A Wiki for Public Participation

How to Wiki well at IAP2

At the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) wikis were a hot topic and HighProductivity's Michael Pilling led a packed session on the use of wikis in pubic deliberation. The participation experts in government and public policy were very curious about how using wiki could speed up their collaboration and consultation processes.

Two questions kept recurring: the first was "ok we have feedback - how do we build toward consensus?" Governments and public policy organizations are often overwhelmed by feedback, negative and positive. Pilling replied "When I work with elected public officials, we talk about how we can channel all that feedback coming at them into vigorous deliberation among stakeholders - it puts the onus for developing solutions on the community itself, and allows the leaders to spend less time responding to individuals and more time serving the community.

The other question that organizations wanted answered was "We have committees and they deliberate well - too well, the meetings to take forever to resolve into action." It is all about how you structure the deliberation, Pilling says, "Because wiki's are a highly customizable environment, we can create pages templates that channel discussion into decisions and decisions into action. I've had people say to me that they find wiki meeting?s more productive, even if everyone is already in the same room.