e-Democracy – it’s not the tools, it’s what you do with them

Firstly I must say a great thanks to Dan Jellinek @ Headstar for setting up a great “e-Democracy” conference on the 11th November. It was a packed day with some great speakers and covered a lot of ground. If you’re available for next year’s then I whole-heartedly recommend it.

It also highlighted some interesting issues about the engagement of UK (and European) citizens with the process of e-Democracy. There was a general consensus from the people I spoke to that although there has been a lot of implementation of various e-Democracy tools i.e. consultation sites, forums, petitions, blogs et al, that when it comes to the more formal consultation processes there is a lack of public engagement across the UK. In short though the tools are often in place, people are not getting involved.

One obvious reason is that although the tools are there, people (citizens in .gov speak) do not know about them. You could answer that by saying, well there wasn’t enough marketing, but I think that’s missing the underlying cause. This tells me that in the public sector, central government and parliament there is a lack of understanding of the philosophy of e-Democracy; the tools exist to create a more transparent and democratic form of governance, however, the implications of their use are not properly understood and maybe even feared.

For example, if one were to ask the question, “When a public consultation is published and available to respond online how are the results of that consultation communicated back to those who have responded?” I’m certain there would be no standard answer, at best I imagine that a PDF of the ensuing policy gets posted to the consultation website and perhaps an email is sent to me.

Which brings me onto my second point. To spend time and engage with government online, as a member of the public I need to trust that my voice will be heard. I want to know how consultations are conducted. How the results of those consultations are compiled and analysed. How decisions are then made. And finally, to know how my contribution has helped and been valued.

If there was a clear process across-government and the public sector about how public consultation worked it would then be much easier to communicate to the public about how to engage with government, how to have their say outside of elections.

The new tools available to us that can help government engage with members of the public are doing little more than throw into sharp contrast what has for a long time been the case: the process of governance is not clear to people, including those in power.

I think the challenge to the government and the civil service therefore is to reengage with the processes of democracy; the technologies can only add value if these are better understood.

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