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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A new initiative by Israel’s parliament will soon allow every Israeli citizen to share his or her proposal for new legislation by cellular phone text messaging.

The “Knesset SMS” program, conceived by MK Israel Hasson (Israel Our Home), will be activated and managed by his bureau. Hasson will select the best suggestions and will officially propose them to the Knesset.

So how will all this work? A citizen who wants to propose an amendment to a particular law or advance an idea for a new law can send a brief summary of his idea over the phone. The SMS must open with the word “law”, followed by the written proposal.

The message must be sent to the phone number 5454, at a cost of 40 Agorot (about 10 cents) per message.

The proposals will automatically be presented on MK Hasson’s Web site. Every few weeks, Hasson will sift through the suggestions while consulting with legal advisors and his office colleagues. He will present those deemed suitable to the Knesset as law proposals.

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(via textually.org)

On his blog Lunch over IP, Bruno Giussani discusses some high-level experiments in “participative” democracy online.

"After experimenting with participative democracy in my region, I became convinced that citizens are often experts and can contribute to solve problems". Feel there is something wrong with this sentence? (What form of democracy do you know that’s not "participative"?) It’s signed by Segolène Royal, the front-runner for the socialist nomination in next year’s French presidential election. She is trying to develop her program/platform online, "participatively", through a website called "Désir d’avenir" ("Longing for a future") where she posts drafts of her ideas and lets people comment on them. The resulting synthesis "of the ideas that I deem feasible will be published on the site, so that your contributions will be fruitful"…

José Luis Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, is testing the online waters too: PSOEtv (where PSOE is the acronym for the Spanish socialist – majority – party), which is arguably Europe’s first online TV channel by a major political party, just launched. It has immediately been nicknamed "Telezapatero" and the first show featured the Prime Minister stating that the aim of PSOEtv is to "inform the citizens and let them participate in the government’s actions". The participation bit is not clear though: all there is is a button saying "your comments", which takes users to an e-mail form.

Antonio Di Pietro, the man behind the famous Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) enquiry and currently Minister of Infrastructure in the Prodi government, launched a blog in January 2006 to enable “direct communication and participation for people in the political life”. Interestingly (and exceptionally), the blog content is identical in English and Italian.

Today, he writes that at the national conference of his political party, Italia dei Valori, he also invited a group of bloggers, because, he says, the internet can be a “tool for direct democracy, “thanks to the possibility of giving direct knowledge about the facts whether they are political or related to the actions of the government”. He believes “that this is a first for such a group to be officially present at a political meeting”.

French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, who is the executive vp & managing director of Europe of Six Apart, the company behind TypePad and Movable Type, immediately picked up on this.

(via Loïc Le Meur)

The relationship between late modern governance and new information and communication technologies (ICT) is complex and dynamic, catching the attention of scholars across disciplines.

The book “Democratic eGovernance : approaches and research directions” by Olsson, Jan and Åström, Joachim (eds.), brings together research within informatics, political science, media and communication studies and history, and provides a critical perspective on approaches and research directions from an inter-disciplinary perspective. The collective aim of the book is to develop a more comprehensive understanding on the conditions for Democratic eGovernance by pulling together insights from a variety of disciplines.

Taking on this challenge, the book summarises empirical researchand theoretical questions ranging from the invigoration of formal politics to the “explosion” of informal politics, from global trends to local responses, and from political ideas to technical practices. In its concluding part, a strategic inter-disciplinary research agenda is developed by combining thet hree intellectual virtues of Aristotle: episteme, techne and phronesis. This book is essential reading for all who have an interest in late modern governance, ICT and the possible futures of democracy.

‘Facilitating Active Citizenship’ is the title of a status report on eParticipation in the UK and Germany, published by the British Council in Germany in co-operation with politik-digital, a German organisation that monitors the impact of the German-language Internet on citizen-friendly political communication. The study is available in German and English.

The report itself draws few direct comparisons or conclusions, beyond noting that eDemocracy, like any other democracy, is nothing if not participative. For the most part, the study consists of well-researched and interesting practical examples from both countries.

An accompanying article on politik-digital digs a little deeper. “It is noticeable that eParticipation in Britain is already much more strongly integrated into everyday political life than in Germany,” writes politik-digital’s Christoph Dowe. “The Scottish and British parliaments provide extensive good practice on getting citizens and politicians talking to each other better. British public service broadcasting has now come to see itself as also being an ‘enabler’, not only delivering information but also creating the infrastructure for citizens to become politically active themselves.”

Dowe ascribes the differences between German and British approaches to attitudes predating the Internet: the British ‘Speakers’ Corner’ tradition of soapbox politics versus the feeling within German political institutions that they “have no legroom for experiments, because they might fail”. In IT terms, he dubs this “the German fear of the beta version”. But as Dowe himself points out, the report is only a snapshot. There is plenty more scope for eParticipation in the UK, Germany and everywhere else.

- Download report in English (pdf, 1.9 mb, 84 pages)
- Download report in German (pdf, 1.73 mb, 89 pages)

The e-Governance Academy is an Estonian non-governmental, non-profit organisation, founded for the creation and transfer of knowledge concerning e-governance, e-democracy and the development of civil society.

Its mission is to train and advise leaders and stakeholders in using information and communication technology (ICT) to increase government efficiency and to improve democratic processes with the aim of building open information societies.

The e-Government Academy is a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Regional Support Centre of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“eParticipation is a Preparatory Action [of the EU's Information Society and Media directorate] to promote the development and use of Information and Communication Technologies in the legislative decision-making processes, in parliamentary and government environments, aiming at enhancing the participation of citizens and contributing to better legislation”.

Is it not clear? Well, unfortunately the rest of the page is not much of a help either. So I had to download the work programme to find out what this eParticipation initiative actually entails (user-friendliness is not the first thought of whoever writes these EU webpages).

It turns out it is all about kicking off some demonstration projects that use technology to create better citizen involvement in the legislative process, or in the EU’s own bureaucratic language:

“The overall objectives are to demonstrate concrete cases where, with the help of modern ICT
tools and applications, improvements of the legislative/legislation process and its outcomes
can be achieved, and at the same time, enhance the participation of the public (citizens,
businesses, socio-economic and political groups, etc) in the decision-making process,
amongst others through improved interaction with decision-makers.”

They have now issued a call for proposal [deadline: 4 October] for trial projects to test state-of-the-art ICT-based tools in concrete legislative processes, with a particular emphasis on:

• Visualisation of arguments, dialogues and impacts of legislation
• Tools to assess costs and benefits of proposed or adopted legislation
• Tools to reduce complexity of legislation in order to improve access to its content by
  non-specialists
• Possible ways to organise and structure legislative information, thus improving use
  and content access, through e.g. standardisation and harmonisation techniques.
• Tools and services to allow access to relevant legislation content according to specific
  needs of citizens, socio-economic groups of geographical areas
• Tools and services to enable the interaction between members of parliaments and
  citizens or socio-economic groups on cross-border EU level issues

The Serious Games Initiative is focused “on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.”

The website, which is really a blog, was developed by David Rejeski, director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and Ben Sawyer, president of Digitalmill, Inc. a Portland, ME based consultancy.

On the Wilson Centre website — which strangely enough doesn’t provide a link back to the Serious Games Initiative website — you can read an interesting article by David Rejeski where he argues that there should be a public sector body to make video games in the same way that PBS or the BBC makes radio and television. This body, which Rejeski calls “Corporation for Public Gaming”, “would operate on a model similar to its broadcasting equivalent, providing grants to develop a diversity of games for the public good.” In other words its goal would be “to provide high-quality games, which ‘inform, enlighten and enrich the public.”

Sawyer was also the volunteer producer of the first Serious Games Summit held at the 2004 Game Developers’ Conference. The 2006 Serious Games Summit is “the premier professional conference for the creators and commissioners of serious games, [focused on] the use of interactive games technology within non-entertainment sectors”.

(via my business partner Jan-Christoph Zoels and Anne Galloway of Ottawa’s Carleton University)

“Extreme democracy” is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a deliberative process that places total confidence in the people, opening the policy-making process to many centers of power through deeply networked coalitions that can be organized around local, national and international issues.

Visit website

We want to start a new political party that will focus on formulating political agendas rather than fielding candidates for election. The Participatory Democracy Party (PDP) will be a genuine grass roots effort; the party membership, organized into task forces focused on particular areas of concern, will identify problems that the political system can address, evaluate proposed solutions, and define a political agenda to apply the best solutions to the problems. The party’s influence on events, then, will depend on its ability to get elected officials to adopt and implement the agendas it develops. The work of the party task forces will be done through email and telephone conferences, managed and facilitated by web-based technologies. The PDP will be a transparent effort: all party communications will be publicly archived.

This site presents a proposed structure and operational methodology for establishing the PDP.

Kitchen Cabinet is a project initiated by the UK Design Council to design and prototype new systems of interaction between (UK) MPs and constituents and to create an open resource of ideas, suggestions and best practises that MPs can use to strengthen the connection between people and politicians.

Kitchen Cabinet starts with the constituent’s perspective. The Design Council has been “listening to the perceptions and experiences of constituents in North East and South East England” and they are “in the process of identifying a number of design opportunities that MPs can use to improve their relationship with local voters”.

The findings from this initial stage of research with constituents can be downloaded here:

• Download project summary presentation (pdf, 964 kb, 11 pages)
• Download complete user research report (pdf, 1.71 mb, 107 pages)
• Download user research summary film (mp4 file, 55 mb, 10 min.)

Government 2.0: Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy
by William D. Eggers.

A well-written, lively, optimistic book that calls for the transformation of technology in government from lipstick on a bulldog to total information awareness. This book is proactive in nature (see what these governments are really doing), does not call for a wholesale and costly transformation, and employs a subtle shaming of those governments that have not yet joined the 21st century. William Eggers’s argument, conservative in nature, states that the world of politics would quickly and markedly benefit from this digital transformation in terms of a fiscal payoff, but a more profound change would result as governments become more transparent, more democratic, and more efficient.

- Amazon link
- Book website
- Article by the book author

While nonprofits and campaign organizations are still focusing on top-down organization to raise money and build support, other groups are working to build environments for a deeper kind of democracy that’s based on collaboration, talking, listening, and learning, much of it mediated by social technology.

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voi siete qui è il primo strumento del progetto openpolis, per una politica liberamente accessibile, modificabile e migliorabile dalla comunità degli utenti.

Un intervento permanente nella cosa pubblica, di controllo e influenza sulle scelte politiche.

L’idea è dare uno strumento che permetta a tutti di confrontare i programmi dei partiti su 25 temi fondamentali.

I prossimi strumenti saranno progettati per permettere il monitoraggio comunitario, per ognuno dei 25 temi, delle posizioni di tutti i partiti nel corso della prossima legislatura (prima delle elezioni hanno detto questo, dopo hanno fatto…).

Tutti i progetti di openpolis sono geneticamente open publishing, open content, open source creati e moderati dalla comunita’. Per saperne di piu’ vai su openpolis.

L’idea del progetto openpolis, di cui voi siete qui è il primo strumento, parte dai soci dell’associazione democrazia elettronica e partecipazione pubblica.

Poi si e’ allargata a un gruppo di persone che si interessano della politica e di nuovi media. Alcuni lavorano da anni nel campo delle nuove tecnologie, altri stanno nelle universita’ e nelle scuole. Tutti condividono i principi del progetto. Siamo una comunita’ che vuole crescere, in fretta.

TheyWorkForYou.com is a non-partisan, volunteer-run website which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in the UK Parliament.