Westminster and the Scottish parliament have very different e-petititoning systems, and last week's e-democracy 07 conference offered an opportunity to hear from two of the key people involved on each system.
The 10 Downing Street system was launched a year ago, allowing people to collect names and petition the Prime Minister online instead of by the traditional means of presenting boxes of forms on the doorstep. You may create a lot of media interest if you are lucky - as with road pricing - and get a response online from the Prime Minister, but there's no scope for discussion and you don't know what real impact your effort have made.
Professor Stephen Coleman, of Leeds University, kicked off conference discussion with an assessment of the No 10 site as "a combination of technological enthusiasm and a lack of any political connection" as the BBC reported.
The Scottish Parliament system allows you to have a discussion forum, and you can track its progress. It may help build a campaigning community.
Jimmy Leach, who won an award this year for greatest individual contribution to new media, has been responsible for e-petitions as head of of digital communications at No 10.
He argued the fact that any petition receiving more than 200 signatures will get a reply has made a real difference to accountability.
"It is quite a culture shift for government, for civil servants to sit down and write back to citizens to say 'this is why we are doing something'."
Even if, he added, some government departments had been more helpful than others in providing prompt replies.
As for political influence, there have been signs of a shift on the government's thinking on road pricing, but it is difficult to say how much real impact it has had.
"What you will not get is a policy maker, a civil servant, a politician, saying 'well, yeah, that petition didn't half put the wind up me so I changed it. I changed my mind'. You will not get a direct line of causation from a petition direct to a policy change.
"What we do get is, it's part of the landscape of politics, it ratchets up the pressure, it's a way that people let the government know how they feel about something."
Jimmy is leaving government for the world of digital PR, but he's still a civil servant for a few days, so I lobbed him an easy question about what he was proud of during his time at No 10. He focussed on e-petitions, which gave me more of the Westminster slant. One telling point he made about introducing new engagement methods to government was that in the Prime Minister's office it only took a few people to "sign off" a project and get started. Things are much slower elsewhere ... so a lead from No 10 is important.
Click To Play or go to blip.tv
Also at the conference was Ann Macintosh, responsible for designing the Scottish system and others in UK local authorities and the German Bundestag. She is now Professor of Digital Governance at the University of Leeds. She explained to me that the reason the Scottish system works is that it is embedded in the overall process of government. This was a theme that came up a number of times at the conferences: e-democracy is not about technology, it is about changing the way politics works, with new tools as the levers.
Click To Play or go to blip.tv
One of the criticisms of the Westminster system is that it isn't clear what effect the e-petitions have - a point made strongly at the conference by Stephen Coleman. Jimmy said that an independent study was being commissioned - but didn't elaborate.
Technorati Tags: e-democracy, e-democracy07
There's a consultation on how local government should respond to petitions (including e-petitions) at the moment - the deadline is 20th March.
For more information, see: www.consultationwatch.org.uk
Posted by: Andrew | March 04, 2008 at 04:02 PM