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.

Read full story

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)

PASC – the UK Public Administration Select Committee – launches a new inquiry into the role that “customers” or “users” should have in shaping or even helping to provide public services.

The establishment of the Parliamentary Ombudsman scheme in 1967, and the introduction of the Citizen’s Charter in 1991 reflected an emerging consensus that public service users have a right to minimum standards, and a right to some recourse when those standards are not met. More recently a number of initiatives aimed at improving public services have put renewed emphasis on the citizen as a ‘customer’, ‘consumer’ or ‘user’ rather than passive recipient of the service.

This inquiry seeks to build on the Committee’s previous report into “Choice, Voice and Public Services” by considering the development of “voice” in the design and delivery of public services: mechanisms for complaint and redress, customer feedback, official consultations, and dedicated user representative bodies. It asks whether users should be more directly involved in service delivery – and if so, how this might be achieved.

Read full story

(via eGov Monitor)

An online ideas store to help cultural websites stand out from the crowd has been launched by Culture Online, part of the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), reports the eGov Monitor.

Called ProjectsETC, the new site aims to encourage information-sharing between institutions and focuses on the overlapping areas of education, technology and culture.

The site – www.projectsetc.org – includes case studies, practical guidance and comment pieces about real issues facing the cultural sector in the digital age.

Subjects covered include the truth behind web statistics, search engine optimisation and how to make websites accessible. The new site – part toolkit, part confessional and part advice centre – aims to help professionals working on interactive projects.

A series of podcasts has also been launched, exploring the issues behind the creation and management of digital resources.

Read full story

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.”

Read full story

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.

Read full story

With Europe’s population ageing rapidly and the demand for healthcare growing, healthcare services need to become more efficient. However, little hard evidence is available on the contribution of eHealth solutions. Now one EU project, eHealth Impact, has demonstrated that eHealth can provide enormous benefits – if the technology is properly implemented.

Electronically enhanced healthcare promises to reduce costs, improve quality and efficiency and treat more patients with the same resources. However, to date, no reliable data has been available to support this claim.

Now that data exists. The eHealth Impact project, which finished in May 2006, conclusively demonstrated that there is over a 2:1 ratio between economic benefits and costs. In other words, the benefits gained from implementing eHealth systems are more than two times greater than the additional cost of implementing them. “An eHealth system might cost more, but the benefits far outweigh the costs,” says Alexander Dobrev of the project team.

“But that ratio needs to be treated with caution,” he warns. “This is the cumulative average from ten of the best eHealth implementations we could find in Europe.”

Read full story

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.”

Read full story

Lavorare meglio, conciliare vita privata e professione: con l’aiuto delle tecnologie digitali.
PA@lfemminile è uno spazio per conoscere, comunicare, condividere. Dedicato alle donne della Pubblica Amministrazione.

Working better, reconciling private and professional life, with the help of digital technologies. PA@lfemminile (“Public Service in a female way”) is a space to be informed, communicate and share. Dedicated to the women in public service.

The site is run by Roberta Cocco, Director of Marketing of Microsoft Italy, who is also the driving force behind Futuro@lfemminile (the future in a female way) which aims to teach women about technology and empower them via technology.

(via a thousand tomorrows)

Patient Opinion is all about enabling (UK) patients to share their experiences of health care, and by doing so help other patients — and perhaps even change the NHS.

Patient Opinion is a revolutionary online system which allows anyone to share their experiences of receiving specialist treatment on the NHS.

Funded jointly by the Department of Health and South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority, Patient Opinion is a new non-profit company led by experienced GP and social entrepreneur, Dr. Paul Hodgkin. Based on his experience, and the service improvement requirements of the NHS, Dr. Hodgkin identified two major communication gaps which Patient Opinion will address:

• Patients and carers are now being provided with greater choice of specialist treatment options and locations – but they have little information on which options are best for them, without which choosing can be a lottery.
   
• The NHS has put in place lots of reporting and rating systems – but this formal ‘performance’ data seldom records the real experience of patients and carers.

People & Participation is the first publication of Involve, an independent organisation focused on the practicalities of giving more power to ordinary people.

“There have been many books and pamphlets about democratic reform. What is unusual about this publication is that it provides much needed practical detail, drawing on the experiences of many hundreds of practitioners who have used new methods to involve the public in issues ranging from local planning to nanotechnology. Its starting point is that deepening and strengthening democracy depends on success in learning lessons about why some kinds of participation lead to better and more legitimate decisions, while others do not.”

“The book shows that greater public involvement can greatly help in addressing some of our most pressing problems, and countering the risks of distrust and alienation. But it also warns that too much participation today is superficial, an exercise in ticking boxes as opposed to good democratic governance, or using public consultation to justify decisions that have already been made.”

“To their credit hundreds of public agencies have taken the lead in trying to involve the public more actively. The priority now is to build on that experience and to build confidence that public involvement can lead to better, and more legitimate, decisions.”

To download a free copy click here.

eUser, a Europe-wide survey of citizen needs for eGovernment and other public online services, funded by the EU, finds that 55% of those who have used eGovernment services are positive. Early efforts by Member States have led to a good start.

Nevertheless, a considerable proportion (33%) of users experience at least one significant obstacle when using or trying to use online government services. These include locating the relevant online service in the first place; using eGovernment efficiently; dealing with poor or patchy quality of content; and limitations in service functionality.

To remedy this situation, European governments must intervene on both the supply side – tailoring services to user needs and the user side – developing eSkills and awareness of online advantages.

Read full story

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)

Design for Democracy increases civic participation by making the experience clearer, more understandable, easier to accomplish and more trustworthy.

Design and social research professionals collaborate to enable compelling, efficient and trust-building experiences between government and the governed.

On a nonprofit basis, Design for Democracy offers consultation services to federal, state and local government agencies by developing models and prototypes to address large and small civic communication or industrial design problems. We consult with groups who work with government agencies in order to institutionalize design standards.

Design for Democracy helps government agencies find either national or local professional designers and researchers within its membership, who, on a for-hire basis, will test and implement designs.

Design for Democracy is a strategic program of AIGA, the professional association for design.

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)

Envision Solutions has published a new e-book that explains how to communicate about healthcare successfully in a world where social media is becoming increasingly influential. From Command & Control To Engage & Encourage focuses on how innovative healthcare industry players can integrate social media in their communications efforts:

“Currently, companies like Dell, Microsoft and GM are using social media technologies such as blogs to engage and communicate with their stakeholders. These corporations understand that social media has given the masses the power to significantly influence their economic fortunes.”

“Despite this shift in the communications landscape, many in the healthcare industry have been hesitant to do more than dip their toes into the social media ocean. They fear that engaging social media will require giving up control of their messages. However, the masses are already shaping perceptions of the healthcare industry. Individuals and organizations in this sector will have no choice but to develop a strategy for communicating effectively in a social media world.”

The e-book is available as a free download from the Envision Solutions web site.

(via the Business Innovation Insider)

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).

The E-Democracy programme of the Hansard Society, a UK charity that works towards promoting effective parliamentary democracy, seeks to develop innovative ways of using new interactive technologies to reconnect Parliament with citizens and encourage participation in the democratic process.

The E-Democracy Programme’s research explores the potential for interactive technologies to create new channels of communication and participation between Parliament and the people to enable citizens to scrutinise and influence legislation and those who represent them.

Some of their latest initiatives are:

• Citizen Calling – a pilot initiative with the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, where young people can have their say via mobile phone.
• TellParliament.net – open online consultations being run by Parliamentary Select Committees
• im-local.net – an online resource allowing young people and councils to interact and discuss topical local issues using ‘instant messaging’ technology.

“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