David of Debategraph has dissected the G20 communique, using his Debategraph application.
Quite a brilliant idea, Debategraph. It does everything that a pro-democracy technology should do - it enables a wide range of people to rationalise a problem. Once that’s done, elected politicians can make and explain their decisions - not in terms of interests bought [...]
Filed under: Consultations, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Debategraph, Eave | No Comments »
I want to tell you about Mixed Ink - a really good concept in collaborative authoring that I encountered on my travels a few weeks ago.
I was in Miami (‘ark at me!), touting a democracy project that I’ve been nurturing for years.
The conference I was at was designed to showcase bright ideas in the use [...]
Filed under: Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
This blog is here to explore the concept of a more inclusive means of forming policy at a local level. So let me offer you two examples of the kind of people that we need to include in such processes.
Our first case in point - let’s call her Mrs Meldrew (though it’s not really a [...]
Filed under: Consultations, Conversational localities, Political parties | 4 Comments »
Local government has been thinking a lot about community engagement and reputation management, and one of the unexpected side-effects has been an increased focus on how council communications support the democracy and participation message.
Press releases are more focused on residents’ experiences, and repeat key messages about the council’s activities. Process description is kept to a [...]
Filed under: Consultations, Democratic renewal, Public administration | No Comments »
Before
This is a good way of explaining it, isn’t it?
Filed under: Consultations, Conversational localities, Deliberative democracy | No Comments »
They say that eavesdroppers never hear good things about themselves. This may be true, but they probably get a more honest appraisal than the more direct forms of feedback can afford.
For me, this raises the question: Should we be asking people what they think about anything?
Or should we be encouraging conversations and finding (non-intrusive!) [...]
Filed under: Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
In a very good edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Analysis’ programme towards the end of last year, the columnist David Aaronovich recounted a programme that he produced in the 1980s featuring the Archbishop of York, John Hapgood.
The Archbishop, as far as I can see, had the kind of views that would appeal to a Guardian [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Conversational localities, Deliberative democracy, Distributed moral wisdom, Pressure groups | Tagged: Certainty, Distributed moral wisdom, Eavesdroppable, Groupthink, Irony, Neutrality, Podcast, Wisdom of Crowds | 2 Comments »
Tiago - who’s blog is well worth bookmarking -has a good post up about how Londoners can decide where to allocate ten grants of up to £400,000 for London’s parks.
Tiago’s conclusions: A bad start to a good idea.
Filed under: Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: London, Parks, Participatory engineering | No Comments »
Here’s a good post from an Australian blogger on the question: Is adversarial politics damaging to our democracy? (It’s actually an update on a previous post with that title). Here the adversarialism is opposed by a more attractive ‘deliberative’ model of the kind advocated here. The flipside of this argument is put very well by [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Neutrality, Pressure groups, Public administration | Tagged: Adversarial politics, Discretion in politics, Independence, Standards Board, Transparency | 2 Comments »
My friend, former Hansard Society e-democracy watcher Ross Ferguson says:
A local government will fall head-over-heels in love with the promise of eDemocracy and launch into an ambitious project to put digital front-and-centre of its democratic processes and service provision. It will be facilitated with next-generation municipal ICT and it will capture our imaginations but it [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Councillors, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
Labour-leaning ginger-group Compass is inviting policy proposals to be submitted and debated on this site and at meetings around the country.
The site says that the proposals will then be voted on by the Compass membership - forming the policy priorities for the organisation to campaign on. The successful polices will sit alongside the narrative that [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Compass, The Labour Party, The left | No Comments »
If one argues (and I do) that democracy is at it’s most effective when people who are elected are making decisions, and that those decisions should be made without undue pressure from campaigners and lobbyists, one rapidly finds oneself explaining that this doesn’t mean that the public can have no influence on policy in the [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Point-of-view-shifting, Visualisations | No Comments »
The FT has picked up on a couple of social media sites that are intended to bring ‘the wisdom of crowds’ to bear upon the new President’s policymaking. Both Fix This Barack and Whitehouse 2 aim to set priorities for the incoming President. Obama’s team appear to be taking steps to do this themselves by [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Transparency | Tagged: Crowdsourcing, Obama, Policymaking | 1 Comment »
Steph Gray asks a very good question:
“…why aren’t advocates of public participation and engagement more successful in engaging the policymakers who design consultations?“
Filed under: Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Participation | No Comments »
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