Posted on April 2, 2009 by Paul Evans
So much is changing so quickly. Newspapers and broadcasters are changing. Governments now communicate using radically different means to the ones that were practiced a decade ago. Here’s Exhibit A.
We now have free interactive tools that enable us to hold huge multilateral conversations based upon collaborative filtering and reputation management. We can find useful strangers [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Political parties, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Decentralisation | No Comments »
Posted on March 30, 2009 by Paul Evans
The reason that there is such a wide-ranging debate about what democracy is, and how it is likely to change in the coming years, is in no small part, down to the fact that technology is making new things possible. The technical infrastructure available to us is changing, and creative minds are being applied to [...]
Filed under: Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
Posted on March 18, 2009 by Paul Evans
Andrew Collinge has a really good post over on the LGIU blog. He’s picking up on an also-good post by Matthew Taylor of the RSA.
I don’t have anything to say that engages with it directly, only to add something that I mentioned in a post a while ago over on the Liberal Conspiracy site about civic [...]
Filed under: Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Public administration | Tagged: Machiavelli | No Comments »
Posted on January 29, 2009 by Paul Evans
My friend Will has e-mailed this from the Washington Post to me - It may cheer Steph up a little to know that he’s not fighting a purely British problem….
“Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Lockdown, Obama | No Comments »
Posted on January 27, 2009 by Paul Evans
There’s a terrific post here, authored by Dave Briggs - brimming with positivity and enthusiasm as ever. It’s a really good round up, and a good introduction to what is possible for users that already have their heads in the right place.
I’d add a number of observations to it that I hope make sense.
Firstly, I’ve [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 21, 2009 by Paul Evans
Last week, I posted here on how local councillors are actively discouraged from interacting with the public by the configuration of their office PCs. As I said at the time, this may not be the intention, but it is the outcome.
Here, Steph Gray offers a tool that every councillor should run as a diagnostic.
Filed under: Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | No Comments »
Posted on January 15, 2009 by Paul Evans
If you were to draw a Venn Diagram showing attitudes to the use of ICT tools for interactivity, putting Interactive Evangelists in one circle and local authority ICT managers in the other, I strongly suspect that you would end up with something that looks like a number.
This number:
8
When I get time, I’d like to pull [...]
Filed under: Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 13, 2009 by Paul Evans
A while back, I noticed a nice short post from Aussie blogger The Mild Colonial Boy quoting De Tocqueville:
“It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, What makes a good representative? | Tagged: Attracting talent | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 12, 2009 by Paul Evans
Here’s a bit of music made using assistive technology to cheer you up. It was sent to me by my old mate and colleague Amanda - the best usability consultant and website project manager that I’ve ever worked with.
What’s this got to do with local democracy? Well, I’ve worked with a [...]
Filed under: Design, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Bureaucracy, ICT, Inclusion, Web accessibility, Web Standards | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 9, 2009 by Paul Evans
I’d been planning to do this blog for years, but the thing that finally nudged me to get on with it was this story (my first post) about how an MP’s online allowance was docked by the Parliamentary authorities because he used it in the way that you would expect politicians to use such an [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Petitions, Pressure groups, Public administration, Transparency, Web 2.0 and democracy | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 7, 2009 by Paul Evans
Before politics stopped being fairly boring in the late summer last year, the book of the year looked like it was going to be Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge. It’s still worth a look when you need a break from Robert Peston - and one of their areas of interest has been ballot design [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Democratic renewal, Elections, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 5, 2009 by Paul Evans
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 »
Posted on December 17, 2008 by Paul Evans
If ever a review were overdue, it’s the one that Hazel Blears has just announced (though it was heavily trailed in the ‘Communities in Control’ White Paper) into the rules that determine what publicity councils can and can’t do.
I’ve visited approximately 100 local authorities in the UK, trying to persuade councils to help councillors take [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Web 2.0 and democracy, What makes a good representative? | Tagged: Publicity rules | No Comments »
Posted on December 14, 2008 by Paul Evans
Being a politician is a good deal harder than most of us realise. Recent posts here about cognitive polyphasia remind me that being a politician involves squaring a number of unsquareable circles. Here’s the RSA’s Matthew Taylor on cognitive dissonance and the rose coloured mirror. People - the voters (trans: you and I) don’t recognise [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, What makes a good representative? | Tagged: cognitive dissonance | No Comments »
Posted on December 12, 2008 by Paul Evans
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 »
Posted on December 12, 2008 by Paul Evans
These couple of sentences leaped out of an article by Polly Toynbee recently:
It was pollster Ben Page who first used the phrase “cognitive polyphasia” to describe what pollsters find all the time: most people hold several entirely contradictory beliefs at once. They want local decision-making but are adamantly opposed to a postcode lottery….
Another example of [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Decentralisation | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 4, 2008 by Paul Evans
This time last year, Sir Christopher Foster - a long-standing government adviser on economic policy was much in evidence. There was this interview in the Telegraph, and I heard him on BBC Radio 4. The link to the programme is no longer available, but I made notes at the time. The Telegraph piece makes some [...]
Filed under: Democratic renewal, Neutrality, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Civil service reform, Neutrality | No Comments »
Posted on November 21, 2008 by Paul Evans
Here’s former New Statesman & Society editor Stuart Weir (now with Democratic Audit) on the dangers that arise as a result of the BNP being allowed a toehold in local politics.
“Wilks-Heeg analyses electoral data research findings from Burnley to argue convincingly that the BNP’s breakthrough constitutes a stark warning about the “advanced state of decay [...]
Filed under: Democratic renewal, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, The far right | Tagged: BNP, Democratic renewal | No Comments »
Posted on November 20, 2008 by Paul Evans
As there are a couple of good posts in the mainstream political blogosphere touching upon the qualities that are needed to promote an effective representative democracy, today is a good day to start a blog on the subject. This post will focus on the most topical:
Both Puffbox and Spartakan are chewing over the fact that [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Neutrality, Obstacles for democrats to overcome | Tagged: Bureaucracy, Centralisation, MPs, Neutrality, Parliament, Websites | 2 Comments »
