SACRAMENTO, Calif. /California Newswire/ — On Tuesday, Calif. Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) announced that he is continuing his groundbreaking opportunity to allow individual citizens to draft a piece of legislation directly via an online Wiki. Citizens can visit the “Wiki bill’s” website, and by using an interface similar to Wikipedia’s, they can propose, draft, and edit a bill, which Gatto has committed to introducing, after a consensus emerges. Gatto initiated the project last year as the first purely crowdsourced piece of legislation in the United States.
Gatto will discuss this Wiki bill (and other privacy issues) at a press conference at the Capitol on Thursday Jan. 8, 2015 at 12:30 p.m.
Inspired by his new role as the Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, this year’s Wikibill will ask citizens to weigh in on legislation to protect privacy. Assemblyman Gatto has advocated for using technology as a tool for citizen engagement in the past, and hopes that he can show that modern technology can be used to protect privacy and increase democratic participation.
“There are growing fears in our society about the ability for technology to intrude into our personal lives and violate individual liberties, this is a great way to use technology to ensure those concerns are heard and give people a direct voice in their government,” said Gatto. “Too often, special-interest groups draft legislation. In contrast, ‘crowdsourcing’ a bill on the Wiki platform will allow for a fully transparent brainstorming, drafting, and editing process that incorporates ideas, experiences, and concerns from a large group of people. The collective wisdom of the public will choose the final product.”
The effort is designed to perfect other citizen-participation mechanisms that are flawed. For example, the Petitions.WhiteHouse.gov site allows citizens to propose broad concepts, but has no teeth, in that the public cannot directly draft legislative text, and there is no commitment by the government to act. On the other side of the spectrum, many reformers (including Assemblyman Gatto) believe that California’s Ballot Initiative process is too strong, because inflexible initiatives can tie the hands of elected officials in perpetuity. In contrast, Gatto’s Wiki process takes advantage of the ubiquity of the Internet to allow vast numbers of people to participate in their government from the comfort of their homes, and allows other members of the public to see exactly how the process unfolds. Thus, it is a way to effect real change, but the ideas will also get fully vetted through the normal legislative committee process after Gatto introduces the bill.
“Most people aren’t legislators, lawyers, or lobbyists,” said Gatto. “But almost everyone has an opinion on how California’s privacy laws could be improved.”
Those interested in participating should visit www.MikeGatto.wikia.com. Once there, users can see what other people have proposed, propose bill text themselves, edit what others have proposed, and view the history of the entire process — just like a Wikipedia entry. Assemblyman Gatto will introduce whatever consensus emerges by the State Legislature’s bill-introduction deadline, which is in early February 2015.
Mike Gatto is the longest-serving member of the California State Assembly. He represents Burbank, Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Atwater Village, East Hollywood, Franklin Hills, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake. www.asm.ca.gov/gatto
