Iraqcost and interactive budgets

Monday, 18 April 2005, 17:51

WorldChanging points out a little Java app for mobile phones that the Liberal Democrats are distributing. The Iraqcost software allows users to reallocate the £5 billion that the UK has spent on the war in Iraq and send their chosen budget priorities back to the party.

And WorldChanging has an interesting take:

Simplistic? Sure. Overtly political? Of course — there’s a Parliamentary election going on in the UK right now. But it’s also an interesting evolution of the use of mobile phones as a political tool, moving beyond communication and organization into the realm of interactive policy advocacy. It also foreshadows the possibility of doing something like this for real — sending out the budget to every citizen for allocation decisions. A staple of science fiction for decades, the notion of collaborative budgets is undoubtedly riddled with problems … But the idea of being able to tell your government precisely how to spend its money will be compelling to a great number of people.

Entry Filed under: General Election 2005