eDemocracy Update

PublicMarkup.org - participatory democracy in action?

I posted earlier this year about the greater possibilities for participatory democracy offered by the Internet.

Well, I've only just come accross the US site PublicMarkup.org but it seems to bring the technology of Part. Dem. one step closer.

The site claims to be:

"an ongoing experiment in preparing legislation more inclusively by opening bills to online, public review.

PublicMarkup.org gives you the opportunity to review and comment on proposed bills before they are even introduced—or while they are pending—in Congress."

It is another great idea by the Sunlight Foundation which gets me thinking, is there a UK equivalent?

Technorati tags: Public Markup, participatory democracy, Sunlight Foundation

Downing Street sneaks out new site images via Flickr

The digital comms team at No 10 Downing Street are currently on fire doing all the right things in the online space.

Not only have they started using Twitter in a way that should be a case study for other government departments and administrations around the world they are using their Flickr photostream to give people a sneaky look at the new Downing Street website.

I won't go into too much detail about the site and its features, as Simon Dickson (who's company, Puffbox, has been involved in the development) gives a thorough overview on his blog.

However, expect lots of social media-type functionality as the new site has been built using Wordpress!

Via Neville Hobson / Simon Dickson

Technorati tags: Downing Street, Gordon Brown, Wordpress

Public sector goes Twitter crazy

There was a flurry of activity on the UK & Ireland E-Democracy mailing list today with a Dave Briggs flagging a number of local authorities embracing Twitter.

Dave's list includes

• St Helens
• Southend
• Barnet
• Hillingdon
• Stratford-on-Avon

It's interesting to see how each authority is using Twitter. St Helens is using it to announce news stories; Southend seems to have used it to update the count during the local elections; Stratford-on-Avon are using it in a fully conversational way while Barnet seem to have registered their profile and not much else.

Another and interesting recent addition to Twitter is UK Parliament who seems to be someone behind the scenes at the Houses of Parliament website. This will be really interesting to follow as the HoP website provides a wealth of information from the day's activities in the house and having someone interpreting some of the day's parliamentary news is a great idea.

However, my main bugbear is that there isn't RSS on the HoP website. Given the amount, variety of info and frequency of updates is the perfect site to use RSS. That'll be my first question via Twitter!

Technorati tags: Twitter, Local Government, UK Parliament, Edemocracy

Lord of the Blogs: corny name but great blog

I thought Lord of the Blogs was a spoof at first… but a closer look reveals it is a group blog authored by 10 peers from the UK’s upper chamber, the House of Lords.

Despite the corny name and lacklustre design the site’s content is really, really good. Take for instance a recent post from Lord Norton. Responding to requests from commenters who want to know more about the bloggers, Lord Norton posts 10 interesting things about himself in turn achieving two really important things.

Firstly, he is responding to requests from users – creating a genuine dialogue. Ok, it’s not exactly about major policy issues at this stage, but if you set the foundations up right then it's only a matter of time before we get to that stage, surely?

Secondly, he is talking about himself, a member of the UK parliament’s upper (and traditionally most aloof and esoteric) chamber in an informal way.

To give Lord Norton his due he *attempts* to tell us 10 things about himself, but fails. He can only find nine – and one of these is: ‘trains’!

The other interesting thing is that the blog is part of a project being co-ordinated by the independent democracy think-tank, the Hansard Society. I intitially presumed that this would be part of their ongoing Digital Dialogues initiative, but a closer inspection of the DD website shows that it is a separate project.

More info about Lord of the Blogs can be found at the Hansard Society's website or in today's Guardian

Technorati tags: Lord of the Blogs, House of Lords, Hansard Society

Downing Street starts twittering

Following on from Alan Johnson’s use of Twitter for his deputy leadership campaign two new additions to the growing Twitterati are Downing Street and Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone.

I wonder how long before having a Twitter stream is a key part of political communications.

It was only a couple of years ago that blogging MPs were a rare commodity.

It ‘ll probably be quite a while yet though. I spoke to a client’s government relations manager recently about how he communicates with MPs and Peers. His reply was: “Mostly by phone or letter…. Although some are starting to now use email.”

Technorati tags: Twitter, Downing Street, Lynne Featherstone

A Youtube? On the interweb?

However, the best quotation comes from Conservative MP, Andrew Robothan, who - showing the Tories cutting edge credentials - told BBC Online that:

"There is a site called YouTube on the net and you can listen to the video. "I reckon I can hear 'what' being said."

Bless. Read the full story via the BBC.

EXCLUSIVE: First liveblogging MP during a parliamentary debate

The Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome, Sam Coates, sent me a fascinatng email this week telling me about possily the first example of liveblogging from the backbenches of Parliament!

Sam told me that the Tory MP for Harwich, Douglas Carswell, posted live to the ConservativeHome CentreRight blog while waiting to be called during a debate on the need to review the parliamentary calling procedures. He posted via his Blackberry.

Douglas reports:

"I write this sitting in the chamber of the House of Commons listening to a "debate" on education and skills.  It is now so utterly plodding and pedestrian that the gaggle of Italian tourists up in the visitors gallery got up and left after five minutes."

I bet liveblogging wasn't proposed in the review on making Parliament more accessible to the public.Maybe that's because live reports would be as damning as this one!

Douglas then offers us some constructive thoughts on reform:

"Rather than the current 15 minute time limit on backbench speeches, why not have 3 minute limits, but allow speakers to make several contributions?  That might force Honourable Members to say what they mean, and allow points to be developed."

Well, he may have hit on something there. His proposed changes would certainly make the debates more conversational, rather than a series of broadcast speeches from Members.

Another change that would be great for parlimentary democracy (maybe) would be to screen a live Twitter backchannel during debates.

How much fun would that be? During grand ministerial speeches you could see tweets scrolling across the Chamber reading:

• "Ask him where the money for his second house came from!"
• "Those statistics are used out of context."
• "Your flies are undone!"

I think it would be great.

Technotrati tags: ConservativeHome, Douglas Carswell, Parliament, democracy, Twitter

Messy Media's Westmonster launches

The UK's newest blog network, Messy Media, has this week launched its first blog offering in the form of Westmonster.

The site, edited by Sadie Smith, professes to:

"believe in personalities before policies and arguments before debate. We want to say who's doing what to whom and why ... In short, Westmonster aims to bring you what's going on in Westminster, from the insane to the mundane. If you fancy doing our work for us, send your facts, lies and half-truths to tips@westmonster.com. See you in the lobby.

So it appears to be going for a more Guido Fawkes than Iain Dale approach... or perhaps a more openly commercial approach.

Either way, another outlet opening up the Westminster Village is good by me.

Technorati tags: Westmonster, Messy Media, politics, blogging

Miliband's blog is back.. this time with some friends

Work is manic as per and as a resutl I haven't logged into my personal bloglines account in days.

However, I have just come across the news that Foreign Secretary, David Miliband is back blogging - which is great news.

Even better news is the fact that the site is caleld 'FCO Bloggers' which to me indicates that there is more than one FCO blog. So I has me a little look around.... and lo and behold there's a link to 'All FCO blogs'.

Nice one, Dave! The page declares:

"This blog space provides a place for Ministers and officials to engage in a dialogue with you about international affairs and the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We want these personal blogs to be a genuine sharing of ideas, so we will try to read the comments you post here and respond to the debate."

So it's all starting to look like a really good effort to help open up the FCO to a wider world.

In case you can't read the profiles, the FCO bloggers are:

• David Miliband, Foreign Secretary
• Lindsay Appleby, First Secretary, Brussels
• Sarah Russell, new entrant
• Jim Murphy, Minister for Europe
• Maria Pia Gazzella, Trade Officer, Santiago
• Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Ambassador to Afghanistan

Hopefully we'll get some really good material from across the FCO's global remit. There's also an FCO YouTube channel and Flickr stream

Technorati tags: FCO, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, David Miliband, blogging, government

Want a debate with the Prime Minister?

Just received an interesting email from David Price, CEO at website, Debate Mapper.

He writes about Tony Blair's much reported "Feral Media" comments from last week (if you're on Facebook you can even join the group - it's got over 500 members!) and invites me/us to take part in an experimential initiative which aims to aggregate the political debate online. In fact, here's a bit of what he sent:

"Last Tuesday's speech by the Prime Minister stimulated much public comment; with strong arguments articulated in support of and against the Prime Minister's analysis, and a near universal belief that the current relationship between politics and the media demands serious consideration.

Often in such situations the energy and arguments dissipate as the news and political agenda moves on to the next story. Is a more deliberative kind of public discourse possible?

To explore this question, the Prime Minister has asked us to gather and display all of the substantive strands of the public debate - supportive and critical - stimulated by his speech on the Downing Street website using a new form of collaborative web tool; a debate map with the open editing characteristics of a wiki."

All sounds very interesting. If you want to take part then go to www.debate.pm.gov.uk using the login: 106-pmdebate.

I doubt I'll have time at the moment to check it out so would welcome any feedback if anyone gives it a go.