information interpretation. The concept and methodology for ?wikislation? is still far from perfect. But the tools are here. I consider that spending our legislative resources on bottom-up IT will also decrease the cost of deliberation and eventually, the cost of promulgation. To get a complete picture on the concept of wikislation, read and download my 2006 article titled ?How Legislative Process Works in the Period of e-democracy?.

Full post as published by Indonesian Law Reporter (ILR) on September 14, 2010 (boomark / email).