The UK government is keen for local government to harness technology to revolutionise its services; but a culture change is needed first, says The Guardian newspaper.

The government is providing ever more pilot schemes and opportunities to engage but increasingly fewer people believe that “getting involved” is a good use of their time.

This results in the same people who are already active citizens being offered many more opportunities to engage, whereas the individuals who have not engaged are not benefiting from these new opportunities. So just because new channels of engagement are built, they will not necessarily be used by new participants.

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Last week, the UK think tank Demos launched the Everyday Democracy Index (EDI).

The EDI is an original and innovative tool for assessing the democratic health of European countries beyond the ballot box and across many different dimensions. That includes the formal dimensions of democracy, like procedural rights and election turnout. But it also includes more everyday features of democracy – how important democratic principles and practices are to the cultures of workplaces, to people’s community life, to the way they interact with public services, and even to the way they talk to their friends and family.

The first index covers 25 EU countries.

To see the results and read the pamphlet, visit the interactive website.

Government websites are organization-centric, complicated and confusing, according to a survey of government web professionals in the United States, New Zealand and Canada, writes Gerry McGovern on his blog New Thinking.

Governments are addicted to proving that they are doing their job properly. Many government websites are politics-centric. They talk about the 5-year plans they have just launched, rather than using the website to help implement the 5-year plan.

Too many government websites tell us about what their political masters did. With soft focus pictures we are told that the minister has just arrived down for breakfast. Oh, look, he sat down and is reaching for the toast. I wonder will he have marmalade or honey this morning. (I really care about his diet.)

Too many government websites tell us about the legislation they are enacting. We are victims of a tsunami of policies, procedures and publications in a language that is often meaningless.

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Involve, a UK-based independent organisation focused on the practicalities of giving more power to ordinary people, just launched a new participation website.

People and Participation.net is a new radical resource to help people across the UK influence Government decision-making. The site combines the strengths of an expert guide to participation with interactivity and inclusiveness of a wiki.

Key features include:

• An interactive tool which helps practitioners to select participatory methods based on their specific circumstances
• A comprehensive methods database, covering over 30 traditional and innovative approaches to public participation from around the world
• A selection of case studies, showcasing good practice and allowing site users to post their own success stories to inspire others
• A section for site users to post their questions about participation. Involve staff will respond to these questions and thereby create an ever growing knowledge bank of answers to common.
• News and events information from the UK and beyond
• A comprehensive library of written and web-based resources from around the world to help site users make sense of public participation

It has been designed by social media specialists Headshift, with funding from a couple of UK Government departments. Involve hopes that the site will be a creative space where officials, councillors and citizens can share their success stories.

New Zealanders have been given the chance to write their own laws, with a new online tool launched by police.

The “wiki” will allow the public to suggest the wording of a new police act, as part of a government review of the current law, written in 1958.

Police say they hope to gain a range of views from the public on the new law before presenting it to parliament.

The wiki, one of the first of its kind in the world, is open to any internet user, police say.

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Every year, the EU Benchmark Survey assesses the quality of online public services in Europe. For the first time, the survey also looked at the users experience when accessing on-line public services, in recognition of the growing importance of this topic, and found mixed results.

From the press release:

“The survey examined three elements which are important to the user experience: the provision of a legally recognised, secure electronic identity, whether the service could be accessed via alternative channels such as call centres, kiosks, mobile phones and TV, and compliance of the websites with the International Accessibility Guidelines. The overall result for this indicator is more mixed and reaches 19%, with Austria, Bulgaria and Norway scoring above 30%. The most striking finding was that only 5% of websites make a specific reference to their compliance with international accessibility guidelines (WAI).

National portals fared much better. The report looked at the number of basic public services which can be accessed from the portal, the existence of personalised options, ease of navigation and whether its presentation is targeted at different kinds of users (businesses vs. citizens, around life events or around the structure of the administration). The overall score of 75% demonstrates that national governments consider the national portal as one of the cornerstones of their eGovernment plans.”

However the report itself puts some further qualification (page 27) on the above optimistic assessment of the user experience of national portals:

“We conclude that the national portals are well developed as user-centric gateways to public service delivery points.

However on the level of the transactional services itself, the agencies, the e-services delivery is still primarily organised around the needs of governmental organization more than around the needs of the users, being citizens and business. [My emphasis]

The survey, carried out for the European Commission by consultants Capgemini, examined over 14,000 web sites offering 20 basic public services in the 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Turkey. In 2007 the online sophistication of public service delivery reached an overall score of 76%, while 58% of the measured public services are fully available online.

Austria stands out both on sophistication and full on-line availability, with scores of 99 and 100% respectively. Portugal has made major progress since 2006 and Malta and Slovenia stand out as countries that have embraced eGovernment and advanced online service delivery and therefore top the charts in 2007.

- Read press release
- Download report (pdf, 15 mb, 123 pages)

Management guru Don Tapscott, the co-author of best-seller “Wikinomics”, wants to teach governments to harness the power of the Internet to reinvent democracy.

Tapscott is an evangelist for Web 2.0, the second-generation Internet based on participation through social communities such as Facebook and MySpace, participatory sites like free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and blogs.

In “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” published this year, he and co-author Anthony Williams dared big companies to reveal their trade secrets on the Web in a gamble to collect the ideas they need from people outside the firm.

Now their thinktank, New Paradigm, is starting a project to involve governments, non-governmental organizations and citizens around the world to revitalize the public sector.

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Tiago Peixoto sent us a link to this report presenting the results of a joint OECD-World Bank stocktaking of social accountability initiatives in OECD countries. The report which was written by Peixoto, together with Joanne Caddy and Mary McNeil is part of OECD’s efforts to identify emerging trends and develop policy lessons for countries seeking to build more open, accountable and responsive government.

OECD countries have done much to enhance government openness and encourage citizen engagement and participation throughout the past two decades.

Although countries now understand that a whole-of-government perspective is necessary to ensure that system-wide impacts are considered, planning and implementation issues remain. This stocktaking of social accountability initiatives aims to collect information about existing initiatives and country experiences, in an effort to help countries meet these challenges while building more open, accountable and responsive government.

This exercise generated 40 templates detailing social accountability initiatives in 27 OECD countries, and the European Commission. Cases were selected based on focus, level of government, and transferability of policy lessons. The group as a whole illustrates the wealth of innovative practices currently available, and provides a rich resource for practitioners.

Several cases explored the use of online tools to enhance public scrutiny and engagement:
- Canada: Online Pre-Budget Consultation (p. 44)
- Denmark: Danmarksdebatten [currently part of Borger.dk] (p. 55)
- Germany: Online Dialogue Participatory Budgeting (p. 72)
- Hungary: e-Games (p. 81)
- European Union: e-Agora (p. 164)

- Full abstract
- Download publication (pdf, 1.2 mb, 196 pages)

The method of selecting representatives for presenting the view of a constituency was deployed at the time when internet and mobile technologies were not available and there was no method of making a collective decision on policies to government the society.

In today’s times , most of the population have mobile phones that can be used by the citizens to communicate their opinion on important policy issues. Should not we therefore relook at the ways of people representation and amend the democratic processes accordingly?

m-GovWorld is an Indian initiative to create an observatory for mobile government developments and developing a community of stakeholders with the aim to enable acceleration of adoption of mobile technologies by government agencies.

The comments from readers are welcome to suggest innovative ways of making democracy more vibrant using mobile technologies where citizens can be continuously involved in policy decisions rather than voting once in five years.

(via MobileActive.org)

From climate change to social care, innovation will be critical to meeting the public service challenges of the future. But traditional approaches to generating new ideas will not be enough. Rather than focusing on processes and pipelines, policymakers and service deliverers needs to harness the potential of citizens to be innovators in their own right.

Unlocking Innovation: Why citizens hold the key to public service reform is a publication by the UK think tank Demos that collects essays and analysis from a wide range of public sector experts and practitioners. The pamphlet’s chapters offer lessons on how public services can better engage their users based on examples of best practice in the public and private sectors.

It argues that the public sector must embrace new forms of ‘user-driven innovation’ that use the needs and potential of service users as the spur to radical service redesign.

The publication also presents a series of case studies that showcase citizen-focused innovation in action, including:

• ‘In Control’, a social enterprise that provides social care users with easy and flexible access to individual budgets, making it simple for them to choose their own package of services.
• Hammersmith and Fulham council using detailed survey data to redesign their customer contact centre to better serve local people.
• Public private partnerships for tenant management organisations using deep dialogue with local residents to improve levels of service in social housing.
• ‘Innovative ecosystems’ that have allowed educationalists, academics and artists to come together to build ‘mediascapes’ that allow pupils to enter a virtual world of sights and sounds in order to learn in an interactive and cooperative way.

Download report (pdf, 525 kb, 186 pages)

A new website for young people has been launched by West Sussex County Council aimed at giving them vital information and a voice for their concerns.

The front page of www.yourspacewestsussex.co.uk also has the first details of how young people aged from five to 19 will soon be able to apply for a free ‘3in1′ card that will give them cheaper travel on the buses, an instantly recognisable ‘proof of age’ and discounts with retailers.

The ‘YourSpace’ website also contains information and advice for young people on a wide variety of issues such as bullying and health.

There is also a link to new-look pages for the West Sussex Youth Cabinet, information about clubs, holiday activities, and dance nights for the under 18s.

There will be regular quick polls to find out what young people think about major issues of the day. The first is about the July 1 ban on smoking in public places.

Read full story [eGov monitor]

YouScotland.com is not a political party, it is a citizens’ movement aimed at influencing the political process.

With elections pending to Holyrood and at Council level on Thursday, May 3rd, electoral politics will inevitably dominate the next few weeks. But there will be another 204 weeks before there are new elections to these bodies. It is then we believe youscotland.com will come into its own, irrespective of the results on 3rd May – an online citizen’s voice that will hold the politicians we elect on 3rd May to account.

But we do believe we can have a here and now influence by informing and exposing where parties, politicians, the media and others are clearly “at it”, and we will do so without fear or favour. We are in nobody’s pocket, though we hope we are on the right side.

Demos, the UK think tank for everyday democracy, has published a collection of essays by leading thinkers and practitioners that assesses how far the UK has already come towards a more collaborative style of government and sets out international case studies of some of the most interesting initiatives to date. It concludes by asking how future governments can use collaboration as a key design principle for transforming the UK’s public services.

“Competition and choice have become the watchwords of public service reform over the past decade. But while these principles have delivered some important gains, they are not enough in isolation. Tight accountability and choice have often come at the expense of fragmenting the way that schools, hospitals and councils provide their services. Service improvement has come at the expense of the capacity to solve local people’s problems.

If we want to sustain improvements into the next decade, then we need a new generation of reform that builds on experiments with collaboration between both different parts of the public sector, and between institutions and the people they serve. Joined-up government, place-based policy making and co-production with citizens offer exciting new possibilities for creating flexible, dynamic and democratic public service organisations.”

- Read table of contents
- Download publication (pdf, 1 mb, 203 pages)

Children will be able to find out about Government, public services and the world around them in a fresh, fun and informative way through a new website launched today.

DirectgovKids aims to get children from five to 11 engaged with some of the areas of Government that have an impact on their lives, and to help them learn about and understand the society they are growing up in.

The site is designed to look like a revolving globe, with interactive buildings that children can investigate including: a Town Hall, a Police Station and a School. There are online activities and exciting games, as well as animations and slideshows. New areas are being added all the time and include a Health Centre, a school council voting activity and a special area, where children can have a ‘virtual vote’ on issues that affect them.

Read press release

Involve (an independent UK organisation focused on the practicalities of giving more power to ordinary people) has produced an “Evaluation Guide – Making a Difference: A guide to evaluating public participation in central government”, as a webguide and pdf document.

Public engagement is becoming a central plank of public policy-making. Activities range from large-scale consultations that involve tens of thousands of people, to social and market research, on-line discussion forums and small, deliberative citizens’ juries.

As government increases the scope and size of its public engagement activities, it is becoming increasingly important to assess the effectiveness of the different engagement methods, increase accountability and learn from past experiences. This is where evaluation comes in. Evaluation helps public engagement organisers set and measure attainable objectives, assess impact, and identify lessons for future practice.

Using clear language, simple instructions, illustrative case studies and a glossary, this guide is a valuable tool for anyone involved in running or commissioning public engagement in central government and beyond.

A new study has shown that public involvement in policy-making is unlikely to become more prevalent in the information age – confounding hopes of e-democracy enthusiasts everywhere for a strengthened state of democratic engagement.

The study – titled “Information Technology and Public Commenting on Agency Regulations” appears in the first issue of Regulation & Governance, a new journal of Wiley-Blackwell.

Professor Steven Balla and Benjamin Daniels of George Washington University tested, for the first time, the assumption that the information age will bring forth a new age of enriched democracy over government regulation.

Regulatory agencies have historically been receiving public feedback on proposals via written comments that were either mailed or hand delivered to agency headquarters – making it difficult for most citizens to gain access to, or have an awareness of, available materials. The onslaught of the information age brought renewed hope among regulatory observers that the Internet would bring agency policymaking closer to the public – enabling greater citizen involvement.

The Balla and Daniels study compares hundreds of rulemakings before and after one of the world’s first systems for electronic commenting was introduced in the United States in 1998 – before concluding that levels of participation were almost identical across both periods, indicating that the advent of the Internet has not changed the public’s participation patterns in rulemaking.

Professor Balla said, “Paper processes have been automated, yes. But this automation does not appear likely to significantly increase, for good or for bad, the public’s engagement in rulemaking – a very important mode of policymaking.”

Professor Balla concluded that “public involvement in rulemaking is not likely to become vastly more prevalent in the information age, confounding both hopes of democratization of the process and fears of costly and harmful mass participation.”

(re-posted from Kansas City infoZine News via E-Government News)

Recently the UK Department of Constitutional Affairs published a report into ‘The Future of Citizenship‘ (pdf, 645 kb, pages), an ambitious study which looks at how our definitions and behaviours of citizenship might change over the next 20 years.

The report outlines four possible scenarios for where we might be in 2027. The different scenarios assume different levels of economic development and civic activism.

The first ‘Global politics’ assumes that global shocks such as Climate Change lead to a global sense of responsibility and citizenship. In this scenario international agreements have a lot of public support.

Scenario 2 (‘Charity begins at home’) assumes that economic growth is combined with increased civic activism, creating a scenario where philanthropism and volunteering is widespread. The downside is that much of this activity takes place within relatively closed communities and that those who refuse to get involved are vilified by the rest of society.

In scenario 3 (‘Tribal politics’) the economy stagnates and society becomes increasingly fragmented. Politics becomes dominated by interest groups fiercely competing for limited resources and the interest of minorities is frequently overlooked. Civic engagement is largely reactive and limited to when ones own interests are threatened.

Lastly, scenario 4 (‘Remote self’) assumes that economic growth is combined with an increasingly disengaged population. This leads to a situation where the role of the state is limited and where the gulf between haves and have nots grows without any significant public reaction. People are increasingly individualistic and uninterested in the collective good. The government is increasingly called upon to used technological fixes, such as tele-voting, to curb the disengagement of citizens.

When asked which of these scenarios were most desirable and which were most likely government policy makers said that they would prefer a combination of scenarios 1 and 2 but that they thought that scenario 4 was most likely.

(via Involve)

Online petitions like the 1.8m-strong one against road pricing risk undermining representative democracy, a committee of senior MPs warned today.

Last month the prime minister, Tony Blair, was forced to send out a personalised email response to all of the signatories on an electronic petition to Downing Street demanding an end to congestion charging plans.

Today Tory and Labour MPs on the influential public administration select committee cast doubt on the use of online petitions by Downing Street.

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Recently the Downing Street website crashes under the weight of e-mails from angry voters.

The road pricing petition, which saw 1.8 million people e-mailing the Downing Street website, was arguably the biggest protest against government policy since 2003’s anti-war march.

The question now asked by Brian Wheeler, political reporter of BBC News, is where does it go from here? And is it a good or bad thing for democracy?

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‘Digital Dialogues‘ is an independent investigation into the use of online technologies to promote dialogue between the UK’s central government and the public.

The Digital Dialogues pilot is an initiative established by the Democratic Engagement Branch in the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA).

The Hansard Society’s eDemocracy Programme was commissioned to administer ‘Digital Dialogues’ and produce the case study evaluations. The Hansard Society is an independent, non-partisan educational charity.

Phase One of ‘Digital Dialogues’ took place between December 2005 – June 2006. The interim report released in December covers Phase One and contains case studies and draft guidance from that phase.

Six case study evaluations were completed in Phase One, involving a cross-section of central government agencies, departments and ministerial offices. The case studies used web-based applications, including blogs, forums, surveys and webchats.

Evaluations were generated through analysis of site statistics, interviews with case study owners in government, and surveys with registrants and site users.

Phase Two of ‘Digital Dialogues’ is scheduled to be conducted between August 2006 – February 2007. It provides an opportunity for longitudinal evaluation of case studies to test the guidance created following Phase One. In addition, phase two will make available applications that are beginning to see mainstream use – wikis, podcasting, file-sharing directories, audio-visual blogs, mapping software, virals. New case-study leaders will also be encouraged to combine applications – for example, converging polling software with forums, or photo-sharing with mapping tools. Any applications will be offered the opportunity to make use of one or more of these platforms in isolation from or in parallel to conventional, offline techniques.

The report from this phase is scheduled for April 2007.