Designing for Civil Society

Professor questions the value of e-democracy centre

Professor Stephen Coleman, guest blogging at Connecting Bristol, an acknowledged leader in local e-democracy, has now turned his questioning gaze on the government-funded International Centre for Local e-Democracy (ICELE). After listing a range of well-known e-democracy projects in the UK, he says they will be judged by the quality of their outputs.

In the case of ICELE it has been difficult to arrive at any judgments because I simply don’t understand what they are aiming to achieve. Is it new research and understanding? Or new tools to be used by governments? Or critical debate about the merits and values of e-participation? Perhaps someone can tell me what ICELE is for and why considerable amounts of public money should be spent supporting it?
The pilots that were funded by the national project for local e-democracy seem to have disappeared without trace, with the exception of the local issues forums (which survive largely because of the commitment of Steve Clift and his colleagues) and some rather under-used councillor blogging tools. What became of the other government-funded projects? How much money was spent on the now-abandoned Voice toolkit, described by ICELE as ’a web-publishing toolkit and an online community network rolled into one’? At the very least, a fully transparent evaluation should be made available.
Incidentally, I don’t write this in a spirit of negativity. Some projects will fail and we should learn from them. It’s the failure to be open about or learn from such experiences that worries me much more.

Ouch. Will ICELE feature this in their news section? I don't think they have a blog ....

Chance to blog with Stephen Coleman

A post from Shane McCracken let's us know that Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, is guest blogging on the future of politics and citizenship at Connecting Bristol. This is an unusual opportunity to engage online with Stephen, so do pop over. I've covered the topics in more details on socialreporter.com. Great discussion starting, and a reminder to keep in touch with Stephen Hilton and his team in Bristol who do such great e-democracy work. This is not always the case elsewhere, as Ian 'Cuddles' Cuddy reported a few months back in Public Sector Forums - Local E-democracy: Dead, Alive, or in Hiding?
Over on the Bristol blog Stephen Coleman asks if anyone would be interested in discussing ICELE, our International Centre for Excellence for Local e-Democracy. I've said yes please.

Technorati Tags: edemocracy

If we talk, will Government listen?

Two contrasting approaches to UK e-democracy emerged over the last few days. On the one hand OurKingdom is promoting the idea of a massive online conversation leading up to a Citizens Summit to discuss the British Statement of Values, which I wrote about here.

I've been one of a small group offering ideas on how this might work, and OurKingdom is now inviting anyone else interested to join in. This isn't the big conversation itself, just how to plan it. The assumption is, if we talk sensibly Govenment will listen.
On the other hand Tom Steinberg, who runs the hugely successful mySociety organisation (Pledgebank, FixMyStreet, No 10 e-petitions) spells out their philosophy in launching Free our Bills, a new initiative focussed around getting Parliament to publish bills properly. It boils down to - don't expect Government to change except in very small ways, whatever you say.

In a post to the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange, Tom says:

mySociety has traditionally worked on the assumption that it's basically impossible to ever get any part of any government to do anything of any real significance in the field of edemocracy, or in the wider field of greater access to data.
As a result we've always tried to pick projects that work as well as possible for the citizen without requiring government to do anything it didn't do before (think FixMyStreet, or WriteToThem). Picking a project that requires a bit of government to move a single inch in order for your project to work at all is a sadly proven path to failure. Unfortunately, our need to campaign today is a validation of this highly pessimistic approach. It is absurd that this campaign is even necessary, given that we tried so hard to do it the 'nice way' with meetings, gentle encouragement and nicely written word documents in Whitehall-speak explaining why it was useful and cheap and non-threatening. But where it counted the unelected officials who hold the relevent power here just weren't persuadable for reasons that we're having to FOI to find out.

Tom suggests a new approach to evaluating e-democracy. Instead of looking at what e-democracy projects don't achieve in terms of mass engagement, it is better to look at "pressure points, chinks in the armour where improvements might be possible, whether with the consent of government or not". He concludes:

Anyway, if this seems like a counsel of despair, it isn't supposed to be. I'm just saying that being realistic about the nature of actual progress in our field (tiny, incremental, currently peaking with things like TheyWorkForYou and Stemwijzer.nl ) makes for more interesting, useful discussions than comparing everything to the Holy Grail of True, Mass Scale Deliberative Democracy.

The OurKingdom approach does rather fall into the Mass Scale Deliberative Democracy frame. It started through a conversation between Anthony Barnett of OurKingdom and Michael Wills, the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice responsible for the Citizens Summit, and Anthony gives a summary of the private discussion a group of us had, now public here. Buried in there are my reservations about how far it is possible to plan something like this in the abstract: I think you need to be very clear about what you are trying to do, with whom - and to do that in the room, with the client. Others more experienced in the ways of e-democracy were able to be more constructive and it turned out to be a quite interesting discussion.
However, the question for me - highlighted by Tom - is whether it is worth having big conversations with Government, local or central. The Minister and civil servants may be very well-intentioned, but it is going to be very difficult to manage, and to analyse ... and even trickier to get agreement with all the different interests within Government. I remember Tom at UKGovwebBarcamp, when asked for his three tags (keywords) of self-description, saying "code not talk". So - is it worth trying the big conversation, or is it better to focus on the small steps? Or can we afford the time, energy and public money for both? "Image what you could do for one million pounds", was thrown into the OurKingdom discussion as a hypothetical. You get a lot of mySociety sites for that.

Update: the BBC has a very interesting way of displaying comments and emotions in relation to its discussion Is white working class Britain becoming invisible? I wonder if something similar might be relevant for a British Statement of Values conversation if that did get started? Hat tip to Nico Macdonald for the link ... who then points me to Healthcare for London, which I see is done by my friends at Delib

Technorati Tags: governanceofbritain

Reports from the e-democracy symposium

I didn't go to last week's e-democracy and empowerment symposium in London, but there are now some reports from those who did, plus webcasts.
Richard Wilson and Alice Casey of Involve gave us some context. They blogged at the Guardian, noting the government is keen for local government to harness technology to revolutionise its services, but concluded a culture change is needed first:

For e-democracy to work more than anything else, yes even more than money, we need an injection of staff time. Staff time to experience working in new ways. Staff time to listen, engage and understand all citizens, and time for staff themselves to become properly supported and empowered. Then, and only then, can they start to empower others.

Over on the UK and Ireland e-democracy exchange, Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, was not impressed by the keynote speech from Secretary of State Hazel Blears:

Even by the standard of other Ministerial statements in which politicians clearly have little to say, this seems to have been an extraordinarily vacuous speech. Hazel Blears refers to how online 'dialogue helps us make a better policy that really reflects what people need and want', but did not give a single example of how such public input has led to policy that is in any way different, better-informed or more representative. Referring to the Number Ten e-petitions, Hazel Blears cites 'Burma, Capital Gains Tax, The police pay deal' as examples of important public input. The questions she needs to answer, if her commitment to e-democracy is to be taken at all seriously, are i) how have these e-petitions contributed to government policy-making; and ii) how does she know what contribution they made in the absence of any evaluation of the Number Ten e-petitions project?
Although Hazel Blears' speech was short on detail, it was revealing for a couple of issues not mentioned. Firstly, amongst the successful e-democracy projects cited (Netmums, MySociety), there was no mention of any of the projects launched by the government as part of its national local e-democracy project. It would have been interesting to hear how many of these are still going and are seen as contributing to government policy-making at any level. Secondly, there was no reference to the government's own e-democracy centre (ICELE), which is odd considering that this is probably the main area of government spending on e-democracy. I suspect that these non-references were the most important part of the speech.

Shane McCracken has blogged three items. Part one: blogging and facebook; Part two : Avaaz and NGOs; Part three : Norfolkblurb and youth participation. It sounds as if that final session was one of the few genuinely participative ones.
Steve Dale was presenting on the first day...

...on the topic of building communities in the local government sector, using metaphors to describe how village communities developed around meeting places such as the village hall in by-gone years, and how communities of practice can flourish once a domain of interest is established (I used the Gosport Allotment Holders association as a contemporary example, where the mix of gardening experts and novices find mutual benefit in belonging to a collective). The key point being that just because we now have much better on-line collaboration tools and technologies, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's the people that make communities (of interest, or practice or whatever). A message that was probably lost on a speakers platform that was almost exclusively devoted to Web 2.0 technologies as the panacea for enabling more effective citizen engagement with the public sector. Reinforced of course with a veritable blizzard of 'e' prefixes - e-Collaboration, e-Empowerment, e-Participation, which never fail to give the uninitiated the impression that we're all in the technological fast lane (though some of us suffer from deja vu when we recall a similar e-word blitz associated with the previous dot-com era of the mid-90's. It meant nothing then, it means nothing now!).

Steve Dale also seemed underwhelmed by  Government offerings:

I'd like to think that the government is investing in the right 'e-programmes', but I can't help feeling that their inherent lack of agility and the propensity for the big consultancies to sell them hugely expensive and over-complex Web 2.0 solutions will mean yet more missed opportunities. In the mean time, us citizens get on with life as best we can!   

It'll be interesting to see what the Governance of Britain team over at the Ministry of Justice has planned by way of events and online discussions leading up to a Citizens Summit about a proposed British Statement of Values later this year, which I reported here. Will they go for a big site/big consultancy approach to reach a wide range of people, or try and achieve that with more emphasis on existing online forums and networks, coupled with a hub site to aggregate and keep things moving? Will they have the time and staff to deal with responses,and analyse them?
The latest on Britishness from the Government comes from Margaret Hodge, speaking at an IPPR event.

Technorati Tags: edemocracy

Government plans major discussion about British Statement of Values

Thanks to the Our Kingdom for noting that Justice Minister Michael Wills has now confirmed in a recent speech there will be a programme of events and online discussions leading up to a Citizens Summit about a proposed British Statement of Values later this year. This is one of three strands to implement the Green Paper Governance of Britain proposals I wrote about here.
The speech is interesting both for the details it give of this process, and asides on the balance of representative and participatory democracy.
After speaking about the Constitutional Renewal Bill - which will "surrender or limit a wide range of powers currently exercised by the executive, transferring them to Parliament" and the British Bill of Rights and Duties, Michael Wills said:

The final strand of the programme is the formulation of a British Statement of Values. Our national identity matters. Most advanced democracies have developed ways to express formally their view of who they are as a nation. This country has throughout much of its history vigorously discussed what it meant to be British. It was only in the years after the Second World War that we went through a period of introspection, lacking in self-confidence when such discussions were often regarded with embarrassment. We are now far more successful and self-confident as a country and the government believes the time is right to find a way to express who we believe ourselves to be in a way that is inclusive and commands broad support.
If we don't do this, others will. National identity matters to people. If there isn't a national process to discuss it, in ways that are inclusive of everyone on these islands, then there is a risk that this territory will be colonised by sectarian and sometimes even poisonous views.
For us, here the process of discussion and deliberation is as important as the outcome. That's why we are doing this through an innovative constitutional process. Shortly, we will start a series of discussions up and down the country, accompanied by print material and online forums, on what it means to be British, what's best about it, what best expresses what's best about it. This will all be fed into a citizens summit - a representative sample of perhaps 500 people, selected randomly, for example, from the electoral register, but filtered, in much the same ways as opinion polls filter their samples, to ensure it is demographically representative. And informed by these consultations and by presentations directly to them, they will deliberate - and we hope decide - on four main questions: should there be such a statement of values, if so what it should be, how it should be expressed and finally what it should be used for.
Their decision will then go to Parliament for a final decision.

Writing at Our Kingdom, Guy Aitchison highlights the Minister's caution about the benefits of edemocracy:

Wills discusses the transformational role of the web, but with a mixture of enthusiasm and apprehension. He celebrates the ease with which constituents can now contact their MP, but is uneasy that new forms of technology and communication might challenge the representative principles upon which our democracy is based. “The electronic plebiscite”, he warns, “is just a click or two away” and we should be “very careful about embarking on a slippery slope towards plebiscitary democracy.” He imagines what might happen if an unscrupulous billionaire wanted a policy change and set about a nationwide campaign of mass emails and advertising to convince voters to support it online. Could MPs be trusted in such a situation to meet Burke’s ideal of the representative, using their “unbiassed opinion, mature judgement and enlightened conscience’”?
Wills’s misgivings, I’d suggest, reflect a much broader anxiety on the part of government towards the power of the web - something memorably brought home to them last year with the huge success of the anti-road charge e-petition. For government, the challenge is to use new technologies for deliberation and engagement between elections, whilst ensuring that, what has been called, the “mainframe” remains intact. Is this possible given that the mainframe belongs to a previous age?

However, Michael Wills does end with a general commitment to great engagement with citizens, saying:

In these circumstances of the changing societal base for our democracy and the advent of new technologies which, indeed can be a benign force enhancing democracy, this government is convinced that we need to work more vigorously to re-engage citizens in the representative democracy we all share - and from which we all benefit.
Hence the surrendering or limiting of the power of the executive, the development of new mechanisms to make policy development a collaborative venture between government and citizens, instead of a top-down exercise which can only be accepted or rejected at elections with no in-between options, and giving citizens greater opportunity directly to monitor and scrutinise the delivery of policy.

See my original post for references to Gordon Brown's ideas on engagement, including citizens juries.
The Ministry of Justice has rather a good Governance of Britain web site with news feeds that you can add to your own site, and a what others are saying section  fed by del.icio.us bookmarks. If you tag your blog posts "for:governanceofbritain" you may get included on the site. You can read here how that was developed using Wordpress by Simon Dickson, working with the MoJ's own blogger and UKGovwebBarcamp organiser Jeremy Gould.

It's comforting to know that when the Ministry does start to roll out online discussion it has some in-house expertise.
Declaration: I did done some early work for MoJ with Drew Mackie, running a workshop with staff to help design the programme. We used a game like this to simulate the process, and I think it helped wok through how the mix of online and events might work.

Technorati Tags: edemocracy, governanceofbritain 

BBC plans to sustain citizenship and civil society. Please tell us how

Here's a story about how the BBC is developing new local multi-media services, its Charter remit for "sustaining citizenship and civil society", the closure of BBC Action network, development of citizen (or networked) journalism, and how the BBC Trust consults us on what the BBC is for. These developments and issues may be related ... I don't know .... but I think we should be told. But by whom? Maybe on the BBC Internet blog where they are exploring Digital Democracy.
My interest in these issues was re-awakened by a couple of e-mails in the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange. E-democracy guru Steven Clift asked whether anyone has an update on the BBC Action Network, which has been hailed as a civic media success story, but as I had noted earlier is due to close soon. Steven wondered if future developments related to a Press Gazette story about Regional newspapers’ fury at BBC local web plan.

Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director, Centre for Digital Citizenship, responded:

The BBC is dropping/has dropped the Action Network. It plans to do a number of other exciting things along these lines in the coming months. The Action network (previously iCan) was always meant to be an experiment. The BBC is right to learn from experiments and change course if that's what seems right.

I'm interested on the e-democracy and civil society front, but also also because, with colleagues, I did some work last year for the BBC Trust when it was carrying out a review of BBC online services, and exploring how blow blogging could assist in its consultation. Here's my review of developments over the past year, which I've referenced in some detail in the hope that others closer to the action may pick up the threads.

The year-old BBC Charter sets out as a key public purpose for the Corporation "sustaining citizenship and civil society", but until recently it hasn't been clear how that might be fulfilled. There have been speeches by senior figures but no practical details. At the same time there has been a lot of discussion about the changing role of journalists, audiences and citizen content-contributors in a more networked world. See references below on both.

Then a couple of weeks back Controller of BBC English Regions Andy Griffee told students at Coventry University about a planned £20 million BBC Local website, which "features a map with direct links to content such as articles, radio and video for each region". The Coventry site Through the Looking Glass reported:

Topics covered with this new site will be news, sport, travel, and weather, bringing each element down to a local level. Commenting on the service, Griffee said that it will be available “anytime, any place, anywhere”, and later confirmed that regular exclusive news bulletins will also become a major part of it. While the service hasn’t been properly decided on by the BBC Trust yet, the reaction amongst the audience was largely positive.

The other speaker was Alan Kirby, Editor of The Coventry Telegraph, who described how they were planning their own web site with ultra-local sites divided by post codes. The focus of these sites will be user-created content that is relevant to more local people.

Griffee, sensing that Kirby was a little disturbed by the BBC’s plans, offered some words of reassurance, stating that the service is not designed to “compete with newspapers”, and later broke it down to the fact there are only 5 radio stations but there is 66 newspapers in the West Midlands.

Then, says the report, visitors both went on to explain that nearly all of their journalists are being trained in more skills, highlighting the importance of online as a catalyst for obtaining larger audience coverage.
However, the response from regional newspaper representatives, quoted by the Press Gazette, and picked up by Steven Clift, was less restrained. In Regional newspapers' fury at BBC local web plan the Gazette reported that while previous plans for ultra-local TV were dropped in October, this was a new "unprecedented attack". Ian Davies, development director of regional media business Archant, added:

The new websites will have hyper-local capabilities using geo tagging of content and mapping interfaces. What the BBC gives with one hand, it takes away with a huge skip on the other.
What a strange approach to public service media. Look at what the community-leading local press is doing in reinventing itself to provide local content and ‘connectivity’ beyond print; then take a huge publicly funded stick and swing hard to cause as much damage as possible to this vital organ of local comment and democracy.
This is not competition. This is BBC, full-bodied, unfair, damaging to existing emerging services, competition. It seems that attempted demolition is the sincerest form of flattery.

As if the charges of unfair competition challenge aren't enough, there are those who feel the BBC shouldn't be in the sustainable citizenship and civil society business anyway. Janet Daly, writing in the Telegraph last December attacks the vision of the chairman of the BBC Trust Sir Michael Lyons. Janet writes:

As Sir Michael put it in a speech last month, the BBC is being "challenged to play its part in reinforcing social cohesion in an increasingly diverse society". He went on to give his personal commitment to that objective in these terms: "All of my previous work has convinced me that diversity both within and between local communities is a source of strength rather than weakness - and that the UK will become stronger the more it recognises and builds on that diversity. The BBC can and should help with this."
Whether you agree with those sentiments is neither here nor there. Who precisely is Sir Michael, not to say all those hundreds of faceless programme producers, writers and editors, to decide that the UK will become stronger if it embraces diversity? Who elected them?
Sir Michael's account of the BBC's mission is explicitly, tendentiously and presumptuously political. Whether licence fee payers believe that their country will become stronger "the more it recognises and builds on" diversity is a matter between them and their mandated government. It is entirely inappropriate for the BBC to enforce a particular systematic view of how society should develop and how, as Sir Michael himself notes, its rapidly changing structure should be addressed.
Engaging in a clash of overtly political objectives is properly the business of political parties or opposing lobby groups, not a supposedly neutral, publicly subsidised broadcaster.

I hope you'll see from all this that the BBC Charter public service remit for "Sustaining citizenship and civil society" - and how it is fulfilled - is potentially relevant to all aspects of democracy, local and national. It could also influence the way that journalists, bloggers and anyone aiming to publish content of public interest is able to do so, and get a wide audience.
The BBC Trust, who act on our behalf, don't currently provide us with anywhere to discuss these issues, except through rather formal consultation processes ... which aren't online. I believe they are considering doing more following earlier explorations with bloggers. Meanwhile the BBC managers and journalists, through a widening range of blogs, including The Editors and BBC Internet, are engaging directly with the rest of us ... but are understandably tentative in dealing with policy issues.
I think that the plans for local news sites, trailed by Andy Griffee, provide a great opportunity for the BBC and BBC Trust to engage with license payers on just what "sustaining citizenship and civil society" really means. But who will help convene that engagement? I wonder if Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, might be tempted. He gave a cracking keynote at the 2006 e-edemocracy conference, and is following through strongly in promoting RSA Networks for civic innovation.
Anyway, I'll be interested to see whether my modest attempt here at agenda-setting-by-blogging raises any interest. I'll have to email a few of those quoted ... because the problem with this citizen journalism stuff is few people know you are doing it. Of course, that may change.

Here's some background
The BBC Charter, Charter Review site, BBC Trust consultations, and the BBC governors archive site.
About the BBC: Purpose and values, sets out how the BBC creates public value in six ways, of which the first is "Sustaining citizenship and civil society: the BBC supports civic life and national debate by providing trusted and impartial news and information that helps citizens make sense of the world and encourages them to engage with it."
The BBC and Civil Society: address to the NCVO by then BBC chairman Michael Grade. October 2006.

The challenge for e-democratisers: deliberation as well as demands. Matthew Taylor reported on this blog Nov 17 2006

Audience isn't audience any more. It's online. How TV audiences are now contributors, and what this means for consultation about BBC development. This blog, July 30 2007.

Reaching out to bloggers? Admit limited transliteracy. How the BBC Trust engaged with bloggers in its bbc.co.uk review consultation, on this blog. Oct 23 2007

Citizen regulators: BBC Trust reaches out through blogs in its review of bbc.co.uk. Anthony Mayfield on the BBC Trust process. Oct 28 2007

Networked journalism: For the people and with the people: Charlie Beckett in the Press Gazette says the idea of the professional journalist and amateur working to create a new kind of news is the future.... Networked journalism is where the people formerly known as the audience contribute to the whole editorial process. The public write blogs, take pictures, gather information and comment as part of newsgathering and publishing. The professional journalists become filters, connectors, facilitators and editors. Oct 18 2007.

The pro-am approach to news gathering. Jeff Jarvis: As news organisations inexorably shrink along with their audiences, revenue and staffs, I believe that one way for journalism itself to expand is through collaboration with the communities it covers. Oct 22 2007

A civic media success story: examining the BBC Action Network. MIT Center for Future Civic Media Nov 3 2007

What the BBC is for. Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, Royal Television Society Fleming Memorial Lecture. The BBC has to develop better ways of covering the issues that resonate with those of its audiences who do not necessarily see the traditional institutions as fully reflecting and representing their concerns. Nov 1 2008
What's the role of trustees now we are networked? How the new BBC Internet blog give us a direct connection with those developing BBC services, and issues this raises about the role of BBC trustees. This blog, Nov 11 2007.

TV voting scandals and poor e-democracy both destroy trust. Interview with Professor Stephen Coleman, this blog, November 12 2007

BBC should not decide how society develops. Janet Day, Telegraph.co.uk. Dec 17 2007.
BBC News: The Editors. Mark Thompson, Director General: We want to take our coverage of Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the European Parliament, as well as local councils up and down the land and turn them into the most engaging, the most creative multimedia portal for democracy in the world, using BBC Parliament and our other television, networks, radio, the web and mobile. Direct access to information about your MP or representative: how they vote, what they stand for, how you can contact them. Survival guides and in-depth analysis of current debates and current legislation. Easy ways, for anyone who wants to, to plug into and take part in the debate. And all of it available to every secondary school in the UK as part of a strengthened commitment by BBC Learning to supporting citizenship and modern media literacy.
We don’t want to do all this on our own, but in partnership with some of the existing sites which are pioneering web democracy – and with the democratic institutions themselves. Parliament and its sister institutions already have powerful forms of scrutiny and accountability that, to be honest, very few people outside their walls know anything about. We want to work with them to change that. Jan 15 2008.
Regional newspapers' fury at BBC local web plan: Press Gazette: The BBC has prompted a new rift with the regional press by planning a network of 60 ultra-local websites. Jan 28 2008

"Local is still important" say Andy Griffee and Alan Kirby. Report at Through the Looking Glass of Coventy Conservation where BBC Local website was showcased. Feb 10 2008

BBC Internet blog - Digital Democracy: Pete Clifton: The BBC's public purpose around informed citizenship means it must play a vital role in this area. We already offer more day-to-day coverage of our institutions than anybody else, but a dynamic portal that brings together the best of what we have in audio, video and text, the best that others are doing, something that is easy to find, searchable, personalisable and sharable, feels like a fantastic goal. Feb 11 2008

Technorati Tags: bbccouk, peteclifton, bbceditorsblog, bbctrust, bbcinternetblog

How not to get a positive presence online

There's a wonderful, cautionary, example over on the ideal government blog about why you should be very wary of letting a PR person use your name informally online. It involves William Heath, who as chairman of Kable Ltd, is pretty well known in UK public sector technology; attendance at the recent UKGovwebBarcamp; and ICELE, funded by Government to promote eDemocracy, citizen empowerment and the like. ICELE are rather keen to promote a big conference in a couple of weeks time. William writes:

Do I know Fraser Henderson?

Someone called Susie Ruston from something called 21cConsultancy sends me a personal invitation to some citizen empowerment symposium

"My colleague Fraser Henderson mentioned he recently met you at a BarCamp event at Googles offices and that you were interested in receiving more information about the next International eParticipation and Local Democracy Symposium blah blah blah Citizen engagement is a key priority to the UK Government as demonstrated by the launch of the CLG ‘Action Plan for Community Empowerment’....Secretary of State, Rt Hon Hazel Blears....Governments position...Action Plan...Symposium....etc etc etc"

Well, it ain’t that personal. I’ve never heard of Fraser Henderson. He certainly didnt meet me at the Google offices because I wasn’t at BarCamp. And who in their right mind goes about expressing interest in eParticipation Symposia? Not me. So this is either a misunderstanding or a fib. I expect everyone who put their email address to the Barcamp thing is getting Susie’s PR sweet talk. What a drag. I wonder if this 21c outfit is Romanian?

There then follow several comments on the lines of |"I got one of those and wasn't at Barcamp either" concluding with another from William (or admin, which I presume is him)

Dear Susie

I don’t know you so I didnt open your attachment. Nor do I know Fraser Henderson so either he misled you or you’re taking his name in vain. Nor was I at Barcamp. And I never expressed any interest in e-participation symposia.

So what’s happened here? Where did you get my email address from, also those of my friends Jeremy and Sam?

Also, what is 21cconsultancy? The only record I can find is something in egovmonitor which says 21cConsultancy is a “professional firm”

Well, I was at Barcamp, and do know Fraser, centre manager for ICELE, who has always been perfectly charming, and who did say he hoped to see me at the symposium. But you won't find much Googling Fraser, which may explain William's puzzlement.
I can't make it to the symposium because I'll be at the Circuit Rider Conference running a workshop with Laura Whitehead and Nick Booth. I hope it will, anyway, be a bit more empowering than the symposium agenda, which looks heavy with plenaries and panels aimed at people in government. Quite the reverse of Barcamp.
Anyway, event preferences aside, it seems to me that the lesson here is, if you are in the online business, but choose not to have a profile online, it's a big mistake to delegate online presence to a PR person. Or maybe there was just some misunderstanding. Either way I think Fraser and Susie should hurry over to William's place and explain. Currently William's piece is the top Google hit for Fraser Henderson ... which isn't good PR. Let's all link there:-)

Update
Fraser and William have now connected via comments on William's blog, and look set for a friendly meetup. Second lesson: with a cheery wave, these things can turn out well. Hope I haven't been too humourless here ... but there is something important about being yourself online (even in emails) buried in this.

Technorati Tags: barcampukgovweb, edemocracy

Do e-petitions make a real difference? We may never know

The e-democracy project with the biggest media and political impact over the past year has been the No 10 e-petitions project ... but we may never know whether it made much difference to democracy.

At the recent e-democracy 07 conference Professor Stephen Coleman was pretty scathing about the system because it isn't clear what happens after people have posted their petition, and collected support online. It disappears into the government machine, but no-one knows whether policies change. Jimmy Leach, the No 10 civil servant responsible for introducing the system, was at the conference, and Stephen pressed him hard on the question of an evaluation study. Jimmy said something was being planned with mySociety, who designed the system .... and it would be independent.
It now seems that any study has been dropped and the whole thing is something of a mystery to mySociety too. The  E-Government Bulletin, produced by conference organisers Headstar, reports:

E-Petitions Review Plan Shelved By Downing Street.

Plans for an independent review of the Prime Minister's e-petitions system have been shelved following the departure of Downing Street head of digital communications Jimmy Leach to join a PR agency, E- Government Bulletin has learned.
At this month's e-Democracy '07 conference, hosted by the bulletin, keynote speaker Professor Stephen Coleman of Leeds University blasted the lack of an independent report into the first six months of the e-petition system. The e-petitions had captured the headlines, particularly in relation to road pricing trials, but there needed to be proper analysis of what types of person engaged with the process and what its results had been, Coleman said.
"Has there been a report? If not, it is just a gimmick. If there is, and it is now languishing on the desks of civil servants, then what does that say about transparency and integrity?"
At the time, Leach responded by saying an independent academic report would be commissioned and published in the months to come.
However, E-Government Bulletin understands that such a report has yet to be commissioned, and all plans have been shelved following Leach's departure this week.
The record of the Downing Street electronic petitions system was defended by Leach at the conference as a useful tool among many for gauging citizens' views.
"It had its uses and had its impacts, but it shouldn't and won't be the only solution favoured by government. It is a digital manifestation of a single strand of the constitution."
And while there was no direct line between electronic petitions and Parliamentary debate - just as with paper petitions - he said the triggering of a policy reply from a civil servant to all petitions signed by more than 200 people had already represented a significant cultural shift in government.
"It has been quite a shift, to have civil servants sit down and explain why they are doing something. So far, three and a half million people have received answers. If we were to do that physically it would cost £1 a letter, which would be unsustainable. But we have spent so far £140,000 on this."
Meanwhile, the House of Commons moved a step further to installing its own electronic petitions system this month, with the announcement of a new inquiry into the topic by its Procedure Committee. The committee proposes that electronic petitions to Parliament would have the same status as paper petitions, and is seeking views on how the process could work. For details see: http://fastlink.headstar.com/parl3 .

The question of the evaluation study was raised on the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange, where Tom Steinberg of mySociety says he knew nothing of the plans announced by Jimmy Leach. Message thread here. Tom adds:

We're just starting to conduct an independent evaluation of our own sites, some of which are 3 years old, having systematically failed to find an academic partner willing to take on the cost of doing this before then. So I can't be too holier-than-thou on this front.
Obviously it's a site worth evaluating though, so I'll ask about it.

I was at the conference doing some video blogging on behalf of Headstar, as you can see here. Further specific links below, where I have reposted to this blog.

Interviews with Jimmy Leach and Ann Macintosh on Westminster and Scottish e-petition systems
Stephen Coleman on people's loss of trust in politics and TV
Publictechnology.net provides an overview of the first year of operation of the e-petitions site
Other posts about e-democracy on this blog

Technorati Tags: e-democracy, e-democracy07

Ross rounds up UK Government & Social Media initiatives

Ross Ferguson, until recently the Director of the Hansard Society's eDemocracy programme, has now returned to his native Scotland to work at Dog Digital, started a blog, and is able to offer us some useful insights from his new perspective away from the Westminster bustle.
I talked to Ross at the e-democracy 07 conference just before he left, when he reflected on the past few years in e-democracy. Steady progress made, he felt, but in order to achieve more a greater number of politicians need to engage with the possibilities offered by engagement online. At present developments were too often  driven by officials, companies and activists. Gaining more commitment would involve paying more attention to the way that online working can integrate with politicians'  day-to-day work - rather than focussing solely on their external communications.

Click To Play

Ross has now posted a piece to his blog - UK Government & Social Media… Ones to Watch - which gives us a round-up of initiatives that he sees as promising.

I was lucky enough to start work with the UK Government just as it began to take an interest in what we are now/currently calling social media. That was 2005 and there was hardly anything happening. Today, it's a different story.

With a host of initiatives on the go, I thought I'd pick out 10 that I think are particularly interesting:

1. Ministry of Justice - BarCampUKGovweb was an idea floating about waiting to happen, and Jeremy Gould got it off the ground. It's the first event of its kind for government.
2. National Health Service - The Our NHS, Our Future activity is putting a lot of weight on its online engagement components. The issue is meaty and its an intriguing opportunity for NHS stakeholders to direct its development. But will the people come? And how will the government tie up their online with the offline activity?
3. Foreign and Commonwealth Office - when David Miliband arrived, engagement shot up the agenda, particularly online. Not content with just the Secretary of State blogging, staff from across the FCO were invited to get in on the action and duly did.
4. Government Communications Network - the Social Media Review and associated activities, being led out of the GCN, is taking on the challenge of helping an area of government so used to controlling the message to adapt to a new communications environment.
5. Downing Street - it's use of ePetitions was the biggest UK eDemocracy story yet. But will it see out the winter? Well, yes, but with parliament planning its own online petitions system, will time be called on the government's biggest and most infamous social media experiment yet?
6. Communities and Local Government - the CLG rebuilt its corporate website using community software. The CLG was one of the first departments to make a conscious effort to utilise social media. The use of deliberative forums by a range of policy teams is worth watching alone, then you factor in the blogs and wikis and you start to realise the importance of this department's activity.
7. Defra - the software that runs the CO2 calculator, complete with the government data, has been made freely available under general public licence. Google has used it in its carbon footprint widget.
8. DirectGov - according to the ONS, 6 in 10 of the UK's web users have accessed government services via DirectGov. So, where to now? Is there room for a social media angle in the next phase of development?
9. Ministry of Justice - OK, I'm a bit bias but Digital Dialogues, which is in its final phase, has been putting data about government blogs, forums, webchats etc in the public domain since all this social media interest kicked off.
10. SS/SIS - a bit of a flippant inclusion. I've no idea what they're doing with social media but whatever it is, it's bound to be worth keeping an eye on.

Please flag up any others you know about. Maybe there's some similar stuff going on elsewhere in this big globe of ours.

You can see other videos from the e-democracy conference across on the Headstar e-government bulletin live blog.

Technorati Tags: democracy, e-democracy, e-democracy07, politics, e-government

Cisco champions the Connected Republic - and its citizens

Click to Play or go to blip.tv

Some of the strongest advocacy for the democratic power of online networks that I heard at the e-democracy conference 07 was embodied in the work of a private sector company - Cisco Systems.
As Professor Stephen Coleman says in his interview it is the people-to-people power of networking rather than the institution-to-people connection that is proving most powerful these days. Cisco agrees.
Cisco weren't making a great fuss about their proposals, but I was struck by the clarity of the White Paper The Connected Republic 2.0 that they produced recently, and the associated web site. It is a set of resources and a community space for "anyone interested in exploring how connectivity can help transform public services."
The White Paper sets out three imperatives:

• Use the network as a platform for collaboration and creativity
• Make the best use of all available expertise and and experience by "empowering the edge".
• Harness the "Power of Us" to create knowledge, solve problems, and deliver better services.

One of the authors of the paper, Paul Johnston, Head of Cisco's European Public Sector Team, was at the conference chairing a session, so I was able to asked him to elaborate.
He explained that Cisco aims to explain to the public sector - who are of course, major customers - just what the implications of the networked world are. In doing that, Cisco recognised they couldn't just talk it all up, they had to set up a networky site to engage with other people with similar interests. They see it as a voyage of discovery.
Paul is blogging on the site, demonstrating he is prepared to take a critical look the way things are going at present:

The final session had three UK politicians (Andrew Miller, Theresa May and Ed Davey) giving their thoughts on e-democracy. Not surprisingly, they were strongly focussed on the use of Web 2.0 by politicians, political parties and representative assemblies and all three of them made clear that they wanted to embrace these tools. None of them of them, however, seemed to have much sense of the real transformational possibility of Web 2.0. There was very little sense of the scope for opening up all sorts of decisions to public scrutiny and public involvement. It was much more a case of - how can some of these tools give a bit of a boost to our existing democratic processes? Not surprising but it does show there is still a huge amount of work to do in getting people to see the real possibilities of a connected world.
More generally, the conference was a lively event, but there seemed to be quite a lot of ambiguity about what e-democracy really was and could deliver. Professor Stephen Coleman made a typically challenging speech where he called for more e-democracy projects that involved real deliberation and generally more rigorous analysis of the impact different e-democracy projects had had. Interestingly, he wondered whether a key aspect of e-democracy was really citizen-citizen rather than citizen-government. In other words (if I understood him rightly!), projects should be aiming to get citizens interested and talking to each other rather than holding out the illusory possibility that they can interact with government on an individual basis. The most obvious UK examples of Web 2.0 in government are things like the No 10 petition site and David Millibands blog, but I tend to agree with Coleman and think they are a transitional phenomena. The real future are sites that - with or without government support - bring citizens together to discuss and take action on public issues. That, of course, and the much wider issue of moving to a public sector culture of openness and feedback the like of which has never been seen!

I wish we had heard more on the day. I think the Cisco view chimes with that of Matthew Ellis, chair of ICELE, but not necessarily - as Matthew said in his interview - with many of those in charge of our democratic institutions.

Tags: e-democracy, e-democracy07