Jason Kitcat

This one has been in my to-blog pile since Friday so under the better-late-than-never heading here goes…

The folks over at DELIB have launched CitizenSpace which is essentially a portal for consultations. As they say:

Citizen Space acts as an intermediary between policy / law makers, and you.

This is useful. There is no national clearing-house for consultations and I think we desperately need one. Citizen Space could just do that. I would like to see an XML format (using RDF like FOAF does) for creating 'consultation feeds' to automate tracking all these participative practices. Anyone keen to start work on such a standard? Drop me an email.

It also is a showcase for how consultations themselves can be developed. DELIB have implemented their take on the current consultation on Prostitution Law Reforms. All responses they generate will be fed into the Home Office's work. DELIB's version is not earth shattering in terms of any new angle or technology. It's just a multi-page questionnaire form done pretty much exactly right.

In one sense not that exciting. But in another, exactly what we need. Many government consultations are only ever going to be forms like this due to time and resource limitations. Yet these forms are often created without any sensitivity to vital usability issues. DELIB have shown us how this most fundamental of online consultations forms can be done well. And we should thank them for that.

Now bring on the deliberative, social consultation tools!

I don't have time to do this site justice but ECOresearch Network's Election 2004 site is extraordinary. Using analysis of a wide number of sites, thousands of online documents etc the system tracks interest in and keywords associated with the candidates in the US presidential race. Especially cool is that non-US sources are included in the analysis and you can track changes in metrics over time. Very nice.

The site describes it as:

This project of the ECOresearch Network automatically provides a weekly snapshot of international media coverage. The results reflect media attention and attitude towards the US presidential candidates. Keywords grouped by political party and geographic region summarize the issues associated with each candidate.

This year we have the Labour Party's conference in Brighton (as if you didn't know). After managing to negotiate Sussex Police's astonishingly large Operation Otter (who comes up with these names?) I've slipped into quite a few fringe meetings already.

Before reporting on the fringes though, a few other items. The main thoroughfares in Brighton have become banner battle-grounds with supporters of the new stadium in Falmer making some creative entries (unfortunately as I'm rather opposed to building a football stadium in the countryside next to my University!). e.g. 'Professional football club, GSOH, looking for new home' or something to that effect.

Still the most striking banners are the primary colour New Labour ones which strike me as being odd in a number of ways…

1. The 'New Labour, New Britain' thing just seems remarkably hackneyed and dated in any context including the banners.

2. The statements on the banners are just so banal, meaningless and impossible to verify as so they do nothing for the casual observer. 'A better life for children' or 'A better life for communities' means what exactly? Labour has made many good changes (along with several bad) but these banners don't highlight the good work, they're almost aspirational – if they mean anything at all.

Robin Grant over at Perfect.co.uk (who is making blogging ever so challenging, he's posting on everything before I ever get a chance to!) has noticed that there are matching banners being advertised on the web. Nice to see some banner ads being used, but the same comments above apply to Labour's particular implementation.

The banners link through to the Labour Virtual Conference which does provide quite a decent conference experience with webcasting, live chats and… a blog ('conference diaries' in Labour.org.uk lingo) with comments enabled and even some entries from Party Chairman Ian McCartney. Some of the posts are a little garbled but I'm really rather impressed. Again Robin at Perfect.co.uk has more on Labour conference blogging.

Well this has turned into a rather large post in its own right so fringe reports in a later post…

• Louise Ferguson has posted a useful roundup of recent e-voting articles and upcoming events
• Brighton & Hove City Council have launched an intriguing site which lets you navigate the text of their Local Plan through maps. It's a fantastic idea but you can't actually post comments online and the usability leaves a LOT to be desired. Perhaps Louise could give them a hand.
• Perfect.co.uk had a great post on online consultations back in June. The link has been sitting in my 'to read' folder all that time. It packs together a lot of good stuff, some of which I'll comment more on next week. (Oh what a tease… I know).