Archive for May, 2011
The character of local government
It’s Friday. It’s 3.30pm. It’s time for
a nice entertaining post about the character of local government.
Oh! Here’s one – on a blog that’s generally worth keeping an eye on.
Along with the Glum Councillors tumblog, we’re seeing the culture of local government being ever-so-slightly lightened and humanised by the blogosphere.
On democracy, environment and the Red Tape Challenge
April 7th 2011 was a dark day both for the Coalition government’s commitment to be the ‘greenest government ever’, and for democracy in the UK. That was the day that the government launched its Red Tape Challenge.
The idea of cutting red tape has a long and undistinguished history in the UK; undistinguished in that it is never a job that anyone has said is done.
Under Conservative Prime Minister John Major in the mid-1990s, there was a ‘deregulation unit’. Major memorably described tackling red tape as like trying to wrestle with a greasy pig.
Across governments, the idea of slashing red tape never went out of fashion. Under Tony Blair, New Labour established a ‘red tape task force’. And Gordon Brown claimed to be the ‘enemy of red tape’. Read the rest of this entry »
Mulling over a ‘right to manage’
Wonderful pop-up social enterprise thinktank Popse (possibly the first pop-up thinktank ever, but certainly not the last) popped up in London’s Exmouth Market from 9-13 May.
Among other hot topics was a proposal from the Waterways Project that a community ‘right to manage’ (or a ‘presumption in favour of community management’) should join the existing proposals in the Localism Bill. Read the rest of this entry »
House of Lords Reform, Long-termism and Future Generations
The House of Lords Reform Draft Bill and accompanying White Paper were presented to Parliament by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Tuesday 17 May.
The documents set out long-awaited options for a reformed House of Lords.
The Bill is grounded in a smaller, 80%-elected House, retaining (controversially) the Bishops. The White Paper indicates that a 100% elected upper House has not been ruled out.
One striking feature of the proposals is that they have nothing at all to say about the functions of Westminster’s upper house. In fact, the White Paper’s summary of the proposals states that “[t]he reformed House of Lords would have the same functions as the current House. It would continue to scrutinise legislation, hold the Government to account and conduct investigations.”
So the proposed changes would be in form, not in substance. Read the rest of this entry »
Why 'Microparticipation' is so important
My friend Mick Phythian picked up a very useful motto/warning for anyone promoting e-government projects a while ago. To government, your time is worth £Zero – and this is why e-government fails.
A good democracy has to value everyone's time properly (click for pic credit)
This explains why a very sharp idea that Dave Briggs has been working on recently – promoting the notion of ‘Microparticipation’ with a dedicated idea-site here – is so important.
We are, after all, being gently forced to comply with other people’s procedures where it is in their interest to invest in this compulsion (or ‘nudging’ as it is gently put).
This is the whole trajectory of the World Wide Web – from the first release of HTML scripts and early browsers in the early 1990s, through the progressive development of website coding and site-building tools, the burgeoning science of Accessibility, Usability and the ‘Semantic Web’ through to the aggressive mainstreaming that it has undergone in recent years as social media has dragged billions of people into compliance with the web. Social media is a conspiracy to dovetail all of our economic activity with the processes of the organisations that invest in online applications. Read the rest of this entry »