The network at the
heart of democracy
Matthew Landauer
OpenAustralia Foundation
@matthewlandauer
matthew@openaustralia.org

Implementation of
Democracy
The Past
The Future
The Present

“Form of government in which supreme
power is vested in the people and exercised
by them directly or indirectly through a
system of representation usually involving
periodic free elections...”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/
157129/democracy

1. The Past

Stagecoach

How do you run a
country with problems
like that?

Representation

Our system of
democracy
is a mirror of the time in
which it was created

2. The Future

The last 250 years

The last 250 years

What kind of democracy
is possible with these
new technologies?

Representative
democracy but not based
on physical area

Direct democracy

Proxy voting

Warning

Is the Internet the same
as two people talking to
each other?

How do we get there?

Experiment

Transparency and
information

3. The Present

What is
OpenAustralia?
OpenAustralia.org is a non-partisan website
run by a group of volunteers which aims to
make it easy for people to keep tabs on
their representatives in Parliament.

OpenAustralia
Foundation

Non partisan

OpenAustralia.org

Near Future

So many possibilities

Voting

Committees

Bills

States & Territories

Video

Contacting politicians

Get involved

Join the Google Group
openaustralia-dev
Follow @openaustralia on
twitter

Go to
software.openaustralia.org

Join one of the
upcoming Hackfests

Make something for
OpenAustralia.org
or
Build something new
using the data / API

Photo Credits
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baureihe143.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_A380_blue_sky.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IMG_9988.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Early_portable_tv.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lance-Armstrong-TdF2004.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Morse_Telegraph_1837.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bushtr82repro.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ericsson_bakelittelefon_1931.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/348629926/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/transkamp/54371294/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zhasper/3626373279/

Questions