Australia: Politics Future Melbourne wiki Citizen Government

ByLaurel Papworth

I’m just really bookmarking this wiki for my own future reference. Pass it on to those Melbournites that a) might want to be involved and b) might have a clue, willya? Recent news The first round of collaborative drafting in the Future Melbourne wiki has now finished. Over the coming months the plan will continue…

Future of Melbourne
Future of Melbourne

I’m just really bookmarking this wiki for my own future reference. Pass it on to those Melbournites that a) might want to be involved and b) might have a clue, willya?

Recent news

The first round of collaborative drafting in the Future Melbourne wiki has now finished. Over the coming months the plan will continue to evolve under the guidance of the City of Melbourne’s Future Melbourne Team.

During the public consultation period, 17 May to 14 June, there will be a further opportunity to help draft the Future Melbourne Plan online. During this period we encourage you to log on and help influence the future of our city. Everybody is welcome to take part!

In the interests of transparency and accountability we request that you register with your real name. After registering, we encourage you to complete any empty fields in your user page.

and

Introduction

The City of Melbourne welcomes you to the Future Melbourne wiki. As far as we know, this is the first time a local government has used an online collaborative process to develop a shared strategic vision for its municipality. This is a bold and exciting opportunity for the people of Melbourne!!

We have invited you, our City of Melbourne Councillors and management team, our Future Melbourne Reference Group, our project partners, our key stakeholders, members of the eVillage and people interested in the future of Melbourne to assist us in developing this draft plan, to edit the content that is there and to fill any gaps you identify.

The previous attempt at a government/citizen wiki wasn’t brilliantly successful – we tend to use social networks to solve our own problems,and are fearful of getting caught up in bureaucracy, no?

10 Comments

  1. Please don’t confuse what you read in the newspaper as supporting my personal views – it doesn’t. I don’t believe social networkers to be self-obsessed or attention seeking.

    Here’s my blog post response response to news.com.au

  2. Greetings Ms Papworth, I am part of a Melbourne online community: bloggers. We meet regularly at bars and for picnics. Quite a few of us.
    I have just read your remarks on online social networking, as reported by the Telegraph.
    Not all OSN is mindless.
    Consider please, people stranded geographically.
    Not necessarily stupid or self-involved.
    I have 2 blogspots, one has links to mostly Melbourne alpha-bloggers (I am not an alpha-blogger, but I read them), and the other is this one for making provocative comments where I do not necessarily want to be a friend of the recipient.
    Your description of the relentless poster would seem to fit Mark Bahnisch of Larvatus Prodeo, but maybe he and others are just bursting with brains and the urge, and it all has to come out somewhere?
    best regards

  3. Hi Dale, here are some past posts of mine you might find interesting:
    the Architectural League of New York – building New York in virtual spaces.

    New Zealand Police had a wiki to review the Police Act

    there’s this lot of SocialText wikis
    https://wiki.nla.gov.au/homepage.action National Library of Australia’s wiki
    NSW Department of Education and Training, I think this is on the educationau site
    Roads and Traffic Authority (NSW, Australia)
    Queensland Office of Gaming Regulation
    Treasury Corporation of Victoria

    But I was probably talking about the Australian Government having a consultation blog to decide if they would have a wiki/forum. There was a bit of furore about the need to have a blog to decide to have a wiki. 🙂

  4. Hi Laurel, thanks for your post on the Future Melbourne project.

    As far as we can tell, this is the first time in the world that a local government has enabled anyone to directly edit the content of a city plan.

    Have you had a chance to log on at http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au? We’ve just finished redesigning the entire wiki with a new look and feel for the public consultation period.

    Out of interest, what’s the previous attempt at a government/citizen wiki that you refer to?

    Dale,
    Future Melbourne Team

  5. Thanks for the links Laurel, some interesting reading.

    Yes, we studied the NZ Police Act review wiki in some detail before deploying our own. Of most interest to us was that the wiki was only live for public editing for one week and was considered a complimentary form of consultation rather than a primary tool to replace more traditional methods.

    With Future Melbourne, we’re quite excited that our primary level of consultation, engagement and participation is via the wiki, and that we’re open for editing for a full month.

    ..and may I say, the irony of a consultation paper on a consultation blog is multi-layered! Obviously they haven’t heard of the Wikipedia mantra: be bold!

    Dale
    Future Melbourne team
    http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au

  6. yes, I had a nice phone call from a lovely Police Commissioner or some such. After I spoke to the press, and then to the NZ Police, about how networks feel when THEIR content is removed, they decided that instead of removing permanently the wiki, they would put it back up as Read Only. Good move. 🙂

    good luck with it all!

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