Designing for Civil Society

Uploading Innovation, promoting collaboration

Tomorrow's Uploading Innovation event in London is fully booked, but you can join in the web discussion which is warming up around making communities work online and off (Matt O'Neill), the new impresarios developing collaborative economies (Steve Moore), and news of a new initiative in Practical Design for Social Action (Leonie Ramondt). The event is organised by my at friends Policy Unplugged, and promoted by NESTA the UK innovation agency.
Roland Harwood, who is leading NESTA Connect, explains here how the national programme is designed to encourage co-operative approaches.

Core to NESTA Connect is a simple but powerful concept; that innovation happens through collaboration, rather than in isolation. In other words, innovation is a ‘contact sport'. Our focus will be upon finding and supporting unexpected, novel or extreme collaborations that disrupt the boundaries between different disciplines, organisations and places. As with any meeting of individuals or organisations, it is critical that they can find a common language, so that they can communicate and collaborate. This is what NESTA Connect is all about.
We know that we cannot begin such an endeavour without tapping into and harnessing the extraordinary network effects of the Web to connect people to one another, to promote co-creation and harness collective intelligence. We are now developing a strategy, which will explore how collaborative innovation can be optimised online. We expect to have the details of our plans finalised in spring 2007 and Uploading Innovation has been convened to bring together 120 of the leading online collaboratives to inform this strategy development.

I'm very much looking forward to going along, and while I'm full of good intentions about shooting some video and doing some blogging, I think it may be one of those occasions when the buzz of face-to-face makes me neglect online commitments ... but somehow I don't think we'll be short of contributions.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, innovation, onlinecommunities

Nonprofit uncollaboration

in Fortune favours the brave consultant Paul Caplan reports on his work helping UK voluntary organisation explore the potential of what he appropriately calls the Live Web, and then muses on why the potential for collaboration is not being fully realised:

Currently doing some work for the nice people at the Finance Hub, another UK government initiative like my benefactors at the ICT Hub, designed to get the voluntary and community sector working better and taking over from the collapsing state sector (who slipped that in?).
Anyway, been seeing the inside of a lot of trains again as I travel around the country meeting VCOs and the organisations that support them. Once again I am amazed at the levels of energy, committment and passion out there in the real world. If these Hub initiatives actually worked and brought that sector together, and I was in government, I’d be more worried about that than a bunch of angry motorists and a petition. The organisations and the people who run them, often without resources, support or even encouragement, constitute a powerful series of voices that when combined with the Live Web could create a real political movement.
The Live Web, unlike any tool or medium before it, honours voice and passion. It favours the brave. Voice, passion and bravery are what drive the VCO sector - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s a natural fit.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work out:

I believe the people running the Hubs know this and can see it potential. Perhaps even the ministers in Government who’re behind the Change-Up initiative believe it and want to see it happen. They can’t all be cynical New Labour PFI-driven privatisers can they? But what’s most frustrating about working for the Hubs is that the way they are working is not enabling that to happen as effectively as it could.
I go around the country like a digital Elmer Gantry whipping up enthusiasm but then moving on. I can’t afford to help all the organisations who ask me to and the project is being forced to focus on the number of attendees rather than on how deeply embedded the new tools and communication practices could be. There seems to be no  funding for follow-up, in-depth support or project development. There seems to be no real integration across the Hubs to enable organisations to use the new networking potential to develop P2P consultancy around communications, marketing, finance and fundraising.
The potential of the Live Web is bigger than just creating a voice-driven, passionate movement. It is about P2P, open-source networking -  a new form of consultancy where services like Blogs and Wikis, consultants like me and infrastructure organisations and funders like the Hubs or Change-Up get behind organisations, get out of there way and look for ways to enable them to do what they would do naturally and which for years they have been told to unlearn.
No-one quite knows what is the future of the Hubs. I’d like to think that they can take on this role.  Don’t unremarkable work in leading organisations.  They could do even more if they got behind them.

All credit to Paul for being prepared to tell it as he finds it; I share the same frustrations. But why is the potential for collaboration under-realised among nonprofits at national level? I think there are probably some structural challenges, among them the pressure to deliver against targets and compete for funding, and the short-term nature of many project which means staff don't have time to develop relationships. The level of expertise in using new technology is generally low across the sector, which makes it very difficult to enthuse people about the potential. Why bother if other people aren't using the tools.  However, as Dave Pollard reported from a wider study of collaboration he did with Mitch Ditkoff, Tim Moore and Carolyn Allen a year ago:

Two criteria, enthusiasm for the subject of the collaboration, and open-mindedness and curiosity, are rated as the most important criteria by virtually all segments of respondents. More than half of all respondents rated these qualities as indispensable in a collaboration partner. By contrast, five experience-related criteria (proven trustworthiness, collaboration experience, previous familiarity with other members of the team, reputation in the field of the collaboration, and business experience), rate at or near the bottom of the 39 criteria assessed by participants. Candor, courage and timeliness of follow-through are also rated very important qualities in a collaborator, along with strong listening, feedback and self-management skills and diversity of ideas.
These findings, most of which are based on responses from experienced collaborators, seem to suggest that just about any group of appropriately motivated people can be effective collaborators, and that good collaboration is more art, and perhaps chemistry, than science.

So what might foster a more collaborative attitude? I suspect those in the front line might point to senior staff ... senior staff might point to their funders. Maybe the use of the Live Web among smaller organisation will lead to pressure upwards for greater collaboration - if we believe that tools help change behaviours. I'll have a chance to explore some of these themes when I speak at the second conference of the ICT Hub, who I should emphasise are, of course, Very Nice People.
It's that other lot who are the difficult b*****s ...
Update: Leon Benjamin, in a comment on my earlier item about his on fractional work, writes:

Actually non-profits have an edge because they have a cause, particularly voluntary non-profits where the nature of the participants tends to promote rather than inhibit collaboration and sharing.  With some off-centred thinking and the application of social software, non-profits have the potential to evolve into movements.

... thus echoing Paul Caplan's point about the groups that he meets, and the wider potential. Perhaps the problem at the higher, inevitably more bureaucratic, reaches of the voluntary sector is that they are somewhat removed from cause. It's not just attitude, but context and culture that matters. I'm glad I don't have to do such a tough job, pulled in so many directions.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, nptechuk, snnonprofit

Fractional work and small slices of expertise

The Internet potentially offers a host of solutions to a couple of linked challenges: how do I use the enormous ability to connect to find answers to my problems ... and how do I make money by selling what I know online? Unfortunately the reality can be rather messy ... fruitless searches, lots of to-and-fro discussions by email, forum or blog, and uncertainty about whether or how to buy or sell expertise.
However, things are changing with a range of smart sites aimed at more focussed knowledge exchange and what  Leon Benjamin - the author of Winning by Sharing - calls in his book Fractional Work. In an update on his blog Leon wonders if Fractional Work is the next small thing and offers a great round-up of developments:

The video blogging web site Revver opens with the statement "What if creativity could pay the rent?". And JyvePro announces "Live access to people and what they know". Ether launched a while back with the strap line "Earn money, selling what you say". More recently, BitWine in similar vein, proposes that people can "Get straightforward Advice, Instructional Guidance or a Second Opinion, and talk to real people in real time".
Emerging behind the scenes is ki work (my favourite, and in which I have a personal interest) which if it receives funding, will adopt a profoundly more subtle approach to fractional work and should eclipse its nearest competitors, Elance, Guru, PajamaNation, Odesk and others. As always we lag behind in the UK, although ExpertSources is getting there. If its management team can be persuaded to embrace Web 2.0 technology it could quite easily become a de facto cybermediary for sourcing expert opinion in the UK by connecting media researchers to experts. At this time, none of these appear to have embraced or indeed undertstood the importance of reputation management and the dimension of trust it adds to user confidence. Several new entrants can provide the 'plug 'n' play' services they need, for example RapLeaf, Venyo (just launched) and iKarma.

After citing some statistics on the use of this type of service, Leon adds:

I'm convinced as stated in a previous post - Fractional Work Debuts, one of these intermediaries will become the new Manpower or Adecco except using a model that anticipates the maxim, "the unit of work is no longer a whole job".
In the UK Richard Tyrie, founder of JobsGoPublic, has developed a Ruby on Rails based platform branded as Slivers of Time, funded by no less than Her Majesty's Government, The Office of The Deputy Prime Minister. It is perhaps the most functionally rich web application for matching supply with sources of demand, I've seen to date and supports their proposition for employers;
"Employers input their needs, for example "3 people for 2 hours at lunchtime today", they see everyone who wants to do that specific booking ranked by reliability (reputation) and hourly rate. They can buy instantly."

Leon goes on to suggest how work in public and private sectors could be reshaped to offer people new opportunities, and also reduce workplace stress, concluding:

There must now surely be a case for corporations and government institutions to completely re-think the way they source, manage and contract with their 'human resources'. Everyone needs to realise that fractional work is not only economically viable for all parties, and that traditional models of employment are not only unproductive, but inhumane and in some cases, barbaric.

I think there are also enormous opportunities for nonprofits to adopt some of these online methods to share expertise within the sector, promote virtual volunteering and sell services. To see why, take a moment to visit the links that Leon offers.
Here's a couple of explorations in the nonprofit field:

• Using ICT for collaboration. Miles Maier summarises two reports
• The icollaborate blog where a group of Dutch practitioners are documenting their online collaboration experiences.

More generally about online collaboration:

• The Cooperation Commons blog
• Blog of Collective intelligence
• Online collaboration news - latest tools from Robin Good

Anyone know of other examples?

Technorati Tags: collaboration, nptechuk, snnonprofit, socialtech

Designing a Wiki Carnival about social media

The story of how thousands of people are collaborating worldwide to develop Wikipedia is pretty familiar. It is a brilliant example of the power of collaborative, social media ... but just creating a space online doesn't make it happen. It can take months to build a community of contributors: but maybe there's another way. Would you like to help Michele Martin and I find out - and in the process explore what we can do with social media? Read on for our idea and how you might help.
While developing an A-Z of social media a few weeks back I spotted, amongst the wealth of goodies emerging from US-based bloggers, a wiki about Best Practices in Using Web 2.0 in Nonprofits developed by Michele Martin of The Bamboo Project. My idea for the A-Z - supported by the NCVO ICT Foresight team - is that it could grow into a guide for anyone aiming to use blogs, wikis, and other social media in voluntary and community groups and the public sector, or across sectors.
I contacted Michele, and we put together some first ideas over Skype, on Google Docs, emails, and tweaks to the wikis. We couldn't quite get how to move things forward until Beth Kanter came up with the idea of modeling a wiki carnival on a blog carnival.
Here's what we then put together.

Our Plan
Borrowing from Kivi Leroux Miller's Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants we'd like to run a Wiki Carnival to gather materials and information. Our plan is this:
From March 5-11, we'll be putting out a call for participants to:

• Send links to Michele or me of any of your blog items that you believe should be linked in the wiki. Even better write a new item!
• Send us a video or podcast or link related to using Web 2.0/social media tools that might be helpful. We're particularly interested in real-world examples, case studies, etc.
• Let us know what del.icio.us tags you use ... maybe socialmedia, collaboration ... then we can look for stuff you have bookmarked
• Recommend other blogs, books, articles that you think will be useful.
• Send us questions you'd like answered or ideas you have for resources that would be helpful to you in using social media with nonprofits.

You can either e-mail us the information or you will be able to post in either of our wikis on special pages that Michele and I will set up specifically for the Carnival.
Once the Carnival week ends, Michele and I will sort through everything, organize it and post into the appropriate locations in our wikis. We'll also share with you a write-up of what we got, as well as identify any gaps in information that we have, unanswered questions, etc.
Depending on what we get back, we anticipate that we'll run a Round 2 (or possibly a few more rounds) to fill in the gaps that we identify.
Right now we're running this idea up the flagpole to see if you have any ideas or suggestions for how we could run this most effectively. We want this to be a collaborative, community-building process and we definitely need your input to get it going.
So what do you think? Drop me an e-mail or leave me a note in comments. At this stage we are just asking for responses to the idea - though anything else relevant welcome too. Are there other social media wiki builders out there? Here's Michele's blog post on the carnival.
Flickr Photo

Technorati Tags: collaboration, nptechuk, snnonprofit, Web_2.0

Open source thinking - and practice

Beth Kanter offers both philosophy and a practical demonstration of open source thinking, which she describes like this:

Open source thinking is sharing and remixing. You've got to set your ideas free, you can't  control your content. It is a different mindset: "Ah darn, someone  else has got there first" versus "Great, don't have to do that, I can  build it on it!" For me, it's been the ability to think out loud with  colleagues on ideas and topics, share presentations, etc.

Beth explains her task:

Later today I'm doing a Webinar, a briefing on Web2.0 tools for the good folks at NCNA. I'm filling in for colleagues Marnie Webb and Billy Bicket from Netsquared. I'm trying to embrace two ideas here - the idea of open source thinking and wikitation. Both require me to let go of old ways. That's a hard thing to do.

Beth cites Allison Fine's book, Momentum, which has a chapter on Open Source Thinking, and how it is the key to successfully using new  tools. Beth adds:

Marnie Webb's excellent presentation called "Ten Ways To Change the World With Web2.0 Tools" and published under creative commons by/NC license. That means you are free to use as long as you give the author credit and it isn't being used for commercial purposes. So, I remixed it for the audience. I added a lot of visuals, I changed the examples, reorganized and tweaked the steps. You can see my remix here.
My next step is to contribute it to the Np Best Practices Web2.0 wiki that Michele Martin created. Maybe we can add a section for presentations that we can share.
I've been fooling around with alternative ways for share presentations over the web.
You can export jpegs to flickr and create set, you can upload a powerpoint into slideshare or create a wikispace for the presentation or wikitation. I generally like to have visuals, a place for my script, and links. I like having a leave behind. There are some definite pros/cons to the different approaches and I'll write about it later. I'm also curious to see what works for a webinar.

I love Beth's preparedness to share not just ideas and practice, but to do it on the run so you get an understanding of how she is actually trying things - not some cleaned up version at the end which skips the difficulties. Beth was in the UK recently, and it was a great inspiration and learning experience to put together materials for a conference together. You can find Beth's wikitation and the social media game we developed on a wiki I'm developing. More shortly on how Michele Martin - who runs the Np Best Practices Web2.0 wiki - and I aim to collaborate with others on a wiki carnival to populate our space. I'm very happy to give credit to Beth for the idea of how to do that. More open source thinking - "hey, great idea, here's how you could do it". No request for attribution - but of course you do - and that's how open source relationships develop.

Learning about social media by walking the walk

Lloyd Davis has a great idea for the London Social Media Club that he is helping organise: don't just talk about it, get out and do it. In Thursday Night is Social Media Night he writes:

What I suggest is that anyone can come along at 6pm at a pre-arranged location to take pictures, make some audio or video, or just walk around town and blog about it, somewhere in London according to the following schedule:
* 1st Thursday: Photo-sharing
* 2nd Thursday: Podcasting & Audioblogging
* 3rd Thursday: Hosted Discussion & Networking
* 4th Thursday: Videoblogging
* 5th Thursday: Blogwalk
Except for the 3rd week, these will be out and about somewhere in London, maybe pub-based when weather gets rough, but dedicated to improving our social media skills by doing as much as by talking.
I'm committing to starting this on 1st March with a photo walk about in Soho, meeting at the John Snow pub in Broadwick St (bring your camera) - yes, it will be just getting dark at 6pm so the theme will be "Things you can photograph in Soho in the dark without getting arrested or your face smashed". Frankly, I'll be happy if I get just one other person to come with me, but of course, the more the merrier.

There's a club wiki and a mailing list. The idea ties in rather well with an observation from Australia, where Shawn at Anecdote muses on Walking to create community:

I just had coffee with Greg Shepherd. He coordinates the Dining and Activity Network in Melbourne. What a delightful fellow. I was asking him about which activities his social club members seem to love the most and surprisingly he said walking was best for building community. As Greg explained, walking enables a group of people to clump into small groups and talk without being forced in an intense face to face meeting. When you tire of one conversation you can easily slow or quicken your pace to join a new clump. This probably explains why the blog walks are popular.

That was certainly my experience at a London blogwalk, and last year I found a couple of people promoting photo walks for tourists. Of course, all social events produce their own anxieties. Do I need to upgrade my camera? Is my mike of suitable specification? Is just talk and text acceptable? I've do doubt Lloyd will make us all feel welcome.
Update: Lloyd's site has suffered some spam attacks and may be down.

Gossiping seriously about Google tools

This evening's Gurteen Knowledge Cafe produced the usual rich mix of conversations, this time around social media. The most memorable for me went something like this (condensed version):

Me: Hi - I'm a freelance doing some work on communities of practice... setting up a system for people in different countries to share information and ideas about their projects. What are you working on?
John: well, my company has just been taken over, and I'm one of the casualties. Don't mind though, it's going to be messy. One group uses Notes, and one uses Exchange, and there's no way to get them to integrate.
Me: well, I spent a lot of time last year working on open source systems like Drupal which developers say can do pretty much anything you want ... blogs, forums, file libraries, profiles  ... you just add another module. But .... now I'm not so sure it is the all-in-one solution we need. It requires quite a bit of customising and maintenance, and people have to learn something very different from their day-to-day tools. I'm impressed by all the free or low cost tools coming out ...
John: Ahh! Google! We've been trying the enterprise solutions that tie together a start page, Gmail, instant messaging, calendars, web page creation and so on. It's going to take my company a year to decide which way to go on their systems, and by that time Google will have a suite of tools that will do the job. We have been looking seriously at just going the Google route.
Me: Seriously? In a large company? This isn't just for individuals and nonprofits....?

Disclosure: I'm have no relationship with Google or any other supplier, but I do have a hunch that things are changing fast when it comes to setting up online systems for collaboration. The conversation gave me another nudge. The reasons are two-fold (at least):
First, it takes a lot of planning, time and expenditure to  develop a customised system - particularly if you are working across different organisations or groups. To do it properly you need to do user profiles, use scenarios, wireframes (paper mock-ups), test sites and so on before you build the system. Then you have to get everyone engaged, trained, facilitated, stewarded, maintained. The time and money you should spend on the people gets eaten up by the technology ... and it may not work.
Secondly, a lot of smart knowledge management people advise a more organic process of developing communities online. Enlist the champions, work with them, spot enthusiasms and opportunities, evolve as you go. That's much easier when you have a suite of tools like those offered by Google (and others). You can start with one thing ... maybe the calendar and groups ... then bring in others. You can offer everyone a Home page to bring things together. You still need to look at the different users, scenarios and so on, but it is potentially much more flexible.
Thirdly, helping people use Google tools, or Yahoo, and other free or low cost web apps is going to be useful outside the specific project. They can start to develop mini-systems for themselves.
What I wasn't sure about was whether it might be a serious proposition that could be scaled up. My conversation this evening made me think it worth investigation on at least one of my projects. We may need a Drupal site in the middle to provide a framework, but I don't think it is where we should start. It would be interesting to see how far we could go with Google, then what extra is needed. OK, this needs a lot more thinking through, but often it is the bit of gossip that offers the big insight. Isn't that what social media is about? Including face-to-face, of course.
What are the pros and cons?
Here's a discussion group on Google Powered Office Tools, and the Wikipedia entry on Google tools.
Previously: The Great (almost free) Web Office Experiment

Update: Google has just announced a Premier edition of Google Apps - reviewed at Read/WriteWeb. It costs $50 a year per user account. Comparison of free and paid-for is here and here.

What a difference a reply makes

I wrote the other day about new plans  for 6000 UK online centres, and what seemed a pretty top-down consultation approach that didn't involve those using the centres. I emailed the organisation developing the plans - since I rather doubted they monitored this blog - and didn't expect to get any response. It looked that sort of organisation. But I got a friendly email, giving me new information directly related to my piece, which I'll come to later. It changed the way I felt about the organisation - and made me reflect what a difference it would make if others were also prepared to do the same.
The context is that government is pushing local centres - which may be in libraries, colleges or other community facilities - to focus on what used to be called e-government, and is now (transformational) t-government. It is, in official language, a major  programme to modernise and transform the way government interacts with the public and delivers its services. In practice it is, in part, about trying to get people to use the Internet instead of ringing up or going to the counter. Local and central government has met its targets of moving services online - but people aren't using them enough ... and that is costing.

The UK online centres are important because they serve a lot of people who use public services - but don't use the Net. Their original aim was to provide access and learning opportunities - whether informal or formal - and so address the digital divide. As the consultation document says:

There are no signs that the divide will close naturally over time as once predicted in fact internet use has stalled at around 60% over recent years, which means that 40% of people are still not accessing potentially vital services.
In many ways, the need for UK online centres has never been so great.
This is why we feel the time has come for a new vision and mission for UK online centres which recognises the significant work you are already doing and outlines how the network can be better aligned to support the needs of both citizens and government.

My main point in writing about the plan was that no one seemed to ask the centre users what they wanted, so I wrote:

While there are many pros and cons for this approach, I was struck by another question. Is anyone asking the users of the centres what they would like? I suppose they could go into their local centre, download the pdf, digest the proposals, then fill out the response form, but looking at the form I don't that's the idea. Questions are about Do you agree with the mission, Do you support the vision, Do you feel the strategic aims are the right ones ... so it is clearly for  managers rather than users. The plan says there have been focus groups at centres, but no details are given of what was said, or whether centre users were involved.

Here's what I received in reply, from Anne Faulkner, Head of Policy

Many thanks for sight of your blog and for taking part in the debate - I think your assessment is fair and balanced.
You're right to ask the question about what centre users think and we've done quite a bit of research in this area, most recently with a major e-government project in the South West - (link)
We're particularly interested in those who can't access online services via their home or office because they're digitally excluded - and often digital exclusion goes hand in hand with social exclusion. Unless these people have support through intermediaries such as UK online centres, we fear that they will be even more excluded as government's face-to-face channels reduce.
Helen wrote an article about this recently which you might find of interest (link):
On the question of the consultation process itself, asking people to fill in the consultation form is only one part of the process and provides a structure for analysis. We also want to encourage centres to talk to their Regional Managers and feed in that way and Helen's planning to post something on her blog to generate debate. I do take your point that we could have broadened the scope further and we'll consider this for future consultations.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment and for your positive view of the work the centres do. I've also sent your blog link to Helen, who will post a reply directly.

Helen is Helen Milner, managing director of UK online centres, who blogs here. In her article for The Times she writes:

As more public services move from face-to-face to online channels, we need to ensure that they’re reaching socially disadvantaged people. At UK online centres we’ve just completed research which suggests that to create the elusive e-citizen, we need t-government coaches. The research analyses a pilot in the South West that teamed UK online centres with selected local and central government websites to support people in using them. Those most in need of a helping hand had a social need to contact government: housing; pension or benefit inquiries; job or course search information. Ninety seven per cent were reassured just by having UK online centre staff around to support their first online transactions. Six months later, a follow-up found that 45 per cent had continued to find useful t-government information, 18 per cent had enrolled on a course and 9 per cent had got a new job.
The benefits of offering this support — to the individual, to government, to society and to the economy — should not be underrated. Our research estimates that 6.6 million people are both digitally and socially excluded, and it’s time the credits rolled on the digital divide and we closed the gap for good.

I've gone on about this this a bit because I think there are a few lessons that may be useful both to organisations and humble bloggers.
I found the way the consultation report was presented rather off-putting. I had to download a pdf and then do a tedious copy and paste job to get some text. The content was pretty formal too. Both the style and the consultation approach - fill in a response form - jarred against the title of 'Creating Confident Citizens'. It put me into critical mode.
However, Anne's friendly response gave me a different feel for the organisation. They were prepared to engage in a one-to-one conversation about their plans.
It seems to me that the challenge for an organisation like UFI, that runs the centres, is to bring a bit more of its conversational style into the front line. Make documents more accessible and blogable. Put Anne, Helen and others up front. Tell some stories from centres - or, much better, help centres and their users tell stories for themselves. There's a start a Centres News section, but the logos are rather overwhelming, and the style is a bit press release.
Ooops, there I go, slipping in a snide aside. Rephrase ... the Centres News section offers a fascinating window into what's happening in the centres. More please. Why not put it on a multi-user blog?
The lesson for me is to try and get to the people behind the official documents. They may be prepared to talk.

Training for new technology: The Book

Thanks to Michele Martin at The Bamboo Project for  this:

For those of us who have struggled to introduce staff to new technologies, this hilarious video shows what may have happened in the first training session on using a book. Could be a great video introduction to open up discussion on how when a "technology" is new, it may seem very confusing until we're used to it.

Beth Kanter has more.

How the road pricing e-petition is being promoted

There's been a number of mentions of viral emails to gather support for the one million-plus e-petition against road pricing, and today a contributor to the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange dropped a useful warning about the impact of these.

The vehicle tracking and road pricing policy petition has put the system back in the spotlight and it's bringing a lot of e-democracy issues to the forefront.
For me a big issue is I'm sceptical that information I've received about the subject through viral campaigns is a reasonable summary of government policy - which would lead me to think that many of the people who signed the petition are influenced by road lobby scare mongering. I suppose the government could email them and explain the policy better though.

Then adding a copy of the email she had received:

"Subject: FW: UK Road Tax and Big Brother - Urgent -

Sending this as widely as possible - sincere apologies if it's unwelcome.
You can sign as an ex-pat too.

See Link Below
PETITION
________________________________
The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it

The tracking device will cost in the region of £200 and in a recent study by the BBC the lowest monthly* bill was £28 for a rural florist and £194 for a delivery driver. A non working mum who use the car to take the children to school paid £86 in one month.

On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can expect an additional fine with your monthly bill.

Its not only limited to speeding - they also know where parking restrictions etc are located - and you!!!!

If you care about our freedom and stopping the constant bashing of the car driver/road user (not limited to cars), please sign the petition on No 10's new web site

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

Then you will get an e-mail from Number 10 with a link for you to click to confirm your objection.

Please pass this on to anyone who owns a car/motor vehicle/motorcycle (or will be in the future). It affects them.

Just to register 1% of those against this proposal there needs to be 300,000 people signed up!

The closing date is 20th February 2007 -DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS????

* Compare this to the annual cost that you currently pay!

PASS ON  - NOW - THERE IS NO TIME TO WAIT."

A Google search using one of the sentences shows that this has been circulating in a lot of places - I got 17,200 results listed (though I haven't checked them all ...).  I tried to find a rebuttal from the Government, and turned up this speech from Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander in May 2006 and news of a draft bill from last November. Earlier this week he told the BBC he would listen to the petitioners - however:

Ultimately, it will be a matter for parliament to make decisions but it is important that people have the chance to have their say and no doubt people will offer a range of opinions during that debate.

All this seemed to me to show up the problem of petitioning without some associated deliberation. The petition has brilliantly raised the issue - but where can we find some facts about what the government is or is not proposing?
The discussion on this and other issues continues on the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange, where you can now view the web archive without registration. Anyone can sign up and join in, and there's also an RSS feed for headlines. Full feeds are promised in a month or two.
The BBC has an interview with Tom Steinberg of mySociety, who developed the e-petitions, and The Guardian has a leader.
As I wrote earlier, the Scottish Parliament has a site where you can petition, see who has signed, and also join in discussion. As so often is the case, they do things better north of the border, but no-one takes much notice in the Westminster village.
Update: I've just spotted this item in The Sun (a populist tabloid in case you are outside the UK) which says the email comes from the Association of British Drivers. It calls on the Government to clarify the proposals, adding:

The ABD’s petition may be benefiting from mass hysteria, but until the finer details of this proposal are set out, no motorist in their right mind will allow the bill to go unopposed.

With the tabloids wading in, I think we'll hear more. I wish it were easier to track where it's all happening, though.