Local Democracy Notepad

I don’t know about you, but I find the outcome of the AV referendum less interesting than the fact that we’re being asked about voting systems at all.

Like everyone else, I’ve got my own prejudices here – I particularly dislike the fact that it’s a question that is subject to a referendum in the first place – a strong enough reason to resist the change itself, perhaps?

I don’t know whether to vote Yes, No or just say ‘meh‘ and stay indoors. But I think that there are some bigger important questions lurking in a squabble over a minor change, and I’d like to help pull together a catalogue of the various arguments to see if that will help the undecideds to make their mind up. Read the rest of this entry »

Professor Lawrence Pratchett

I went to an interesting seminar last week at the CLG (yes – unusual!) where Prof. Lawrence Pratchett and Dr Catherine Durose from De Montfort University talked about a recent systematic review they have carried out of a number of different empowerment tools. You can find the full report on the CLG site and its excellent to see someone looking at stuff that has already happened rather than running around trying to start something new the whole time. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, David Cameron offered a fairly populist ‘bonfire of the quangos’ proposal, with the implication that politicians would take back many of the toxic decisions that they had farmed out to overpaid bureaucrats.

In the FT the other day, Philip Stephens questions the emphasis:

“…broadcasting policy accounts for only about 5 per cent of Ofcom’s workload. Moving it to Whitehall would scarcely mean “that Ofcom, as we know it, will cease to exist”. Some 90 per cent of Ofcom’s remit comprises unglamorous work such as telecommunications regulation, upholding broadcasting standards, allocating spectrum, and, crucially, policing competition. All this can properly be done only at arms length from civil servants and ministers.”

I’d agree with Stephens’ highly critical conclusions about the seriousness of the Conservatives here. All of that said, if MPs had to pick up that 5% that he mentions, it would be a minor triumph for common sense, the taxpayer and a for democracy as well.

Here are a few observations about OfCOM’s activities in the past year or so:

• Not content with having one place to farm out awkward questions, Lord Carter’s ‘Digital Britain‘ was launched in competition to OfCOM’s Public Service Broadcasting review
• In reply, OfCOM have strategically launched their local media review
• While this happened, DCMS have a new minister in the driving seat – one who shows no grasp of the policy questions or any disposition to ruin the end of his ministerial career with futile study
• … and anyway, whatever the DCMS decides, it will be overruled by the bafflingly named BERR
• Carter resigned before his report was published, undermining the whole shooting match

And where, exactly, does parliament fit in to any of this anyway?

These exercises were a complete waste of time. They have taken place in the context of impending General Election and the fin de siècle atmosphere in which all complex policy matters are discussed. Few of these conclusions are likely to result in legislation before the chess-table is turned on it’s head by an incoming government.

It’s a farce – and one that exists because Parliament doesn’t have the resources or the self-confidence to take these issues on in the first place.

We can assess the commitment to promoting ‘scrutiny’ at a local level from the main parties by looking at their attitude to these ‘political detoxifying chambers’ that QUANGOs partly provide. David Cameron could announce that he will ignore the outcome of both the Digital Britain review and any forays OfCOM is making outside of the more complex regulation of things like Radio Microphones – an issue that it would probably be unwise to hand back to Westminster.

Update: I’ve just seen this post over on Jim Godfrey’s blog:

The real solution in my view is not necessarily to weaken Ofcom by taking away PR functions and slashing salaries, but to strengthen the DCMS. Too much of their policy ‘thinking’ takes place elsewhere and they need a strengthened capacity – in concert with the Department for Business.

From Spaceman's Flickr pics

Dave Briggs surpassed himself on Saturday convening a terrific event in Birmingham. I’m hoping to pick up a number of issues that came up in different posts here, but I’d like to start with the session that I helped lead on. I don’t want to detail or argue any of the issues that came up in this post (time enough for that / the archives here touch on a lot of the arguments anyway), but it pulled together what are, I think, four of the most interesting questions:

The one I posed was the old chestnut here:

“Nosey do-gooding interfering unelected self-important fanatical busybodies and how social media loves them.”

This was a flame-baiting conversation starter to smoke out what I’d see as the ‘direct democracy’ problem. Will Perrin responded with an outline of his own local media project along with a profile of a few others:

“Community empowerment through the web” Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Taylor, former No 10 policy wonk, has an interesting article on his blog about public service reform. He rightly says that finances over the next few years are both a huge challenge to public services, but also an opportunity to make real change happen. That won’t come about, he says, without a change in the national political culture, starting from the top:

There are far too many ministers, all of whom think it is their job to generate initiatives; ideas are allowed to be developed and launched without any reference to those at the front line; change management and the time it takes is not treated seriously; there is complete lack of realism about how far the centre’s intended messages actually reach; civil servants fail to see or warn (or be allowed to warn) their masters that every new target or piece of guidance had an adverse impact on all these existing targets and instructions (not to mention local morale).

No disrespect to Matthew, but this is a very technocratic argument. The idea that there should be fewer ministers is perhaps not a bad one – though it needs to happen alongside a more powerful and independent Commons and a reformed Lords. No matter how many Ministers there are, however, they will still be put on a spot on the Today programme and asked to make a commitment that “[bad thing] will never be allowed to happen again.”

There are certainly real opportunities for reform in the fiscal squeeze that’s ahead. The barrier to transformation, though, is not hyperactive Ministers who don’t let technocrats manage, it’s an immature political dialogue in which the media and the public create and feed off outrage and disgust, while politicians sit on top of the bureaucracy and try to placate the beast.

This is a local government problem as much as a national government one. Anyone who has seen parents protesting about school places or attended a controversial meeting of the planning committee will understand that.

If the spending cuts to come are not to create more disaffection and anger, they can’t be done behind closed doors. They need to be discussed openly, in public, and real choices have to be set out clearly, not decided and then ‘consulted upon’.

People should have the chance to see the books, and have intermediaries more trusted than journalists to explain to them what the choices are. They then need to be able to express an opinion more nuanced than ‘I want everything for free’.

Creating the circumstances in which this can happen is part of a widening and deepening of active citizenship that is essential if the political world is to catch up with what today’s citizens expect.

I’m not so naive as to think that this level of openness will appear in the twelve months before a general election, although it would be nice to think that it could. Afterwards, though, if Labour or the Conservatives are really serious about localism and democratic reform, a big conversation, not a Big Conversation, needs to be created.

Because it’s probably wrong to write a post everyday about how marvellous Debategraph or Mixed Ink are as concepts, for a change, have a look at ‘Let Simon Decide‘.

‘Simon’ is an avatar for good decision-making processes and the collective wisdom of the site’s users. It’s designed to ensure that users go through all of the processes in addressing difficult decisions (ones that often get put off because it’s easier to postpone something when you don’t know how to do it). It aims to offer a 360-degree view of problems and to remove the emotional biases wherever possible.

Another example of how we can play a constructive role contributing to decision-making processes at any level.

(Via Read Write Web)