Crowdsourcing’s latest innovation comes in the form of a draft constitution, generated by online contributions from Icelanders, and is set to be put forward to the Icelandic parliament later this year.
25 citizens presented the draft constitution to parliament late last week, edited based on suggestions sourced from online social media websites — including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
As Mashable reports: Iceland’s constitution remained vastly unchanged since its independence from Denmark in 1994 1944. After the banking crisis in 2008, where billions were lost in collapsed Icelandic banks, leading to health services and universities across Europe losing out, the drafted constitution was developed in a bid to change the political atmosphere in a largely despondent nation.
While suggestions of free ice-cream and more volcanoes sourced from Facebook were largely discounted, the vast editorial process created a document focusing on greater transparency and decentralised government.
Though it sounds like a crazy idea to actually allow a country’s citizens’ to openly assist in the drafting of something as important as a constitution, the end result proves that crowdsourcing can reach the top of the governmental food chain.
The draft constitution’s review will take place from October onwards.
