From public deliberation to public collaboration.

• Author: Kavanagh, Shayne C.
• Position: Book review

WikiGovernment: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful By Beth Simone Noveck Brookings Institution Press 2009, 224 pages, $28.95

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WikiGovernment draws on the author's close involvement n Peer-to-Patent, a program in collaboration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to reach conclusions about how technology can lead to better collaboration between citizens and their government. The patent office was experiencing such a tremendous backlog of work that applicants could expect to wait years for their applications to be processed. Further, the quality of the reviews was suspect--in one publicized case, a 5-year old boy and his attorney father patented a method for swinging on a swing that involved a method "in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side-to-side motion by pulling alternately on one chain anal then the other." (The patent was revoked after much public ridicule.)

In response to this state of affairs, a proposal was made to pilot a peer review system for patent applications. Interested parties could apply to help review a patent by gathering background information on previous related work (which is essential in determining if the application represents a significant innovation), evaluating and annotating this background information, and discussing the application itself. Convening a community of experts was intended to improve the timeliness and quality of information available to the patent officer. The program attracted 2,300 volunteers, who worked on 84 applications. Evaluation of the pilot program showed that patent officers were twice as likely to use Peer-to-Patent submissions to support their decisions, compared to information submitted by the applicant. A post-project survey showed that the patent officers were also generally supportive and positive about the results of the program.

MOVING TOWARD COLLABORATIVE DEMOCRACY

The essential thesis that underlies this book (and the Peer-to-Patent project) is that public participation in government has traditionally been limited to deliberation, but Web 2.0 technology has created significant opportunities for collaboration. Deliberative democracy encourages groups of diverse constituents to come together and have a civil discourse about the issues facing the community in order to put forth a representative public opinion of...