According to yesterday’s papers, the No10 Petitions website has been canned. I can understand that a lot of the people behind it saw it as a learning experience and it clarified a few things.
My problem with the whole project is that this is one area where politicians let themselves down. Civil Servants go on public management courses and would expect to do their political masters’ bidding on things like this more quickly than they would on areas where politicians can’t be expected to bring native expertise to bear. If they are asked to implement something that is plainly at odds with representative democracy in this way, it’s the politicians’ look-out.
I also understand that not every politician would be able to match the basic knowledge of someone with – say – a first degree in political science. But when a whole government can’t find two such geniuses to rub together (and I suspect that the last Labour government – which I supported – fits this description) you have to worry.
Now here’s the next question: Will local authorities have to continue to impersonate No10 in this folly? (I had a post up here that outlined the various options for local authorities a while ago)
In other news, I was in Belfast at the weekend organising an unconference on Political Innovation and one of the attendees was the policy officer from the Northern Ireland Local Government Association. She was inspired enough by the event to go and set up a new blog called ‘Local Is Beautiful’ - one to add to your RSS feed. Welcome Karen!
Cameron in Hansard, 16 Nov: ‘The future of e-petitions is being reviewed by Martha Lane Fox as part of her review of all Government digital communications and engagement.’ But no mention of it in the review’s final document, published today. Well, not that I can immediately see, anyway. Sadly the PDF has been produced as scanned graphics, not text: so there’s no way to search it.