Post in Gathering input from one million people

Ezendu


> I thought folks might be interested in this post from the UK about a
> possible large scale online engagement effort - so assuming something real
> might happen, what advice does the world's largest collection of
> e-participation experts have?
>
> Steven Clift
> E-Democracy.Org
>
>
> From:
> http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/2008/02/government-plan.html
>
>
> 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
> Burkes ideal of the representative, using their unbiassed opinion,
> mature judgement and enlightened conscience?
>     Willss misgivings, Id 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.
>
>
> Member profile for Steven Clift:
> http://groups.dowire.org/contacts/stevenclift
>
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
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>


Ezendu Ariwa
BITM Programme and Pathway Leader
Senior Lecturer - Strategic Information Systems
London Metropolitan University
London Metropolitan Business School
277-281 Holloway Road
London N7 8HN
United Kingdom

Tel: 02071333945
Fax: 02071333899
Email: <email obscured>



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