Local Democracy Notepad

Via FutureGov’s Dominic Campbell, here’s Apps for Democracy (complete with American mis-spellings)

Last Sunday was “Social Citizen Sunday” where neighbors were encouraged to talk to one another about the problems and ideas they have that could be address through better technology.

You can view some of the micro-proposals that it has thrown up here.

I’ve just got back from the PICamp event in Belfast. For a first-time event in a relatively small polity, I think it went extremely well. Steve Lawson has posted a really good round-up of the day.

It highlighted the importance of ‘gamechanging’ as opposed to campagning, consensus-building and caucusing. Mick Fealty, the MC for the day put it well towards the end of the day (here’s the audio file) as he tried to pull the event away from identifying the problems and towards how positive action can come from informal gatherings such as this.

A number of people who came to PICamp were people who didn’t often go to political conferences.

Politics geeks and social media geeks come from quite a different background, and some of the people who had attended events like Barcamp, had seen the effectiveness of them as a way of addressing issues, saw PICamp as an opportunity to explore political issues.

The convening blog for the event, Slugger O’Toole, is a powerful player in Northern Ireland’s politics (Slugger’s PICamp round-up is here), and it attracts lots of comments on a regular basis. But many of the people in the room confessed that they regularly visited Slugger, but didn’t often comment because they either didn’t feel strongly enough to commit thoughts to paper, or they were worried about being attacked by the more fanatical trolls that inhabit all large comment blogs.

@alaninbelfast summed this up nicely here.

In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to tease out what kind of politicians that we want. So far, I’ve covered the posibility that we want them to behave in much the same way as jurors do, or that we want a paragon of virtue (in an expensive white suit).

With Esther Rantzen and The Jury Team in the headlines as alternatives to the menu of political parties, these are apposite questions.

But I’d suggest that there are other possibilities that deserve teasing out.

Do we, for instance, want politicians to be free-booting business people? The Republic of Ireland is widely seen as having a less proper political culture than we have in the UK. Read the rest of this entry »

Both Labour and the Conservatives have moved to take away the whip – and effectively deselect – MPs that have offended public morality with their expense claims.

But is this really enough? Are we simply to be satisfied that a few examples are made of the most egregious cases of an abuse of parliamentary expenses and leave it at that?

Or is there a wider crisis the the quality of representation that needs addressing?

I think that this provides us with a fantastic opportunity to renew the entire political class in the UK. It is time for us to think about how we can reinvigorate widespread participation in political parties – old and new. For this reason, I’d like to propose that we – the voters – offer the political parties a new deal. It runs like this:

“We will double the membership of the local party that we support – but only if they will let us re-select our candidate.”

I’ve outlined how I think this can work on a new website – www.reselect.org and I would urge you to do anything you can to promote this initiative. Read the rest of this entry »

The BBC website has a nice post up about how the question of politicians being ‘in touch’ isn’t a straightforward one. It sort-of reprises a few points that I made in this post here a while ago – that no-body really agrees with anyone else about very much, and that – under such circumstances, politicians are in a bit of a cleft stick. On of my ongoing questions here is to ask what kind of politicians do we actually want? A few weeks ago, I asked if we really want paragons of virtue? And does a private personal wealth allow people the luxury of looking virtuous that their poorer rivals can’t benefit from?

My next question is this:

Do we want politicians to behave like jurors?

We may actually have an answer to this question within the next year or so. I say this because ‘The Jury Team‘ are hoping to field candidates at the next election and they have a rather nice website up here. They are plainly enjoying the way that MPs are being exposed for their venality, or – let’s face it – their downright dishonesty in recent weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Providing an understanding of data by the creative use of graphics is a great way of improving the quality of public deliberation.

Here’s a load of graphics that show the way that we consume media has changed.

Click on the image for more.

Look what is forcast for 2015.

(hat tip: Kathryn on Facebook)

There have been a few interesting developments in the last few days. Firstly, the post of Director of Digital Engagement has been filled by Andrew Stott.

Harry has a positive anecdote about him along with an observation that I’d agree with:

It [a £160k post] seemed like a strange move to make when creating two positions at £80k a piece would probably still attract very qualified people, and give you more time and knowledge for your money.

Dave Briggs, as ever, has a good comprehensive round-up of reactions to the appointment.

The second development (as Anthony has picked up in the previous post) is the as-yet unconfirmed report that the Community Empowerment Bill is to be spiked.

The Community Empowerment Bill always struck me as something of a curate’s egg. It was good, in the sense that it attempted to address one of the key problems with civic engagement – the widespread self-serving belief is large parts of local government that there is no duty to promote democracy at a local level – that this is simply the job of politicians.

Currently, local government officers can be given any number of excuses to avoid doing anything to encourage people to interact with them (or worse, with councillors) on policy issues, and the culmulative effect of the various bits of legislation has been to stengthen permanent officials against elected councillors.

All of that said, legislation is a very blunt instrument to do this. Had the bill gone through largely unamended (and we’ve always known really that this was never going to happen – this was the ultimate peice of ‘signaling legislation’ – designed to position the government politically rather than result in any outcome), anyone with local government experience knows what would have followed: Committees would have been convened – probably in each local authority – and clumsy bits of guidance would have been drawn up.

I have tender bits of my anatomy that I’d rather dangle in boiling oil than sit through that farce.

Oh – one other thing: The ‘duty to promote local democracy’ was probably the only good thing about that legislation unless I’ve forgotten something.

Later this month, in Belfast, the PICamp event I mentioned here earlier is going to pick up on Tim Davies ’50 obstacles’ initiative and look to see if anything can be done to take the idea forward. 

As we’ve seen with MPs expenses, legislation doesn’t work when you want to bring about constitutional reform; What you need is ‘gamechanging’ ideas. I think that the way MPs have been exposed in recent weeks has done a disproportionate amount of damage to democracy in the UK – but it shows that real change only happens when the people who need to change are looking down a gun-barrel.

I’m not sure that legislation or high-profile appointments will meet this need. They seem to be more about the need to be seen to do something.

According to the Municipal Journal, the UK Government has abandoned plans to introduce a Community Empowerment Bill, which would have implemented some parts of the Communities in Control White Paper.

According to the Commons authorities, the Bill would have enabled remote voting in Council meetings, reduced the barriers to introducing an elected mayor, change the definition of politically restricted posts, reform the office of alderman, and modernise the law relating to parish councils.

It is not known whether these provisions will be taken forward in any other way.

Richard Pope, Francis Irving and Julian Todd have developed a site – The Straight Choice – that allows you to upload election leaflets as they come through your door – with the intention of promoting consistency and honesty.

It’s an interesting idea. And – as you come here partly because you often get unpopular arguments, let me suggest another one:

That the demand for consistency from political parties often has the unintended consequence of promoting political centralisation. Surely it’s a good thing if Lib-Dems in Truro are saying something different to Lib-Dems in Anglesey?

(hat tip: Kathryn on Facebook).

An Elephant yesterday. Best eaten a bit at a time. (Image: Wikimedia Commons - click for credit)

Shorter version: Often, the minor technical obstacles mask a wider small-p political obstructionism to the promotion of a more interactive form of government.

Having written this post about the small obstacles to open e-gov a few weeks ago, Tim Davies got such a comprehensive response in his comments thread that he’s rolled them out into a wiki.

The idea that there are ’50 small hurdles’ is a very powerful one – it enables those who want to move small mountains to understand that it can be done in the same way that an Elephant can be eaten: A bit at a time.

I think that Tim has missed an important one out, but I’m reluctant to break the symmetry and tidiness of the ’50′ number. It’s an important one though, and probably a bit less straightforward than the obstacles that Tim has identified, so the omission is understandable:

Promoting interactivity between local government and citizens is a thorny one. It presents a huge amount of potential for disruption. Nominally, under our political settlement, elected councillors are the ones that formally do policy. Read the rest of this entry »