BASIC CRAFT

After a long slog, the Cabinet Office has released its ‘Principles for participation online‘.

These principles formed one small part of a larger piece of guidance I researched and wrote with the COI at the end of 2007. I really enjoyed working on it and have been eagerly waiting to see how it would turn out after coming through the necessary bureaucracy.

They went through a number of drafts but I think that the 5 that ‘made the grade’ are sensible.

For curiosity/reference, the following are the original 10 principles as they stood when I passed over the completed guidance. They are written with civil servants in mind, but I think they’re good advice for anybody finding/sharing/collaborating via social media:

General

1. Be involved… The lifeblood of social media is information and interaction. You will get as much out of it as you put in.

2. Be versatile… Social media needs facilitation and leadership, but there is also a lot of value in participating and spectating as a community member.

3. Be credible… Trust is an important currency in a social media space. Trust can be developed through consistency, thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency.

4. Be constructive… A positive contribution to social media can be made through the provision of facts and figures, and by encouraging constructive criticism and deliberation.

5. Be responsive… The social media space is often informal and conversational. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times. Avoid jargon where possible.

Specific

1. Be official… You should not make commitments or engage in activities on behalf of HM Government unless you are explicitly authorised to do so and have management approval and/or delegations.

2. Be legal… Do not post anything on your blog online that you would not say in public. Standard Civil Service proprietary and ethics apply. Be aware of libel, defamation, copyright and data protection (for more information on legal issues refer to ‘Appendix 1’).

3. Be a representative… Always disclose your position and interest as a representative of the Government. Unless a site demands anonymity, use your real name and provide basic details about your role, team and agency/department/office. Never give out personal details (such as date of birth, home address, home telephone number, etc.).

4. Be realistic… Don’t over-stretch. Social media is more effective and manageable as a team-based activity than an individual pursuit.

5. Be integrated… Wherever possible, social media activity should be should be integrated and aligned with other online communications and offline activity.

Now that we have these principles, let’s now have some action. And that’s where the rest of the guidance - the big bit - comes into play…

Very clever, very difficult, very gratifying… www.sexypolitics.com.

On Thursday there’s an event on at the US Embassy where a panel will present their thoughts on the influence of the web on the US election and, laterally, what it all might mean for the UK.

This will be the first of a flurry of online campaigning analysis as minds begin to focus on a general election at some point in the next two years.

Online campaigning is interesting for lots of different reasons: for academics it means data, the media see a rich source of scoops, and the parties see massive PR potential, if not a direct route to voters. No prizes for guessing what new media consultants see. For the electorate, online campaigning should mean having access to a sufficient amount of information on which to base informed decisions.

While all are agreed on the desirability of electioneering online, there is no agreement on what is feasible and what is worth doing. Online campaigning is still a ‘grey area’, which makes it a nightmare for the regulators - and probably the electorate - but while everything is up for grabs it also means that online campaigning is a rich source of innovation in a otherwise pretty mundane area of politics.

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Have been thinking about analogies ahead of a presentation I’m to give on eDemocracy in the UK. And with our domestic football season coming to an end, I’ve been thinking along footballing lines and playing about with this angle…

If we think of the web or politics as having football-like leagues, then taking an interest in eDemocracy is remarkably like following a lower-league team. (more…)

Been taking a keener-than-usual interest in Canadian politics online; I’ve written an article for a Canadian journal discussing different national experiences of eDemocracy.

I didn’t write about this specific site, but I found CitizenVoices interesting. Ostensibly it’s a platform for Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, to bring young citizens together for dialogue with politicians.

Four elements caught my attention:

1. The dashboard model - I tested this approach with the Office of the Children’s Commissioner as part of the Digital Dialogues project last year. It was developed in partnership with Vohm, and brought profiles, forums, blogs, polls and an ‘Ask & Answer’ module all underpinned by Drupal. The idea is to give participants control over what functionality they use, in the interest of seeing whether their participation frequency rises or falls in comparison with sites where the functionality is pre-determined by its managers. (more…)

I’ve had an opportunity to - properly - go through the World e-Parliament Report, produced by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament.

As I knew it would be, it is an excellent piece of work. I think that the particular value lies in the fact that it looks at a range of possible applications of ICT and covers as many Parliaments as possible.

For me, the recommendations were also an important inclusion. Everyone knows the state of play and where the problems lie, but very few know how to make decisive steps toward addressing these challenges. The Report’s recommendations are clear and achievable and it will be interesting to watch Parliaments try to enact them.

And this tracking, I think, is crucial. Which Parliaments take up the challenge? Which make the best efforts with the limited resources at their disposal? Which are innovative? Which are conservative and static? Which are lazy and isolationist? I think it would be worth taking this tracking on another level and actually setting up some awards to be given out at the Centre’s annual Conference.

I would also like to suggest:
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How can you keep track of what is going on in the Lords? You can read Hansard, you can watch BBC Parliament, there might be the odd article in the papers.

The Lords has been quite a closed shop, more by accident than design. Yet it is busy, bustling, important and relevant. The challenge is how to get the public to tap into that potential.The answer may be found online through blogging. This is the hypothesis of the ‘Lords of the Blog’ pilot launched by the House of Lords and the Hansard Society at www.lordsoftheblog.net.

At the end of 2007, I made some predictions about political uses of the web over the next 12 months. One was that the House of Lords would turn to blogging to encourage public awareness and participation. Of course, I was dealing on some insider info. Fundraising for ‘Lords of the Blog’ was one of my last duties at the Hansard Society. But finding the funds was no guarantee that the blog would see the light of day. The kudos for that lies with Barry Griffiths, the project coordinator, and Liz Hallam-Smith, the Lords Librarian for having the foresight to see the value in such an experiment. (more…)

They say:

“The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Inter-Parliamentary Union launched today the World e-Parliament Report 2008. The Report was prepared as part of the work of the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament.

The  World e-Parliament Report 2008 represents the first effort to establish a baseline of how parliaments are using, or planning to use ICT to help them carry out their representative, lawmaking and oversight responsibilities and to connect to their constituencies. It is also intended to advance a shared knowledge base among the parliaments of the world and to promote international debate on these matters.

The Report is based on the responses and comments provided by 105 assemblies from around the world to a survey on the use of ICT in parliament conducted between July and November 2007. It also draws on experiences exchanged during the World e-Parliament Conference 2007 and relevant publicly available information”.

I say:

“An excellent and very important piece of research. Significant, because it covers all conceivable applications of ICT by parliaments across the world. Well done to Gherardo, Jeffrey and Jane for putting it together”.

The Report is available at www.ictparliament.org.

Another shout from this blog to the Economist, this time for its special edition on technology and government.

On the whole a well-written feature which takes in a range of international case studies; the real value of which is to be found in its brevity amidst otherwise verbose analysis.

One aspect I liked was this idea of ‘government in competition’ or, more accurately, government lacking competition that would make it strive for better effectiveness and efficiencies. In the nearby blogosphere, Simon Dickson also raises this facet of the feature and goes along with its conclusions.

I also appreciated this ‘government in competition’ thesis, but was surprised that the author of the feature (or the usually very savvy editors) didn’t take it in a different direction. (more…)

Today was sizing up to be an important day. ‘eDemocracy Scotland: Creating a National Conversation?‘ was going to Scotland’s first ever eDemocracy conference and I was going to be there giving a presentation on the nation’s readiness for an e-enabled polity. But it didn’t come off - pulled due to a lack of tickets sales.

So is that the ‘national conversation’ over? Far from it! In fact, I’m going to up the ante.

Back in the day, Scottish eDemocracy was looked upon as an example of best practice by British and international peers. Now we’re lapsed - a straggler, a wee bit backward even. But the opportunity to get back to the front has not passed us by. We can be a crucible of democratic innovation again - if our Government and Parliament get their acts together.

So I am going to issue the Scottish Government and Parliament with three challenges (I’ve got more but let’s start slowly):

1. Set up ‘Democratic Innovations’ Funds available to Scottish businesses, VCOs and universities. Set aside a small annual budget for up to 10 small-scale pilots over a period of at least 5 years. This would be managed by participation teams in both the Government and Parliament and awarded on a competitive basis in allotments of up to £15k. Evaluations should be carried out for each pilot, and made available in the public domain.
2. Run a ‘Holyrood 360′ exercise - a pilot where the Government would set up an online community of stakeholders and/or members of the public, consult them on a particular Green Paper, then again at White Paper stage and when the Bill goes over to Parliament the community is opened up to MSPs to consult with. From there, both Government and Parliament should be able to engage with the community at various stages of the policy cycle as they, respectively, carry out their reviews and scrutiny. I wrote about this idea in more detail in the January 2008 edition of Parliamentary Affairs.
3. Establish an annual ‘Engagement Register’ containing a set of desirable and achievable awareness and participation targets for the year ahead and the results of the previous year’s activity. The Hansard Society’s ‘Audit of Political Engagement‘ has a useful set of six indicators that could get you started. Of course, the evaluation would need to be carried out by an independent body.

By teaming up in these ways Government and Parliament can spread the burden and send out a clear message to the Scottish people about their commitment and transparency. (more…)