A long article by PBS’s Mark Dupreau:

“It’s easy to see governments as nameless, faceless monoliths, something impersonal or, even worse, untrustworthy. Much of that is because government culture remains steeped in traditional ideas about public relations and outreach work, notions that have become archaic in an Internet-enabled, hyper-connected world. Just as private companies are learning to embrace social media to manage brand reputations, governments must adapt if they wish to effectively communicate with their “customers” — a.k.a. their citizens and stakeholders.

I propose that using authentic and transparent personalities as public outreach ambassadors can help transform “government for the people” to “government with the people.” This should also have an indirect positive effect on the government organizations — the brands — they represent.”

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The BBC is to launch a political webcasting platform known as Democracy Live, Helen Boaden, Director of News at the BBC, told delegates at Headstar’s E-Democracy ‘08 conference in London this month.

The site “will offer live and on-demand video from all the main UK institutions and the European Parliament. Users will be able to search across the video for representatives and issues that are relevant to them. They will be able to find out more about their representatives in the institutions and follow their contributions,” Boaden said.

The site will also provide information on how the institutions of UK government work and what powers they have, as well as providing a resource of must know information concerning the issues in the news. “And while this will make for a compelling mix on the site, we also want it to be a shareable resource, with video and text content that users can take and place on their own sites or blogs,” she said.

In her keynote speech, Boaden focused on the role of citizen journalism enabled by new technologies in a modern democratic free press.

“Today, and increasingly in the future, audiences want the news at the time they want it; on the platform most convenient to them and tailored to the subjects or agenda they find most appealing…and for audiences who want to join in, that means including them in the process of making the news.

“The London tube bombings of July 2005 brought the realisation that news gathering had changed forever, she said. It introduced citizen journalism on an unprecedented scale fuelled by the use of mobile camera and video phones. Within 24 hours of the attacks, the BBC had received 1,000 stills and videos, 3,000 texts and 20,000 e-mails.

The technology also gives organisations like the BBC footage that would be difficult to obtain otherwise, for example the BBC is barred from entering Burma but when the protests erupted last year they were bombarded by emails, pictures, texts and video from citizens observing the events.

The importance of user-generated content (UGC) is now reflected in the creation of the UGC Hub -”a seven-day, 24-hour operation at the heart of our newsroom”.

Boaden’s speech is available in full on the BBC editor’s blog.

(via e-Government News)

Council of Europe Forum for the Future of Democracy hosted by the Government of Spain and the City of MadridMadrid, Spain, 15–17 October 2008

Conclusions by the General Rapporteurs

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.

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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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)

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.

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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Europe has celebrated 50 years of peace and political progression, but the next 50 will see massive changes in the relationship between the electorate and politicians thanks to technology.

That was the message from the Microsoft Government Leader’s Forum 2007 at the Scottish Parliament.

The delegates from more than 40 countries heard from a number of experts (see film archive), speaking about the role technology had played in transforming countries and how citizens engage with their democracies.

Commissioner for Regional Policy, European Commission Danuta Hübner warned European politicians must not rest on their laurels.

“Connecting with our citizens means more than trying to improve things. Citizens want to be more engaged politically, they want to feel ownership of the policies.”

“Information and Communications Technology has already triggered a social revolution in generating change and European politicians must take this into account with the realisation that the individuals are not only citizens but the creators of the content that all can see.”

Some of the other speakers included: Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rt Hon. Gordon Brown MP, First Minister of Scotland Rt. Hon. Jack McConnell MSP, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands Wim Kok, Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, President of Iceland H.E. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, Slovenian Minister for Public Administration Dr. Gregor Virant, Finnish MP Hanna-Leena Hemming, Vice Mayor of Lyon France Jean-Michel Daclin, Scottish Parliament Presiding Officer George Reid MSP, and YouGov Chairman Peter Kellner.

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Gov2U was founded in 2005 with the intention of harnessing the potential of ICTs as vital tools for the improvement of representative democracy.

Gov2U believes that new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) offer vital opportunities for bringing about a fundamental change to the workings of traditional democratic systems. By enabling and facilitating new forms of interaction within parliaments, and via citizen engagement in the political process, ICTs can help meet the challenge of creating more representative and efficient democratic systems.

The main crux of their activities is the research, development and deployment of open source enabling technologies to facilitate legislative information gathering and dissemination. In parallel, they are involved in the targeted dissemination of knowledge and best practice through the organisation of, and participation in, conferences, meetings, seminars and publications.

Towards the achievement of this aim, Gov2u has created the Gov2DemOSS platform, an open source, generic but customisable, informative and collaborative e-participation platform.

Designing for civil society, a blog maintained by British writer and consultant David Wilcox, features some interesting posts lately.

“Making e-democracy part of the everyday - even if that’s YouTube rules” is the title of one of the comments he wrote about the eDemocracy 2006 conference.

The comment spotlights Molly Webb, web manager at Demos who recently won an award for their site; Jo Twist, a senior research fellow at IPPR, where she is heading up their Digital Society and Media programme; and Twist’s colleague Kay Withers, who is working on Emerging Local Media and Citizenship in a Converged Digital Society.

Webb feels that “the main e-democracy focus on politics, government and citizens didn’t fully acknowledge all the activities people engage in online to express their social concerns and aspirations.” “Politics,” she says, “is on the street - outside Whitehall.”

Twist argues that “E-government shouldn’t just take offline processes and digitize them. We should be thinking about how the trends online are opening up new possibilities for communication and collective efficacy.”

Withers raises a similar issue: “As the idea of handing down power from Whitehall to the town hall, to citizens and local communities gains currency, the question which remains unanswered is how digital media and technologies can work more effectively at local levels to represent, enhance, and support real needs, as well as amplify voices and increase participation in decision making.”

The post also contains videos of Webb and Twist.

More articles and videos related to the eDemocracy 2006 conference are linked from this summary page.

The current issue of User Experience, the membership magazine of the Usability Professionals’ Association is devoted to user-centred e-government, with five articles on the topic, including one by Experientia partners Michele Visciola and Mark Vanderbeeken.

Tom James described how the website of the Salisbury District Council, a UK local authority, changed from a council-centred view to a user-centred view, with the result that the site leapt to the first sport in the SiteMorse survey of UK local authority websites.

Also the Aberdeenshire Council, another UK local authority, implemented a user-centred design approach, write Chris Rourke and Ross Philip. To make sure that government services were highly accessible and usable, the team involved captured user preferences through card sorting, established usability goals and metrics, conducted iterative reviews throughout the design process, and performed usability testing with end users.

Giaele Roccia leads the usability team of CSI-Piemonte, a big semi-public software company that is in charge of most software development for public authorities and entities in the Italian region of Piedmont. In her article she examines how legislative and technological impetus have resulted in strong attention to accessibility compliance, and less strong but growing support of user-centred design techniques in the Piedmont region of Italy. Here as elsewhere, the business case must be made evident to encourage public agencies to apply UCD principles to their websites.

Also written in Piedmont is the contribution by Experientia partners Michele Visciola and Mark Vanderbeeken.
The article “Encouraging Participatory Democracy: A Study of 30 Government Websites” starts from the premise that for the first time in history, a wide distribution of technology allows citizens to get involved in public governance and participate in institutional life on a very regular basis. Yet websites of public authorities are barely taking advantage of the power of the participatory citizen.
Two factors play a key role in this gap. First, the average citizen is not well informed about how basic democratic institutions function, which dramatically reduces the citizen’s capacity to influence the democratic process. Websites can help reduce the complexity of public institutions and get people to understand the way institutions and public administrations function and behave. Second, access to public services online is increasingly separated from institutional information. While online service sites are popular, the role of the institutional sites is not clear. The authors argue that these sites can and should take on the role of a two-way communications tool on topics of policy and politics, support knowledge sharing on areas covered by the authority, and create maximum transparency on what the public administration actually does.
To better understand the opportunities, challenges and evolutions that are affecting public institution websites, the authors studied the main sites of 30 public authorities and identified several innovative approaches. A first analysis shows that a lot remains to be improved. Almost all the sites analysed share three characteristics: (1) policy priorities are not concisely communicated and easy to understand, (2) there is only limited innovation in how regional or municipal institutions present themselves; and (3) there are no tools for active participation.
However, some of the studied sites provide elements of innovation that can be used as models and inspirations. The authors conclude that to improve information access, better communication strategies are needed and to increase participation, better usability is of crucial importance.

Jon Armstrong finally argues that e-government needs to do more to ensure citizens’ privacy. After all if government agencies adhere to privacy laws while developing e-Government solutions, then it is likely that their citizenry will increase its reliance on online government resources, safe in the knowledge that serious data protection has been implemented. Armstrong looks at Victoria, an Australian state, as a case-study example. On the website there is also a short interview of Jon Armstrong by Michele Visciola on the issue of privacy and usability.

The magazine also contains Michele Visciola’s review of the book Ambient Findability by Peter Morville.

The peer-reviewed content of User Experience is not available online but printed copies of the magazine can be bought in the UPA Store.

Tony Blair’s outgoing chief strategy adviser fears the internet could be fuelling a “crisis” in the relationship between politicians and voters, writes Brian Wheeler on BBC News Online.

Matthew Taylor - who stressed he was speaking as a “citizen” not a government spokesman - said the web could be “fantastic” for democracy.

But it was too often used to encourage the “shrill discourse of demands” that dominated modern politics.

He was speaking on the day Mr Blair carried out an online interview.

Mr Taylor said Mr Blair’s online grilling from voters - and other initiatives such as environment secretary David Miliband’s blog and Downing Street’s new online petition service - showed the government was making good progress in using the internet to become more open and accountable.

But he said more needed to be done by the web community in general to encourage people to use the internet to “solve problems” rather than simply abuse politicians or make “incommensurate” demands on them.

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By almost every measure, public confidence and trust in politicians and political institutions is slipping.

The RED unit of the UK Design Council looked at the problem from a local and practical perspective and wanted to find out what MPs could do differently in their constituency to rebuild our democracy and public faith in it.

In this short project they carried out two weeks of user research, ran a design workshop with 15 MPs and spent an intensive week working alongside the constituency office for Doncaster North.

Their report sets out ten practical things every MP can do to rebuild democracy in their constituency.

Download report (pdf, 1.34 mb, 25 pages)

Next week is the 10th anniversary of the birth of e-government in the UK. Michael Cross of The Guardian looks at how it came to be, and asks what progress - if any - has been made.

“In 1996, a green paper called Government Direct (”e” was not yet a business buzzword) set out a vision of citizens paying their taxes, receiving benefits and taking part in the democratic process via new electronic channels.”

“A decade on, after spending several billion pounds building websites, the government is only now getting to grips with many of the challenges the green paper set.”

[...] “For all the talk of radical reform, however, government bureaucracy of 2006 is much the same as it was when the Spice Girls were in the charts. The latest rebranding of the e-revolution, under the name Transformational Government, is wrestling with the same questions raised by Government Direct - how to orient services around the user, how to authenticate citizens’ identities electronically and how to share data in a legal and ethical way. We are no closer to creating a one-stop death notification service for the bereaved.”

Back in 1996, Colin Muid (one of the authors of the 1996 report) says, “We were saying ‘let’s clear up this mess’.” And what about now? “Now? We’ve got a digital interface to that mess.”

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“Seeking new ways to engage with voters, European politicians have taken to blogging and podcasting to get their messages out,” writes Kerry Capell in Business Week.

“David Cameron, Britain’s Conservative Party leader, launched his own video blog (www.webcameron.org.uk) on Sept. 30.”

“The artfully staged clips—the first one shows Cameron in his kitchen cleaning up after breakfast, explaining that he wants to “clean up” British politics—are drawing a mixed response from voters.”

“A gimmicky ploy to reach voters? No doubt, but Cameron and the growing number of European politicians who are finally following voters into the world of Web 2.0 should be commended for trying to engage the public in a two-sided debate instead of just talking at them.”

“Though still in their early days, new media tools such as blogs, video blogs, and podcasts are fast becoming the 21st century equivalent of stump speeches, allowing politicians to reach a younger, more Web-savvy generation of voters. These tools also help keep the pols in the spotlight—in a way that the pols themselves usually can control. [...] Another big lure of the Net is that it enables politicians to circumvent strict limits on media time.”

Politicians featured: David Cameron (UK), Ulster Unionists (UK), Dominique Strauss-Kahn (France), Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Laurent Fabius (France), Jan Peter Balkenende (Netherlands), Wouter Bos (Netherlands), Jan Marijnissen (Netherlands), etc.

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(via Loïc Le Meur)

(see also the “Participative” democracy and Webcameron posts by Bruno Giussani)

The UK Government launched today the International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE), set to drive up eParticipation rates in the UK through providing best practice advice and support to local authorities.

The aim is for seamless, personalised services that respond directly to people’s needs and are delivered in the way that best suits the individual.

ICELE will work with all stakeholders to help ensure local people are well informed and have a real voice in local decision making, as well as spreading this knowledge and learning. Democratic participation is steadily declining, yet opportunities to involve local people in local decision making are growing every day. From text voting through to online consultations, the organisers paln to harness new technologies to make it easy for people across the country to get involved in the democratic process.

The Centre is designed to serve as a ‘virtual’ focal point for collaborative eDemocracy initiatives both in the UK and abroad. Within the UK, local authorities, community groups and citizens can use the Centre’s online resources to help run projects in their local area.

Internationally, governments, academic institutions and not-for-profit organisations can use the Centre’s virtual facilities as a first point of call for information about pioneering e-democracy initiatives.

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Over the summer the RED unit of the UK Design Council ran a short design project to reconnect politicians with voters.

“We did not concentrate on the high road to democratic reform: Lords Reform, Electoral reform, devolution, or constitutional reform. But, focused instead on the low road to democratic renewal. We looked at how voters experience their local constituency MP.”

“We did 3 things. Firstly, we talked to the public to get a better understanding of the problem. We ran a design workshop for 15 MPs and their staff to get them to put themselves in the shoes of the public. And finally we developed some prototyped practical solutions working for a week in an MP’s constituency office in Doncaster.”

“We viewed MPs as a provider of a service to a local community, and tried to develop a new ’service offering’ for them. This included some familiar and unfamiliar ideas. The familiar ideas, included services like newsletters websites and surgeries. The unfamiliar included group surgeries, street surgeries, clusters, reverse invitations, the new local Hansard and a constitupedia.”

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