The Internet has often been touted as the vehicle to promote a more inclusive democratic process, allowing ordinary people to contribute to the wider decision processes of central or local government that are typically hard or costly to access.

While this is often talked about in general terms, the recent NZ Police Act Review might be a specific example of how this might work. Here the team working on reviewing the Police Act put the working draft up on a wiki and allowed anyone in the public to directly suggest/make edits to the wording of the document. The editing process is now complete and a list of suggested changes is available on the wiki. How far these changes are taken account of is yet to be seen, but it might be a step in the right direction.

See Police Act Review Wiki | Main / Home Page

News coverage of the process:

• BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | NZ police let public write laws
• Write your own laws – web – Technology – smh.com.au