BY GREGORY FERENSTEIN, Fast Company<\/p>\n
The office of Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor has just launched a Quora question to tap the Fast Company audience’s collective intelligence. Cantor hopes the crowd can help him flip one of the last stones unturned in the recent wave of eDemocracy: legislation. Aside from a handful of experiments, such as an uneventful attempt at wiki-style legislation in Brazil, few have been able to successfully merge lawmaking and social media. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Cantor\u2019s Digital Communications Director, Matt Lira, hopes that the future of participatory legislative technology will move \u201ctechnology into the function of government.\u201d As an example, YouCut, a sms-based voting platform, allows citizens to decide which government programs are most in need of cutting–and members will actually vote on it. For Lira, this satisfies what he calls the \u201crealness\u201d rule, where citizens have a \u201cgenuine impact on the legislative process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having been on the forefront of many congressional eDemocracy projects, we asked Lira to share some lessons readers should keep in mind as they contribute.<\/p>\n
1. Focus on the process of lawmaking<\/strong><\/p>\n Congress needs to know how to reach the best experts, reduce the cost of legislation, make regulation effective but not cumbersome, and improve the public\u2019s knowledge of law (or, anything that helps law function as intended).<\/p>\n