New Zealand is doing something very interesting. They have a
Police Act Review Wiki where you can
contribute to the Police Act. It will be interesting to see just how specialist a legislator has to be; if citizens are educated enough and capable of making legal documents that can survive constitutional scrutiny what need is there for specialist legislators in parliament? They pretty much become electoral specialists then. Which is a totally different and more cynical animal.
The wiki isn't entirely citizen legislation though, it is expected to be an adjunct to the normal parliamentary drafting process. From the main page of the wiki:
An official Bill is currently being written-up by parliamentary drafters, but in parallel there's an opportunity for others to suggest how a new Policing Act might look by contributing to a wiki Act. It'll be kept open until 1 November 2007, when the results can be fed back into the official law-making process.
Creating this online environment is a continuation of the open process used throughout the Police Act Review. It's all about encouraging a national conversation on policing.
The new Act will need to cover a wide range of topics, from high-level governance to day-to-day administration. To help get people started, we've included some headings and a few example ideas.
But don't feel constrained. For instance, if you'd prefer to work offline and upload a complete Act for others to comment on, by all means add it beneath the one we've started (there's a space provided under the "Alternative versions" heading).
It will be interesting to see if law becomes trans-national with non NZ citizens start contributing to the Police Act in order to restrict policing capabilities and maximise liberties.
The technology of Citizen Legislators is similar to
Citizen Auditors which are spontaneous forming of auditing groups to audit government by interested citizens. Citizen auditors can act as part of a free and independent quality control process on parliament. The FOI (freedom of information) process is supposed to aid this but at the state level it is becoming increasingly restricted by a secretive executive claiming executive privilege. It would improve governance if citizens were given wide ranging auditing capabilities of government.
More More discussion on slashdot:
New Zealand Police Act Wiki Lets You Write the Law which is where I saw it originally.
More Reading on Legislation
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Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
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Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
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Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
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Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
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Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
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www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
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