Technical forms of production are very dependent on quality control to minimise the variation in their product from the requirements. This means the customer gets a consistent product or service every time. Consequently in industrial parlance quality means minimum of variation from the requirements or specifications. We can probably start looking at Parliament as having inbuilt quality mechanisms to produce quality legislation where policy substitutes in the role of requirements.

This was provoked by Lynn Allison's comment in a speech where she spoke on the Broadcasting Bill Amendment 2007:

I think it is not unreasonable to say that the government should have sorted out these problems before we had to deal with the bill itself.

Allison is talking about the Senate in quality control terms. I have not thought of parliament in that way, but it makes sense that there be statutorial rigour and mechanisms to ensure that legislation matches the specifications closely.

Unfortunately Australia's use of the Westminster system means that there is poor separation of powers between executive and legislative, so policy and legislation come from executive cabinet.

The committee systems are a relatively new innovation in the Australian federal system and act as an important process in collecting requirements from the end-users (and those ultimately paying for it) in the public.

Committees can also act as post production reviews of the product's (the legislation and policy's) performance. This suggests that the committees are more important than the time they get in the media or the public consciousness from a quality control point of view.

One of the reasons I am in favour of permanent sortitionist body, apart from being useful in unearthing corruption, is that they will be able to empirically review policy outcomes - act as an a non-political and non-partisan quality review board. The sortitionists basically act as customer representatives (they are customers as taxpayers).

Another idea I like is adam's of spontaneous citizen auditors, who can form as an active FOI body. Auditing government for corruption, but also policy outcomes.

The current government has control of the House and Senate through elected majorities, unfortunately, because of the strength of executive discipline in bloc voting, this has led to poor quality control outcomes. Legislation, as Allison is arguing, has not gone through a proper quality control process of review in cabinet or committee before being tabled as legislation in parliament.

It would be wise to view parliament from a quality control point of view, and audit it constantly, and frequently, from that perspective.

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.

Chris Berg has a paper out on the growth of the regulatory state in Australia and the different forms and arms it takes as legislation as well as delegatory bodies. A common aspect of modern government is the increasing growth of legislation and complexity, even from what the older nanny-state and social-states comprised.

Even within the political philosophies of the free market and limited government the state has found ever increasing ways to increase its complexity, and ultimately, its burden on the population. This has ramifications on the ease and liberty of self-organisation, whether economic, cultural, social; or political.