Post in The big barrier to e-democracy

Mar 01 08:59 UTC

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.

Stephen Coleman
Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital
Citizenship,
Institute of Communication Studies,
University of Leeds