The European Commission has an incredible service called IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) which rounds up all sorts of great e-government news from across the EU. You can receive very detailed weekly emails on e-goverment and also Open Source in government.
Highly recommended.
Yesterday afternoon I attended an excellent IPPR/TUC event discussing how Unions can benefit from using Internet tools. Discussions ranged from getting general secretaries blogging to paperless direct debits. A very useful and productive event for all that attended.
One issue that I found particularly interesting was exploring how the Internet could help leverage peer-to-peer member interactions. So instead of requests going up to a union rep (or higher) and then down again, web-based member directories (such as we build every day for alumni associations, corporate networks etc.) could empower members to find the right people instantly. This cuts out the middle-man and really lets members see the richness of their fellow union supporters.
This idea is scary to many due to the potential loss of control over member communications and data protection issues. These are both surmountable, however talking to delegates it became clear that the real stumbling block was fear from branches of letting centralised union bureaucracies have their membership data in the first place… a tough political nut to crack.
There's a write-up of the event (before it happened bizarrely enough) on PublicTechnology.net. Will Davies (from the IPPR) has a personal blog entry and an official entry with links to presentations, papers and so on. Roger Darlington's presentation was particularly passionate about the power of technology. It was only when I got home and pulled up his site that I realised I already knew who he was – bizarre.
Accelerated Democracy is a series of skilfully constructed (almost real) scenarios on how technology could radically alter the way we vote. (Thanks to Louise for the pointer that led to me finding this site)
The ever thought-provoking Clay Shirky has unleashed another of his essays. “Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software” is an interesting analysis of social use of software and its implications in how such software might be best designed.
If you're a Mac user then you probably know and love at least one item of Panic software. Here's the story of their recently retired audio app, Audion. It's a great read.
I'm a sucker for cool looking visualisations (as Wired's InfoPorn section used to champion). Ones that are useful are even better of course.
Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman from the University of Michigan have distorted maps of the US according to state populations to give us a better idea of how the votes were distributed and it really is quite stunning.
Via WorldChanging
If I was deaf I'd probably be in Portsmouth by now.
Returning from a client meeting I was enjoying the pleasures of Clapham Junction. The electronic signs informed me that the first train would be to Chichester and the second was to my destination, Brighton.
Time passed… a train came and left while I was on the phone. Looking up I saw that the boards hadn't changed… the Chichester and Brighton trains were still up there looking rather late. You know how it goes:
14:28 Chichester expected 14:35
14:32 Brighton expected 14:38
Time 14:41
Then an announcement:
“Customers are advised to ignore the electronic information board as the information displayed is incorred. This is due to a software fault.”
The message is repeated several times over the next five minutes. So what exactly is the next train? Finally we're told it's one to Eastbourne… so I missed my train. Great.
The Eastbourne train pulls up, it's own electronic destination signs proudly showing “00 Victoria” – so where was it going? A voice echoes on the PA reasuring us of the destination. I step on in the hope that it really will stop at Haywards Heath so I can change.
If I hadn't heard any of the announcements then I would have been well and truly stuffed. If you're blind people notice and try to help, but at least you can hear announcements.
If you're deaf it's hard for the hearing to tell so you just look around and use your wits and hope there isn't a software fault.
It seems to me that in the final days of the US election TV is still where it's at.
Last night I watched the special Question Time from Miami, Florida. On the panel was an odd collection of voices from a bombastic Michael Moore to The Sun's Richard Littlejohn. But boy was it fun to watch the crowd… it was like a pantomine, Republicans booed when anyone said that Europe or the world might prefer Kerry – talk about denial. It was fun watching though nothing new really came out if it.
There's another TV-centric story that does bring the Internet into view however. George W's 'wrinkled shirt' during the debates. Did he have a device on his back or not? It was the TV cameras who gave us the lead but it's the web pushing the story forward. The latest is Salon's report on an analysis by a NASA imaging specialist who is adamant that there was an electronic device on Bush's back. This is just such an odd story people can't help to want to know more… and it's the online sources that can do so quickly.
John Lettice in the Register has the lowdown. Basically this is an updated document which has hardly changed in any significant way. OSS remains a possibility but it's unlikely we'll see any new initiatives out of this policy.
The policy document [PDF]
The Guardian has launched a rather bizarre but very interesting project to try and ensure Kerry comes out top in the US elections. Operation Clark County is a website where visitors submit their email address and are given the address of a voter in… Clark County, Ohio. This is a highly marginal county in a highly marginal state which could be decisive in what looks to be a knife edge result. So you get the address, write the voter a letter (persuading them to vote Kerry hopefully though the Guardian doesn't say this) and more people will vote potentially.
Robin Grant expands on the project on perfect.co.uk, they've filtered out registered Democrats and Republicans from the list to increase the impact of the letters. It's a weird idea, nice use of the web but I'm a little suspicious of 'outsiders' trying to influence the election of a sovereign state. But then US politics affects the world like no other country's can at the moment. Well whatever the rights or wrongs I would love to see the faces of those Clark County voters when they open a letter from a Limey they've never met!
Just posted on Ideal Government…
Assuming Government want more people to take part in consultations then putting consultations online is 'a good thing'. Online consultations are often easier to run, more flexible and more likely to garner responses. Sending an email is much easier than responding to a paper-based consultation. Paper-based consultation processes usually involve, in my experience, the following steps:
Online consultations, if done right, can consist of:
Such an abbreviated process is likely to draw in people who haven't previously participated in consultations, or even any political activity. However one challenge is that once these newcomers have done one consultation they may not return for another. Why? Because often it's impossible to see what impact their responses had. At the very least respondents want to see their arguments acknowledged in a summary of submissions. But truly people submit to consultations because they want to make a difference!
Politics is a game of negotiations and compromises between a wide number of interests. However people participating in consultations are not provided with this context. Their expectations are raised to the level that their lone voice will have a meaningful impact. But if the consultation has 7,000 responses and is for a policy at the pre-legislative stage it's going to be very hard for the respondent to see what impact they have had in any outcomes that do emerge.
So online consultations need to do the following to ensure that participants don't go away disappointed but keep engaging in political activities:
Jason Kitcat 