Is there a UK Government Minister for e-democracy?

The problems with Defra's wiki set me wondering where the UK government's centre of expertise on e-democracy lies, and which Minister is responsible. As I remarked previously, local government has ICELE, but Whitehall doesn't (visibly) have the same thing.
Democratic engagement is the responsibility of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. As the guide on the No 10 site says:

The Department aims to empower citizens to obtain justice, safeguard their rights, and participate in a transparent and accountable democratic process.

The DCA last year commissioned the Hansard Society to run the Digital Dialogues programme, and as Simon Collister reported recently that is about to enter a second phase, with a report due about now on experience so far on blogs, forums and instant messaging. As the programme site says:

New case-study leaders will be offered the tools utilised in phase one of Digital Dialogues – blogs, forums and webchats. In addition, phase two will make available applications that are beginning to see mainstream use – wikis, podcasting, file-sharing directories, audio-visual blogs, mapping software, virals. New case-study leaders will also be encouraged to combine applications – for example, converging polling software with forums, or photo-sharing with mapping tools. Any applications will be offered the opportunity to make use of one or more of these platforms in isolation from or in parallel to conventional, offline techniques.
Phase two of Digital Dialogues would be completed in early 2007. Details of the case studies in phase two will appear here shortly. An interim report from phase one will be available online in August 2006.

At this stage I should declare that I did some work myself for DCA earlier this year, helping civil servants learn about (mainly non-electronic) democratic engagement in small action learning sets. After some months of effort on both sides we agreed that particular learning approach wasn't working well for various reasons, and halted the project. My suggestion was that a cross-Whitehall community of practice on democratic engagement would be more useful, but I don't know if that idea went anywhere. I was struck by the  complexity of cross-departmental working, and  how difficult it must be to tackle issues of democratic engagement - including e-democracy - unless you are working with a strong political base, say in Cabinet Office.
Many of the issues are not about tools like wikis or blogs, but the preparedness of politicians and civil servants to take risks by opening up and sharing ideas early on. If you try that - as Defra has with the wiki - you run the danger of some classic political media ridicule. The Labour Government has always been pretty controlling in its communications, and in that environment civil servants will be even more risk-averse. It's no surprise that the Digital Dialogues programme has such a modest public face, and as far as I can find the phase one case studies are internal. Apparently David Miliband's blog is being evaluated, but was not launched as part of the programme.
All that still leaves me with the the question - who in Government is in charge of e-democracy? I suppose that overall it must be the Secretary or State at the DCA, Lord Falconer. He certainly gave a substantial speech on democratic engagement in 2004, although I couldn't find anything about e-democracy. It might be Parliamentary Under-Secretary Bridget Prentice MP who spoke recently at a conference on Civic Education and Political Engagement.... but then her website hasn't been updated since April, so maybe not.  I couldn't find anything in the list of DCA ministerial responsibilities .... but then I couldn't see anything about democratic engagement either. I tried searching for e-democracy on the No 10 website, but got no hits at all. I know there are some bright and energetic civil servants on the case in DCA and other departments, but I do think they should have a political champion ready to step up for "transparent and accountable democratic process" as No 10 puts it. And whoever they are, they should have a blog.
PS: there may not be a Minister, but there is a UK e-democracy exchange where these matters are under discussion. You need to register to view messages and participate.
Update: further investigation reveals that Lord Falconer and Bridget Prentice MP are indeed ministers for blogs, wikis and other things e-democratic. The line is that there's no deliberate hiding of responsibilities - things like party funding, House of Lords and e-voting don't get mentioned either. The current emphasis is on experimentation, which is why the Digital Dialogues report and the programme's second phase is important. I also gather that the community of practice on democratic engagement is still under discussion, and may well surface later this year. I hope so - then I can put the action learning sets experience down as useful experimentation.

Comments

[Simon Collister]

Really interesting stuff, David. I started eDemocracy Update as a passive enterprise to record significant edemocracy news/projects (my main blog 'Simonsays...' demands most of my blogging attention!).

But then I discovered the Dig. Dia. programme and realised somebody, somewhere is taking edemocracy seriously.

As you've pointed out, local government tends to be much more flexible and responsive to new ideas than central government.

The fundamental problem is that engaging with new technologies and iedas requires a willingness to take risks and get things wrong. Unfortunately, central governments like to reflect wider public perceptions (and the current Labour government is particularly trying to claw back some public confidence!).

Until blogging and social media become more widespread and publically accepted (tipping point?) I think edemocracy is something Labour will want to explore - but only as long as it has a zero impact on its other efforts to shore up the electorate's confidence in them.

That is, in answer to your question: I think were more likely to see a Minister for Winning Votes before we see a Minister for Edemocracy!

[Graham Lally]

Some great links that will be interesting to follow up... One question for now - what's included under the mention of "virals" on the DD site?

[davidwilcox]

Interesting, but don't know Graham, you'll have to try project leader Ross Ferguson for that - address on the Digital Dialogues site

[Anonymouse]

There's an irony that individual but comparatively high-profile exercises like Miliband's blogs and wikis are at odds with the over-arching transformational Government agenda, led by Cabinet Office's e-Government Unit.

Because the current initiatives are being driven by a personal and political agenda (Miliband may be making political capital, but there's no question that he also has a strong personal desire to enable the use of new interactive approaches to working with Government) there is no apparent thought being given to interacting with Government as a whole via these channels. This is despite pressure on all of Government to reduce the number of e-channels it employs.

Presumably this lack of transformational joining-up is because many of the more backwards corners of both the Cabinet and the Civil Service could/would do a spectacularly bad job of supporting any debate...