I recently spoke at the Public Policy Development and Evaluation Forum in Canberra (ACT) on the topic 'Open source policy-making: using online participation to improve the policy development process':

• Exploring the use of online services in the stakeholder consultation process
• When are government consultation blogs effective?
• What is the future of www.australia.gov.au?
• A post-mortem of the 2020 summit online
• Case studies from the UK’s Ofcom, Queensland’s Getinvolved site, New Zealands Police Act Wiki, and any other examples that can be squeezed into 40 minutes of slides plus Q&A

I thought it might be a good idea to walk the talk by open-sourcing the speech itself. You can view the results here - please feel free to post your thoughts on the topic in the comments below. 

We're now putting together a brief discussion paper on these issues at http://policydevelopment.wikispaces.com/opensourcepolicy - please add yourself to the wiki if you're interested in contributing.