Can We Harness the Internet to Collaboratively Write Better Laws?

[Commentary] The crowdsourcing process of the OPEN Act is a promising step in using the Internet for democratic engagement in the US, but it is far from the "direct digital democracy" that proponent Rep Darrel Issa (R-CA) claims.

As an attempt it is admirable, and its goal of participatory engagement in drafting legislation is one that hopefully others will emulate. But, as a platform, Madison is flawed. It is a platform designed without paying enough attention to the lessons learned and best practices developed by those already within the social web space. What its designers overlooked is that collaborative consultation online is merely a political application of already existing social web interactions. The last six or seven years have given us thousands of mini-experiments into how to do social engagement right online, and designing successful political engagement platforms need to learn from them.