Following on from the moan about the ‘level playing field’, here’s the next in the ’causes of centralisation’ theme: The minor crisis in the legitimacy of professionals.
Crudely speaking, where civil servants, teachers, police, and judges used to be expect their judgements to be respected, and used to exercise more perogative powers than they do now, [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration | Tagged: Producer capture, Professionalism | No Comments »
The European Union’s Committee of the Regions has published a new Eurobarometer survey looking at the impact of local and regional government in the EU.
The survey shows that local government is the most trusted tier of government in the EU (50% trust), with the EU itself second (47%) and national governments some way behind in [...]
Filed under: Democratic renewal, Public administration | No Comments »
I missed this at the time, but here’s an example of what happens when you spend a fortune on a commission and ask them to ignore the trees while describing the wood.
In Public Service magazine, Professor Michael Clarke offers an account of his work as chairman of a committee that looked at the city’s governance.
For [...]
Filed under: Councillors, Mayors, Public administration | No Comments »
Iain Dale has a roustabout interview with Ken Livingstone. Here’s a snippet:
“…although there will be mistakes, a real, massive devolution would start bringing good people back into local government, but there’s got to be financial change as well. 97 per cent of all tax collected in Britain is collected by Gordon Brown. When I told [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Public administration | Tagged: Bureaucracy, Civil service reform | No Comments »
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 »
It looks like a bit of a headline grabber, but the proposal to allow users to provide instant feedback on public services may enable government to break out of the cycle in which one bad news story about a council on an (unreliable!) national news medium can trump all of one’s experience of local services.
The [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration | 1 Comment »
Part three of a series of articles looking at the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control.
This time, chapter two. This chapter is about localism, and promises that a Conservative Government would:
give local residents the power to determine the balance between the level of council tax and the level of services
delivered;
drastically reduce the centrally imposed [...]
Filed under: Conservatives, Conversational localities, Councillors, Direct democracy, Elections, Political parties, Public administration | No Comments »
Do keep an eye on the Google Reader page that I’ve set up - I’m trying to track as much of the blogosphere’s comment on local democracy as I can - particularly where there is anything that touches on interactivity.
If you have your own shared items, please send me an e-mail from the gmail account [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | No Comments »
Part two of a series of articles on the Conservative green paper on local government, which are also appearing on the Democratic Society blog.
Section one of the green paper discusses local housing and economic growth. The Conservatives’ proposals are:
enable local authorities to benefit financially when they deliver the housing that local people need;
give local [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Councillors, Political parties, Public administration | No Comments »
Well, the Power of Information Taskforce appears to have reached it’s conclusions. The job has been advertised. Dominic Campbell has a few very perceptive bits of advice for whoever the successful candidate may be.
This phrase leaps out of the job ad:
” …the job requires someone who would be acknowledged by their peer group to be [...]
Filed under: Digital inclusion, Public administration, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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 »
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 »
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 »
This US post is calling for the data that agencies use to be as available as their conclusions.
“Mindy Finn noted that politicians (typically leery of too much openness) can benefit from transparency in a self-protective “flood the zone” way — since people are coming to expect information about public figures to be available online, someone [...]
Filed under: Conversational localities, Deliberative democracy, Public administration, Transparency | No Comments »
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 »
Mick Fealty - soon to be an occasional poster here - has picked up on a worrying feature of the direction that David Cameron is adopting in the teeth of the current downturn.
What I think Mick is picking up on is the point at which British Conservatism and libertarianism intersect - the general prejudice that [...]
Filed under: Public administration | Tagged: Cameron, Conservatives, Interventionism | 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 »
This is the first in a new feature for this blog. I’ve approached some of my favourite democracy / participation bloggers and given them a choice of a few questions. The first to step up to the challenge is Steph Gray.
Steph blogs at Helpful Technology, and offers a fantastically informative round-up of the things that [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Democratic renewal, Public administration, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Innovation, Memes | 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 »
Broadly, the Conservative Party are proposing a greater degree of operational co-operation with neighbouring councils in order to earn the right to retain more of their Council Tax revenues.
In speaking to the proposals, Eric Pickles is clear that this would not involve any changes to political structures, or any reductions in the number of local [...]
Filed under: Centralisation, Public administration | Tagged: Conservative Party, Local Government reform | No Comments »
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