A few weeks back the UK Environment Department DEFRA put up a wiki encouraging people to help develop an environmental contract, to tackle climate change and other key issues, by directly adding to the web pages online. It didn't get much attention. Then last week political blogger Guido Fawkes rounded up his co-conspirators to dive in and make some changes which, if highly entertaining, were not contributing to the cause of sustainable development - at least in the eyes of the wiki administrators. They locked the edit facility to stop main pages being altered, and as the recent changes history shows removed comments 186-189. Great glee among the trad political commentators, who probably don't believe in all this participative nonsense anyway. Times Online reported it as:
Last night the Environment Secretary was forced to creep back into his cyberhole after his much-touted “environment contract” had been so defaced by contributors that staff were forced to take it down.
... giving plenty of the joke comments but not a lot on the nature of the experiment. (No comment allowed on the article, of course). Thanks to Tom Steinberg for this Google news feed showing coverage in India, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere, many using the same story from AP:
It was supposed to be a bold exercise in online democracy - but Britain's government abruptly ended an Internet experiment Friday as a website requesting ideas for environmental policies was bombarded with abuse and ridicule.
The fact that David Miliband is the first UK minister to run a blog, and is frequently tipped as a future Labour leader, all made for a good political story - at least in the old-style knock-about tradition. You can tell most of the media don't treat authentic media seriously because they don't give links to blogs and wikis in their stories, with the implication that journalists and their conversations are authoritative and the rest are just story-fodder. (Except of course the beloved Guardian Online with its Comment is Free and other blogs analysed here by Nico Macdonald)
I'm more interested in the story behind the wiki. Experience with Wikipedia shows that a sophisticated editing approach is needed, and Simon Collister can claim the satisfaction of an early warning that the Defra wiki could hit trouble with a totally open approach. He sees the Guido-inspired attacks as puerile, but suggests that these have created ripples with wider implications:
I don't like what Guido has done to the Defra wiki, but the fact that he has been able to do it demonstrates that traditional politics is being disintermediated by the internet.
New power balances are starting to aggregate and for the first time, we have seen an online political network have a tangible effect on a real government initiative.
Simon Dickson, prompted by a comment on his blog, points out that Guido and friends are not just attacking David Miliband, but a medium for people wanting to make genuine contributions to the the wiki and the environmental contract. It's a bit like going to a political meeting and rubbishing the audience as well as the top table.... or rather, the idea of having the meeting at all.
Anyway, it has produced some interesting conversations, which is the main thing. David Miliband blogged yesterday that the wiki experiment will continue, and gained some supportive comments.
But how did it happen? Did Miliband, pleased with his blogging, and wanting an alternative to draughty church halls just say to his civil servants that it was now time to try a wiki? Did they say "yes, Minister, but it is more complicated than that. We need a process to recruit potential contributors, an editing policy ...." Didn't they know what might happen? Was advice ignored? Was it out-sourced?
It's all a bit strange, because Defra is generally very well-versed in consultations, as you can see from this list. The Sustainable Development Commission ran what was probably the first Whitehall wiki two years ago. The Government has invested more than £4 million pounds in promoting local e-democracy, and there is a Centre of Excellence for e-democracy that they could call upon.
Unfortunately civil servants are generally pretty frantic doing day-to-day stuff and firefighting, so there wasn't enough time for innovation and stepping outside the box, if that means working outside the department. The general emphasis - with honourable exceptions of course - is on avoiding trouble and political embarrassment.
That's why I hope that David Miliband and his civil servants stick with the wiki, while perhaps reviewing their existing guidelines to protect the integrity of the site and allowing contributions. I hope they share their experience with other departments and continue to fly the flag for participative democracy. However, to do that successfully I think they will need a planned process (tips here) and a back channel moderator - someone who calls people up and emails them with encouragement to contribute to the wiki, blog, forum or other online tool. They'll also have to lighten up a bit. Guido could offer some tips on both fronts.
Miliband does not really care what the "citizens" think. The Wiki was a PR exercise in sham consultation.
"He sees policy as something that has to be worked out and pushed through the policy forums, the conference, the Cabinet and the Commons. There's no real participatory element in it."
-Benn Diaries (Free at Last!) p643
The Wiki idea is a good one for collaborative projects. Politics is not collaborative. The reality is that politics is a clash of ideas and ideology as well as parties. Only a deluded wonk would overlook that non-trivial detail.
Wiki's can only effectively work as policy development tools when used by a community with common values. The policy making political class do not have common values.
So if you invite those who oppose your ideas to contribute to refining them you should not be surprised when they seek to frustrate your objectives.
Miliband is the wonk equivalent of the nutty professor. He seems surprised that his experiment has blown up in his face.
Posted by: Guido Fawkes | September 03, 2006 at 06:29 PM
From the outset, the Defra Wiki was an experiment. One of many that try to find ways of bringing governance closer to the people. The limitations of the Jotspot wiki service were understood (it was shown that leaving the XML edit option available allowed homepage redirects!) and therefore the current outcome was not unexpected. However there must have been some naivety to believe that the wiki would survive without some form of vandalism and the administration effort required was possibly underestimated.
Open wikis rely on the dedicated few to act as administrators, which is where this wiki fell down. Unlike its political puppet masters, 'Defra' seems to have few environmental virtual warriors drawn to its flag.
To many, Wikis are still new. Defra has learnt that a level of editorial control is essential. This wiki fell short, like others have before it. But the experiment will go on.
Posted by: Justin Coutange | September 05, 2006 at 05:33 PM