Can ordinary citizens help policymakers solve the most pressing problems of our time? That’s what elections are supposed to be for – but when they fail, it might be worth trying something like ExpertLabs, a new effort launched today to tap into collective public expertise to better inform policymaking.

ExpertLabs is a new initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and headed up by blogger Anil Dash. Other high-level names have joined up: $500,000 in seed funding comes from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has signed up to the concept.

It’s surely a worthwhile experiment, but the question is what will actually result from it. Other efforts to increase webbiness and transparency in the Obama administration have suffered glitches, from a White House press site that took a while to get its press releases up on time to an OSTP blog that promised dialogue but ended up with the usual handful of rambling public comments rather than any sort of interactive and stimulating conversation.

Stay tuned to see if ExpertLabs delivers on its arm-waving promises of today.