The panicky reaction to the million strong petition on the No 10 site raises a wry smile in local government. The democratic impact of e-petitions, and of petitions in general, is rather more positive from where I stand.
Kingston upon Thames pioneered e-petitions a couple of years ago and they are still going strong. See them on http://epetitions.kingston.gov.uk/
The main difference between our petitions (whether online or on paper) and those delivered to No 10 is that any petition placed before the Council MUST be considered by one of the committees, if it is about anything for which the Council has responsibility. The petitioner has the right to speak to full Council when presenting a petition and again when it comes before a committee.
Petitions are taken seriously and officer time is devoted to researching and reporting on the issues raised.
Facetious, vexatious or irrelevant petitions are ruled out right from the start. The petitioner is given helpful guidance, on a one-to-one level, about the wording of a petition and where it should be presented before it is posted. Each petition is then tracked so that visitors to the site can find out when it is being discussed and the outcome.
One interesting aspect of our e-petitioning system is the way it has empowered young people to campaign on issues.
The No 10 petitioning site is simple and transparent, but it is clear that there is no back office system in place to actually deal with the issues raised. The astonishing number of petitions that have been listed demonstrate how few opportunities citizens have to express their views to Westminster. Sadly, No 10 seems to think that all they need to provide is a graffiti wall, but with no obligation to read what is written on it.
Central government really does have something to learn from local government about how to respond when citizen participation is encouraged.
This appeared recently on eGovBlog – http://www.egovblog.com
http://www.egovblog.com/2007/01/16/online-public-petitions-at-the-scottish-parliament/
Very interesting
Hi,
The Kingston e-petitions system and the Scottish Parliament system are versions of the International Teledemocracy Centre’s e-petitions system. (Though Kingston have run their e-Petitioner autonomously, independent of us for over a year now). The system is also being used by Bristol City Council and the German Parliament and a new version is about to go live in Sheffield.
There’s more information on our website: http://itc.napier.ac.uk/ITC/projectsIndex.asp
and here are the links to the other systems (so far):
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/item/epetition.html
http://epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/
http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-Petition/bundestag/
Maybe it’s no big surprise, but the media response to the Number 10 service seems to be quite superficial & sensational.
E.g. Earlier this week on Channel 4 News Jon Snow adopted an outraged schoolmaster posture with poor old Matthew Taylor, late of the Strategy Unit. Snow’s approach was “Was this your idea, boy? Are you proud of the disruption you’ve caused?”, kind of thing. Snow worked himself into quite a lather, even suggesting that e-petitions could encourage fascism!
Then, this morning on the ‘Today’ programme, Jim Naughtie suggested that the petition on ID cards must be making Blair regret ever launching the service.
Ridiculous as these reactions are, it must make other public bodies concerned that one of the main outcomes of an e-petitions service is to hand the media a stick to beat them with.
The local press have certainly used the e-petitions pages at Kingston as a source of stories, but has always been positive about the system. In one case, an e-petition (written by a 16 year old)started a campaign to save a local voluntary organisation that was in danger of closing down because of a shortage of trustees. As a direct result the local paper itself ran a successful campaign to find new trustees, and the organisation was able to continue.
The point remains that petitions in local government, whichever medium is used, are processed and dealt with in a way that supports participation. 10 Downing Street has adopted an e-participation system, then been taken aback when people … participate.
(I should have acknowledged that Kingston’s e-petitioning system, along with Bristol’s, was developed by ITC. It is a simplified version of the Scottish system. I was keen that it should be no more complex than a paper petition, and it has worked very well.)
The Scottish parliament has a fairly well-used e-petitions system that does seem to work, too. Sadly, the No 10 version seems to be yet another spin-driven initiative, to give the public the impression that they are “participating”, and that someone might actually want to hear your views, be listening, and might even take account of the petition.
It’s a sad development, which, coupled with steady chipping away of the Open Government promises of Freedom of Information, are in serious danger of doing more to demage public confidence and increase cyncicism than anything else.
We are going “participation crazy”, with no end of new gimmicks embracing “cool” technology-driven tools which, if used properly, could really do a lot of good; but (as with almost all new technology), if mis-applied, merely serve to highlight and emphasise the flaws in the underlying process.