Mark Elliott

This is an exciting initiative and I am very happy to see it happening on the federal level. As director of http://collabforge.com (a web2.0 / social media, consulting & IT services firm) we designed and provided the City of Melbourne with their recent wiki-based site for collaborative public consultation on the city's 10 year plan, http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au as well as developed their online community engagement and moderation strategies. This particular project was a global precedent and we learned a great deal about engaging the public in online consultation (and in online consultation, the world constitutes the public). This project proved to me the merits of online collaborative consultation and the potentials for stimulating a revolution in participatory governance. For instance, the project helped to debunk the notion that if people have unfettered access, they will act in ways disruptive to the task at hand - as there was not a single instance of spam, offensive or even off-topic material contributed. (In Future Melbourne's instance, not only could the public - or anyone for that matter - contribute to online discussions regarding the plan, they could *edit* the actual plan itself.) Of course strong community development/management strategies and associated action plans are needed to pull this off. In fact, the contributions received ranged from fixing typos and adjusting wording, to contributing ideas and even fully developed articles. For instance: http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au/wiki/view/FMPlan/BicycleLanesInHelsinki As an indicator that the area of online consultation is moving ahead quickly, Collabforge now is working with Parks Victoria to develop a full featured, open source public engagement platform, including blogging, social networking, user contributed media, and wiki editing of the plan under review (the Greater Alpine Region Management Plan). The first phase of this project is due to be launched in the next few weeks. Congratulations on this first big step, and I look forward to watching and participating in what looks like will be a fantastic initiative!