In Mr Woody Allen’s film Bananas:

[The rebel leader] Esposito announces that he is the ruler of San Marcos, and orders that the country’s official language will be Swedish and that citizens must now change their underwear every half hour, wearing it outside their clothing so that it can easily be checked.

How, for example, would your design deal with suggestions like Mr Allen’s? How would you stop other contributors flaming him? Will your system accept contributions in Swedish? What would you do if the US Transport Security Administration implemented this idea without giving Mr Allen the credit for it? Having got into the habit of handing out million pound baubles, should the government pay for ideas? Etc …

One from the journal Planning Theory: http://www.darenbrabham.com/files/brabhamplanning.pdf

And one from the journal Convergence:
http://www.darenbrabham.com/files/brabhamconvergence.pdf

My dissertation focuses on this topic, with an investigation of Next Stop Design (www.nextstopdesign.com), a crowdsourced bus stop design competition I headed up that was funded by a grant from the US Federal Transit Administration.

In fact, a Conservative Party official interviewed me about this topic a few months ago.

db

In particular, it is clear from my comments that control of the crowdsourcing facility is an issue. If the politicians and/or civil servants retain control of what issues are consulted on, how the issues are worded and what happens with the suggestions submitted, then the initiative is likely to be smothered, the status quo will be retained. That is a WIBBI, isn’t it. WIBBI some power over the process was relinquished by the politicians and civil servants, and handed over to … someone else. House rules therefore observed.

I would suggest also that debate will be facilitated if we take an example. No-one can possibly disagree that “our” proposals should be “wise and inventive“.

But we need more flesh on the bones. I suggest that we take the Abdulmuttalab case as our example.

What would the public suggest is the proper response to the 25 December 2009 pantybomber?

It’s the public who will have to queue up for hours in airports and be patted down and “X-Rayed” (actually, it’s wireless technology, not X-Ray). It’s the public who won’t be able to go to the lavatory for the final hour of a US flight or even read a book on their lap. That’s if the new security measures being suggested are implemented. What alternative would the public propose?

With that as our example, how do we get the issue onto the public consultation platform? How do we publicise the availability of the platform? How long should the debate continue? Who will word the description of the issue? Who will decide which public suggestions are worth pursuing? Will the authorities just proceed with what they planned anyway and ignore the crowd’s suggestions? Etc …

I think there’s the germ of a valuable and powerful idea here. I dont entirely support how my local MP Jeremy Hunt has articulated it: dismissing “so-called experts” is the sort of langage we expect of people who sack David Nutt and prefer to get their drugs policy from the Daily Mail.

But there’s something here can can try t make the best of. And house rules require that. if we’re not entirely satisfied with how this stands, we suggest how we can make it better. You’re falling short here David.