It’s not often that I find something of relevance to learning technologies in my local Brighton paper, but the report in the Argus last Wednesday certainly got my attention. East Sussex County Council has created a simulator which members of the public can use to have their own go at deciding where the budget cuts should come.
I’ve always thought this sort of simulator would be a good idea. After all, everybody knows where they don’t want cuts to be made, but they run out of ideas when it comes to thinking of alternatives. With this tool, they are faced with the same decisions as the local politicians. They have £337m to play with, but all sorts of competing pressures for these resources.
Apparently the simulator cost less than £5000 to develop. You can try it for yourself here.
For your american friends, the NYTimes came out with a similar tool this week: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html
ReplyDeleteinteresting and amusing tool indeed!
erica depiero
Very interesting. The tax-paying voter in me says there should be more interactive bits like this for more issues. The best I think these things can do right now is help inform voters' choices, and this device is a very good example of combining politics with learning and a dash of experience. Perhaps this is the future of our duties as citizens. If so, I like it.
ReplyDeleteImplementation of this as a means of logging a voter's actual set of positions on a range of issues is obviously far off, and we'll really have to figure out how to keep the ne'er-do-wells at bay from chumming the process. But I will definitely play with this and give some thought as to what it means for the future of politics.