Friday, July 23, 2010

Consult Citizens Online on Climate Change

Last week I attended the conference "Democratizing Climate Governance Conference" at the Australian National University in Canberra. This was timely as apparently the Prime Minister is about to propose a national community consultation process on climate change. My suggestion would be to use the "Public Sphere" Internet assisted consultation process which Senator Lundy developed for this. This would reduce the cost and complexity of organising deliberations and allow for wider input by people via the Internet, to supplement face-to-face deliberations. We have learnt a lot about how to run such blended events since I helped run the first Public Sphere at the ANU in 2009.

My colleagues at the ANU Engineering 'Hubs and Spokes' Project have been working on technology for teaching in a "blended" mode: this combines podcasts and discussions online, with face to face discussions, which can also be enhanced by using technology such as "clickers" (wireless hand held devices to quickly get audience input). This technology could be applied to a citizens consultation process.

ps: The papers for the "Democratizing Climate Governance Conference" have now been released:

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