Open Innovation Meets Democracy on Malta
The island country of Malta may start to change the way it does politics, by taking an open innovation approach.
The aim is to bridge the gap between politicians and the public, allowing individuals greater participation in the democratic process.
Within the last few days the Nationalist Party, a Maltese Christian democratic and conservative party launched the IDEAT project to encourage citizen engagement.
The online portal claims to want to create a more transparent, better connected and more mature democracy. In this vein it is requesting that citizens propose their ideas and open them up for discussion.
Among the many ideas put forward so far are suggestions about education, power generation, conservation of properties, university partnerships, innovation, transport and health.
Key figures from the portal’s first few days as reported by the Times of Malta are:
A new user registration occurs every four minutes.
Visitors to the site spend around six minutes per session looking at those ideas that interest them.
Every six minutes a new policy proposal idea is received.
Over 30,000 votes were received to prioritize submitted policy ideas.
Citizen-Centric Democracy
The leader of the Nationalist Party Simon Busuttil has said that if he wins the general election on June 3, he will roll out the IDEAT platform nationally. In so doing he wants to create his vision of a government that opens up its policy proposals for public consultation.
For more information about the IDEAT Project, visit the party‘s website.
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