An online consultation website combining text and video is among the nine winners of this year’s Building Democracy Innovation Fund (http://www.buildingdemocracy.co.uk/),
set up by the Ministry of Justice to promote democratic engagement.
Yoosk.com is an online conversation platform which allows anyone to ask questions of people including politicians, celebrities and other public figures. Votes cast by site users decide which questions get asked, and those selected are put forward to the figure in question.
The service allows respondents to post their answers in video format as well as text, an option which will soon be extended to users.
The site’s co-founder Tim Hood said: “It can be used as an engagement and consultation tool for government, as a campaigning tool for political parties or as a means to conduct MPs’ online constituency surgeries. Its aims are to improve the accessibility and accountability of public figures but also, seeing it from their point of view, to help them manage impossibly large volumes of direct communications and to get feedback on their performance.”
Yoosk has recently completed a project with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). When Foreign Secretary David Miliband visited Wales, people were invited to ask him questions through Yoosk. Miliband posted his replies via video format, with site users then rating his answers (see
http://www.yoosk.com/fco).
Other innovation fund winners of up to £15,000 each were UK Feedback; LocalEyes – The Voice; All Hansard on TheyWorkForYou.com; Policy Slam; Tagwagon; Young Assets; Empowering the Blind Citizen; and the Cambridge Parliament High Support Needs Committee.
