PINing - the arms race continues (click for pic credit)
E-mail has transformed the way that senior politicians behave. Fifteen years ago, almost all conversations between politicians, lobbyists, civil servants and everyone else were either verbal or on paper. Technology has made recording easier. Written communications are infinitely more index/searchable.
It would be an understatement to say that the situation has been transformed as a result of digitisation and FOI legislation. It has also transformed the way that representatives behave. One MP is now offering a ‘lifestream’ from her website!
We can speculate all we like about how this has impacted upon the quality of governance, but rightly or wrongly, politicians are constantly trying to evade this scrutiny – using different email addresses or other off-record channels.
In the US, it seems, the main worry is that it allows politicians to collude with lobbyists to an even greater degree than they do already. And in order to continue doing this, they are resorting to ‘PINing’.
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
