All posts in the topic The big barrier to e-democracy (Short link)
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- There are 3 posts — by 3 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Stephen Coleman at Mar 01 08:59 UTC
| From | File | Date |
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| Stephen Coleman | Mar 01 08:59 UTC |
From: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/joepublic/2008/02/the_big_barrier_to_edemocracy.html The big barrier to e-democracy The government is keen for local government to harness technology to revolutionise its services; but a culture change is needed first, say Richard Wilson and Alice Casey February 29, 2008 9:23 AM Welcome to HMG, open all hours to all citizens. That was the message <http://www.communities.gov.uk/speeches/communities/707110> from Hazel Blears as she opened an e-democracy and empowerment conference in London, write Richard Wilson and Alice Casey. She highlighted the usual entourage of "cutting edge" sites such as Freecycle, Youtube and the No 10 e-petition. As well as an array of other digital opportunities we must harvest to ensure we're all online, interconnected, fitter, happier and more productive. The "government has not always been quite so on the ball", Blears admitted, but now we're on it and we're juggling at the same time. I paraphrase but you get the idea.
That's good coming from Blears! Local government, with a few exceptions,
hasn't had a problem with revolutionising services, its central
government that’s been lagging and we get tired of hearing it the other
way around.
I've spent the day chairing a meeting of the Yorkshire & Humber branch
of the Society for Information Technology Management (the British public
service IT managers body) focused on digital inclusion. It was lead by
several examples of good practice and then by an attempt to discover the
barriers - the conclusion was that the UK lacked a national agenda for
digital inclusion! We are potentially replicating the scandal of
e-government where nearly four hundred councils did their own thing in
different timescales but without the financial input!
We also have a problem of ownership of the agenda, which whilst not
being technology led has to be supported by it, so it requires all
involved parties from front-office to back-office to cooperate,
especially when some of them work under Whitehall rules. Again, if
Whitehall lags it drags everyone else back.
Blears also wants to see 100 pilots of participatory budgeting by end of
2008 but my small authority in the wild of Yorkshire has been doing this
for a few years now. The problem is that the concept is hard for the
public and its not something easily introduced in the tight annual cycle
of declaring Council Tax. But it is being done without Whitehalls
assistance, because if we waited for them, it'd never happen!
We know she's worked in local government, why does she now sound like
she hasn't a clue?
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