Digital Democracy

The last blog...

admin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:55:00 GMT

This is my last blog as Director of the Digital Democracy Programme. After three and half years I'm heading to new pastures, or rather old ones... back to the world of the independent consultant, this time London-based but still globally focussed.

When I started in this role I wrote about the current state of the digital democracy landscape. A lot has changed since then, not least the rapid acceleration of social media. A lot, too, has not changed - or not changed enough. When I started, Downing Street's e-Petitions were going strong. Now we have the new system on DirectGov and the quality remains dubious but the latent opportunity is still there. Beyond that, more MPs are talking digitally. More get it. More civil servants get it. But still the chain is being dragged and institutionally, despite moves to open up data, there is still significant resistance to transforming government, parliament and society into a more inclusive democratic and discursive space.

What has changed above all is that the internet has come of age. This is now a digital society where the majority of us are online and almost all of us are on mobiles. We've seen time and time again - in the 2010 general election, the Arab Spring and last weeks riots - that people now turn to digital because that's where they live their lives. Digital media is now an inherent part of society, so those organisations who ignore it do so at their peril.

I'm planning on staying around the Hansard Society as a Visiting Fellow, so I won't be a stranger. But in the meantime, keep up with what I'm doing or get in touch via my own website or on Twitter.

Dr Andy Williamson

Parliamentary Broadcasting Agreement versus global media and the internet

admin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:06:00 GMT

There's been a bit of talk in the media over the last few days about a recent edition of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The interest comes from Channel 4's decision not to show a particular internationally syndicated episode because it contained edited extracts of video from Parliament.

The problem lies in the parliamentary broadcasting agreement (PARBUL). This prohibits, by penalty of a few nights in the Tower no doubt, broadcasters from editing footage from the chamber. Which is exactly what the Daily Show did. After all, it's common practice everywhere else.

Channel 4 simply called it a ‘compliance problem'. But there's been a little bit of a moan in media circles about how archaic this all seems. The New Statesman sums it up well.

There are a couple of issues at play here. On one point, the New Statesman is absolutely spot on. The now well out of date broadcasting rules for Parliament have simply failed to keep pace. Not just with the internet but with the growth of digital broadcasting and global media consumption. It makes no sense that you can show footage from the UK Parliament in the US but to do so would be illegal in the UK. The problem goes further, as many MPs know only too well. PARBUL has been a nightmare for Members wanting to put clips of themselves up on their blogs and websites. The US Congress provides Members' offices with the tools to get near-live two minute segments; straight after a Member speaks, it's on their own website. Do that here and you're in trouble. Yes, it is ridiculous. And everyone knows it. That's why PARBUL has been renegotiated this year.

Which brings me on to the second issue here. As Radio 4's Today programme showed us this morning, taking a few words out here and there can and does change meaning. What the Daily Show did is fine for satire but we need to be careful when it comes to ensuring the media has a responsibility to broadcast exactly what was said in Parliament. What's OK for satire isn't OK for Newsnight, where it's definitely not acceptable to edit out any materially important part of a clip.

Finally though, as always, what you can't see on TV, you can see on the internet - the footage is freely available on YouTube.

Andy Williamson

Digital Paper: Gender and Digital Politics

admin — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:47:00 GMT

A new Digital Paper, Gender and Digital Politics, published today by the Hansard Society, examines the online political participation of women and men and concludes that the gender imbalance online is the result of wider political exclusion, not digital exclusion. Gender and Digital Politics examines overall levels of internet access and activity and finds generally similar levels across the genders. However, when it comes to more active online political participation, such as writing blog posts or commenting on blogs, the figures are usually male dominated:

80% of MPs' blogs are by men
85% of political media blogs are by men
93% of councillors' blogs are by men
85% of individual blogs in Total Politics Political Blog Awards 2010 were written by men
79% of blog posts and 90% of comments on Lib Dem Voice blog (to November 2010) were written by men

The gender pattern in the world of digital politics is similar to the gender composition of Parliament (only 22% of the MPs elected in May 2010 were women), and to the gender balance of candidates standing in the last election (again only 22% were women). However, although the numbers of women MPs are small, their use of online tools is not dissimilar to that of their male counterparts:

49% of female Labour MPs and 45% of male Labour MPs use Twitter
41% of female Conservative MPs and 30% of male Conservative MPs use Twitter
43% of female Liberal Democrat MPs and 56% of male Liberal Democrat MPs use Twitter (there are only seven female Liberal Democrat MPs)
Across the parties, 55% of new female MPs and 50% of new male MPs use Twitter

Dr Andy Williamson, Director of the Hansard Society's Digital Democracy programme, commented: ‘While writing and commenting on political blogs seems to be dominated by men; it mirrors other offline and non-political activities such as writing letters to newspapers for publication. Overall, the evidence for online politics suggests that the more an activity involves self-promotion, the more likely there is to be a male dominance. Where women are active in politics, they are equally as likely as their male counterparts to be digitally active.'

The Digital Agenda for Change: Where are we one year on?

admin — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:41:00 GMT

The coalition government, like its predecessor, strongly advocated for open and transparent government. Before the last election, Tim Berners-Lee’s work led to the establishment of a government data store and government efforts since May 2010 have expanded this. We have seen the publication of not just central government spending in machine readable formats but the creation of a requirement for local government to follow suit. This move mirrors Obama’s first Presidential proclamation, a decree for open data, but in the US we are now starting to sense a retrenchment and a questioning of both the value and cost. Where advocates argue for the value of transparency and the power of crowd-sourcing, sceptics suggest it is simply satisfying a battalion of arm-chair auditors.

Although the UK lags behind the US and Australia, there are some excellent examples of public data being harnessed effectively for public use; from FixMyStreet and Police crime maps to London tube and cycle hire apps and the opening up of council GIS services, we have seen an explosion in the range of data available and the innovative apps that use it.

There are wider issues relating to government computing that are relevant to this conversation too. Government is a disparate maze of hundreds of proprietary databases and software applications, departmentally bound, closed (sometimes for very good reason) and costly–both in terms of the data they obscure and the licensing of front and back end applications. Cabinet Office’s 2010 ICT Strategy signalled a clear push towards rationalisation and a shift to the cloud, with a significantly reduced number of remote data centres. This plan seems to be largely on track, if at a reduced pace and scope. Consolidation projects are also being proposed at the front end of digital government, with DirectGov increasingly presented as a portal for government consultation, as well as satisfying service and information provision. Beyond DirectGov, the innovative AlphaGov pilot is taking shape, suggesting a whole new metaphor for citizen-government interaction, designed around individuals and the effective delivery of locality-based services.

All of these changes reflect a slowly changing culture within government, where open access to public data is starting to be assumed but certainly cannot be taken for granted. But where are the boundaries–at what point does the cost outweigh the value and does open data compromise personal privacy or national security? Are there risks associated with providing ‘raw’ data to a public who lack the background knowledge and skills to analyse complex data sets? Or are we to rely on expert third party intermediaries to act as our interpreters?

The government IT model is still largely monolithic but there are cracks beginning to emerge, such as the innovative government skunk works, designed to encourage fast, reactive and emergent thinking around government computing. But, as Martha Lane Fox noted in her report to Cabinet Office, government’s lacks of a central CIO, capable of making decisions and driving new thinking from the top is a stumbling block. And there is still a cultural mindset at play that favours risk aversion; the tried and tested over new and innovative.

A second cultural shift is the removal of the assumption that government will provide the front end (the application) for government data. Through hacks, barcamps and passionate individuals we have seen a wide range of third party apps emerge to deliver public data to our PCs, phones and iPads. This kind of innovation would never have come from the centre but it is now part of the catalyst for change within government.

Politics cannot be immune from such changes. What we learnt at the last general election was that the internet–email, websites, social media and blogs–was important but there was no moment where you could pin substantive change on something that occurred online. We saw the same in Germany. And what we’re seeing now in the Middle East and North Africa is the internet–particularly Facebook, YouTube and Twitter–drawn in as tools for change; important, not mission critical but able to connect like minds, scale up protest, share footage and keep the world informed. The internet is now ‘business as usual’ for enough of the population that it is inconceivable to many that democracy and politics can happen without it.

This means we will see the steady induction of the internet into the processes of Parliament. As someone once said, ‘resistance is useless’. Tweeting from the Commons is now, well, common, and the Lords has relented on this too. Both Houses (with the Lords leading) have acknowledged, if not universally, the contribution of handheld devices such as iPads. Parliament is an effective user of social media and projects like Lords of the Blog reach out beyond the walls of the palace. The coalition government too has followed up on promises for a Public Reading Stage for bills. It is difficult to imagine this not being internet-driven. They have signalled that, alongside a government e-Petition system (to replace the Number 10 system that was quietly euthanized late last year), they would like to see Parliament’s petitioning process brought up to date, as the Procedure Committee recommended back in 2008.

Andy Williamson

Can e-Participation contribute to a new European public sphere?

admin — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:00:00 GMT

There are discourses within the European Union relating to citizenship and the role and value of civil society. These acknowledge that work needs to be done to promote a sense of collective belonging amongst the citizens of member states, where the focus (often fuelled by national media) remains strongly domestic. Civil society organisations are seen as playing a role in this and models of e-participation have perhaps been more focussed on the EUs relationship with these groups rather than directly with the wider public sphere.

Within Europe there are signs of citizen discord and disaffection with the political status quo. Party political membership has been in constant decline for a very long time and today trust in politicians remains low. Recent citizen responses have tended toward public protest rather than direct engagement with the systems of government, with examples of large scale public demonstrations seen in the UK and Spain amongst others. Our societal shift from the communitarian to a more individual focus has perhaps ironically also accelerated the demise of ideology such that today’s citizens are driven by pertinent issues, not led by party manifestos.

Civil society organisations have filled a void created by the general shift towards neo-liberal ideas and were a product of the 1980s and 1990s. Now, twenty years later the landscape has changed again, driven in part by the rise of the internet and social networks but also through a generational shift in attitudes. Whilst some argue that we have experienced a decline in social capital over the last four decades, we have in recent years seen a rise in the more informal networks of association, where weak ties connect people more loosely through interests and timely response to events. The internet is important because it is ideally suited to the forming of rapid, viral and temporal loose networks around issues.

Political institutions remain firmly rooted in the old ways of thinking, despite some attempts to trial new media. The physical building of a parliament can be seen as a metaphor for the democracy it supports; is it open, welcoming and engaging or cold, closed and difficult to reach? This old world is not the online world and political systems risk being left behind if they do not adapt and adopt new media as core attributes of their process of engagement. It is not a case of when but how and resistance to embracing social media and the more open and transparent models of politics and government that this requires is not an option.

Social media itself changes the nature of constituency for our elected representatives and it changes the processes of government. Engagement can be proactive, effective and transparent. It is now necessary not simply to be seen to engage but to be demonstrably able to show the processes for managing the response from such engagement and the actions that result. If the public are to take part they must see value and authenticity in the process. Government must also be willing to hand over responsibility for engagement to others and then be able and willing to take the input from these third party tools. Not only must public data be open and available for public use and re-use, this process must be seen as two-way and data from the public sphere needs to be fed into the policy and legislative processes too.

There are challenges, particularly within the EU, where language is a major issue. Although a barrier to more effective engagement across the member states, this is a temporal issue and translation technology is improving rapidly, however, in the short term, more efforts are required to manage and encourage multi-lingual engagement. We understand a lot about engagement but more research is needed about how we behave online. But we must also recognise that the internet is action led, not research led and we cannot wait to understand these things before pressing ahead. Public bodies must become more willing to behave like technology start-ups and to innovate, explore and even fail (and then learn and try again).

The speed of change is seen in the nature of online engagement. We have moved from standalone websites and asynchronous topical discussions to a much tighter integration with existing digital social spaces and more dynamic forms of communication. In an age where Facebook connects, Twitter coordinates and YouTube stands testimony to the result, there is no space for complacency and no time to ‘gold plate’ solutions that can quickly become redundant. Equally, the internet and e-participation offer a window of opportunity to embrace and nurture a new European public sphere that will be lost if institutions do not take bold steps now.

Dr Andy Williamson

This is a summary of a presentation to the Science and Technology Options Assessment, European Parliament, May 2011

Social Media and the New Arab Spring

admin — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:26:00 GMT

Across North Africa and the Middle East we are witnessing a rising tide of citizen-led protest against autocratic and corrupt regimes. In echoes of the Czech Spring of 1968 and the tumultuous wave of change that swept across Eastern Europe during the 1990s, there is a real feeling that change is real, can happen and can be sustained. There is a new and emergent spirit of pan-Arabism, with activists in one country following and gaining confidence (and support) from those in others. There is nothing new in this; we have seen such movements before during the 1960s. Some of the countries that are today rising up for change were the same ones who were brutally repressed 50 years ago. The difference between then and now is the rise of digital media.

Key tools for the modern revolution are digital because they achieve significant things; first, they bring together otherwise remote and disparate groups. Second, they create channels to bypass traditional state control of the media so the outside world can see what is going on. Alongside traditional activism and action, the tools of the trade today are the internet (for information dissemination and news), social media (to connect and coordinate), mobile phones (to capture what happens) and digital, particularly satellite, television to report it.

The underlying complexity of the network is an important factor too. Whilst many regimes would like to simply turn off the internet, this is very difficult to do completely. Activists on the ground and net-savvy supporters around the world are able to implement proxy techniques to evade detection and bypass the controls of states. Flows of information can be slowed but not stopped; the world is now simply too porous.

Social media is important because it is an ideal tool for connecting loose networks of association, bringing together otherwise disparate groups and individuals to support a common cause. It is no respecter of borders. What happens in Morocco and Egypt motivates and empowers protesters in Libya, Syria and Yemen. We saw digital activists from Morocco support Egyptians, teaching them how to exploit these new tools. One must be careful not to overstate the role of social media; it is only a tool. The previous example was largely done face-to-face, not online, and what social media can achieve is down to alignment with social behaviour and its effective social appropriation. That said, social media does play an important part in contemporary revolutionary movements; we are seeing around 40-45 tweets per minute from Egypt and 30-35 per minute from Syria and Libya.

Twitter receives much media attention, perhaps because it is more visible to the media. Therein lies its value, as a tool to tell your story to the world. This is reflected in the significant number of tweets in English, particularly from Egypt at the time of the Tahrir Square occupation. Equally Facebook’s role in Egypt and across North Africa is to show a growing mass public that they are not alone; suddenly made visible on their social networks is an emerging pan-Arab movement for change, from which individual citizens have quickly taken courage and then action.

Perhaps most telling is that the use of social networking sites such as Facebook to organise and promote demonstrations is now mentioned in passing, almost casually by those involved. What we are seeing in North Africa today mirrors what we saw in Germany and the UK during recent elections. First, a media wanting to portray Web 2.0 as being more important than it really is but, more importantly, clear evidence that the internet – blogs, Facebook, Twitter; citizen journalism and the consumption of these – is becoming normative: it is business as usual, at least it is amongst a significant cohort in terms of scale (UK and Germany) and influence (Egypt and Libya).

We make friends, keep in touch, shop and listen to music online, isn’t it obvious that, when democratic change happens, it happens online too?

Andy Williamson

Digital Democracy in Scotland and Wales: Lagging or Leading?

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:57:00 GMT

When looking at digital democracy, a lot of focus is placed on efforts around how people interact with those in Westminster. Less emphasis is placed on the devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales, and it is important that we take stock of the goings on around digital democracy in these areas. This Digital Paper, Digital Democracy in Scotland and Wales: Lagging or Leading?, explores the digital democracy landscape in both Scotland and Wales, looking at the various initiatives taken by legislatures and governments in Edinburgh and Cardiff. More needs to be done to bring about two-way interactivity and to reach wider audiences in both cases, however it is also the case that both are further ahead in a few areas, namely with regard to ePetitioning.

Read our Digital Paper here: Digital Democracy in Scotland and Wales: Lagging or Leading?

e-Petitions a Step Closer for Parliament

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:57:00 GMT

You might not have noticed but late last year 10 Downing Street's e-Petitions system was quietly turned off. And just as the holiday period got into full swing came an announcement that would allow ‘popular online petitions to be debated within Parliament within a year'. To achieve this, the government is to consult with a range of people, including the House's Procedure Committee. That would be the same Procedure Committee whose own recommendations for Parliamentary e-Petitioning fell at the first hurdle, their proposal being over-complicated and gold plated, requiring enough budget to fund a small provincial town.

The suggestion is that the proposed e-Petitions site will be incorporated into DirectGov, which is rapidly becoming the digital one-stop-shop for all citizen-government interactions.

Some criticise the value of petitions in general and e-Petitions in particular, indeed I've been highly sceptical of the Downing Street venture - but not because of petitioning per se, rather because it lacked an underlying process that guaranteed an authentic and considered response or which led to the possibility of an action occurring as a result of the petition.

I'm also sceptical of applying a naïve quantitative assessment (which unfortunately seems to form an inherent part of the government's proposal) As the National Assembly for Wales has proven, setting a low threshold and assessing a petition on its quality, not simply quantity is a much more successful way to go. There's a further problem with the proposed 100,000 threshold required to trigger a Parliamentary debate (the Procedure Committee recommended that this be a Westminster Hall debate); the German Bundestag e-Petitions process allows petitioners with over 50,000 signatures to present to their Petitions Committee, yet very few ever reach this threshold. The German experience suggests that the only petitions to make the threshold will be broad and highly populist (the infamous ‘Jeremy Clarkson for PM' Number 10 petition comes to mind) or relate to the internet! Back at Downing Street, only eight e-petitions passed the 100,000 threshold in three years. This is not exactly enhancing for democracy and a point well made by some MPs as they resist e-Petitions.

But let's be clear; e-Petitions are effective so long as the process is well designed. They work successfully in Scotland and Wales. The Australian Federal Parliament is about to internalise e-Petitions (having accepted external e-Petitions for a number of years) and petitioning Parliament is a long held citizens' right. It makes absolute sense to update the procedure to bring it into line with the way modern society thinks, works and communicates. Remember too, as our Audit of Political Engagement consistently tells us, signing a petition is the democratic activity people are most likely to do other than vote. Petitions matter as a potential on-ramp to democratic re-engagement.

Perhaps the biggest challenge with the current proposal is one of roles and responsibilities. Government is not able to compel Parliament to adopt e-Petitions (or anything else for that matter). Parliament must decide to do this for itself. Given that the current Speaker is on record as wanting to enhance the power of the backbenches, one must look a little askance at a press release from Government telling the world what it intends to have Parliament do.

Despite this challenge, I'm pleased to see that the government is being proactive and picking up where Parliament has lost momentum. What I'd like to see is a light-weight system drawing on the useful recommendations of the Procedure Committee around process that avoids the unnecessary over complication and gold-plating that stymied earlier efforts.

The internet and the 2010 election

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:22:00 GMT

"Described variously as a non event, the dog that didn't bark and a flop, the UK's first net election shocked all but the wise and sober in failing to refashion the landscape of British electoral politics"

That was Stephen Coleman talking about the 2001 General Election in the Hansard Society's 'Cyberspace Odyssey: Elections in the age of the Internet'. Nine years on, has much changed? Twitter, Facebook, blogs: 2010 was supposed to be Britain's first ‘internet election', but, in the end, it was the televised leaders' debates that really captured the public imagination. There was no pivotal moment at which we entered the age of internet politics but the 2010 election shows how the internet has become a ‘business as usual' space for people and, with this, for politics and campaigning.

With contributions from some key election observers and practitioners, this short volume sets out to cut through some of the hype that surrounded the election and provide some empirical evidence of the internet's place in the election and also assess what realistically we might expect from the internet. Edited by Rachel Gibson, Andy Williamson and Stephen Ward and with contributions from Mark Pack, Matthew McGregor and Will Straw, this volume lifts the lid on what really happened online and stands as a reference on the 2010 election and an informative guide to anyone interested in political campaigning online.

Download The internet and the 2010 election putting the small ‘p’ back in politics? here.

WeGov

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:29:00 GMT

Social networking technology provides major new opportunities for policy makers (eGovernment) to engage with the community (eSociety). WeGov will develop a toolset so full advantage can be taken of well-established social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, WordPress, etc) when engaging citizens in two-way dialogs as part of governance and policy-making processes. The tools will make it possible to detect, track and mine opinions and discussions on policy oriented topics including their origins, bias and evolution. The tools will allow discussions to be seeded and stimulated through injection of policy discussion points into relevant communities. Pseudo-anonymisation, audit trails, and access control will safeguard against misuse and ensure privacy for all involved.

WeGov will be delivered as fully implemented software components packaged in a government toolbox broadly applicable to the interaction between eGovernment and the eSociety, including deployment on cloud infrastructure to dramatically lower the cost of operation. Success will be measured through three live field trials conducted by three end-user partners.

The trial results will be combined into a methodology, including a legal and ethical analysis and review by a confirmed external project Advisory Board of eGovernment stakeholders. The methodology, toolbox, and exemplar use cases will be published through a combination of open source, public reports and open workshops. Together with an exploitation strategy targeted at widespread take-up and use, long-term sustainability of the project results is assured. Policy makers will be freed from the inherent limitations of bespoke and dedicated platforms (e.g. government websites), and instead engage directly with citizens in their native online social environments to close the loop with this audience.

The Hansard Society's Digital Democracy Programme will develop real world end-user scenarios for the implementation and use of the government toolbox, contributing to the development and quality of online engagement initiatives. The Hansard Society will also work to disseminate the WeGov project's outputs.

wegov-project.eu

Online Campaigning: 10 Lessons from the General Election

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:11:00 GMT

The internet played an importantpart in the 2010 election campaign but attempts to build up its significance and importance were misguided and naïve. Behind the scenes, it was database management and email that were vital. In the public domain, party websites and third-party sites failed to excite the public but social media and existing online communities played important roles. The internet was not a game changer but given its widespread adoption and increasing media convergence it was important, allowing for the creation of resources that could successfully be deployed alongside other traditional methods.

The internet's use during the 2010 general election campaign is a direct reflection of increased adoption and wider social appropriation amongst the public. What we saw during this campaign was not a pivotal moment where we entered an age of internet politics, rather how the internet has evolved into a legitimate ‘business as usual' channel for people and, with this, for politics and political debate. The internet clearly offers the potential to build trusted spaces where political debate can happen and for politicians, over time, to build social capital but it is not of itself changing the face of elections, simply supporting a natural process of evolution.

Above all the 2010 General Election shows that it is time to put aside the idea of an ‘internet election' and reflect on the fact that digital media is now so heavily embedded in our political and social culture that we couldn't have had this election without it. So, with all of this in mind, here are my Top 10 lessons from the 2010 Digital Campaign:

It’s about convergence – print with blogs; TV with online discussions; Twitter into the mainstream media – and you can’t control it. So stop trying.
The more effective the tool, the less sexy it is; Think databases and email.
Twitter only gets your message so far.
Novelty value doesn’t hack it. You need a strategy to get the message beyond social media and into the public eye that goes beyond doing something really smart, really cute or completely stupid on Twitter.
Websites aren’t really that great for elections. They’re a good repository for all your policy documents but most people won’t read them.
If you want to engage go to where people are already engaging. Newly created ‘campaign’ spaces lack social capital and even the extended campaign period isn’t long enough to establish necessary levels of trust.
If you want people to engage with you, listen. A lot. And let them set the agenda rather than trying to control the conversation.
It’s about local. Use social media as part of a wider constituency strategy when it’s appropriate but never in place of getting out meeting people or leafleting.
Digital media now permeates the lives of the majority of British adults who use it to socialise, discover and discuss. So when an election comes along, they will use the internet for this too.
That means that this wasn’t an internet election, it was an election that couldn’t have happened without the internet.

Andy Williamson

Britain’s voting system is no longer fit for purpose

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:56:00 GMT

The Victorians built a vast network of sewers and water pipes pumping water in and sewage out of our cities. For the last couple of years London has seen a massive programme to upgrade and replace these creaking relics of the past to handle life in the 21^st century. And it wasn't just sewers, the Victorians gave us a voting system too. One that has been exposed to be in serious need of an upgrade.

The British voting system is no longer fit for purpose. Even before the vote took place, we were subjected to misleading advertising telling us to register online. You can't. As I imagine most of the 50,000 people that downloaded forms to post off on the last day found out. The post-election shambles seems to have everyone involved ducking for cover. Is it acceptable in 21^st Century Britain that those responsible have done nothing to fix a voting system that our first-ever international observer's describe as "worse than Kenya" and "possibly the most corruptible in the whole world"?

It seems blindingly obvious in this digitally enabled age of IT-led process transformation that we should be able to register, vote and count those votes so much more efficiently and reliably if we use the right tools and develop better processes to support them.

In my mind, the arguments against electronic voting fail every possible test of logic. It's bizarre that we demand nothing less than perfection from new systems when the current one is so flawed and open to failure and fraud. It's not just those locked out of polling stations but also the 14 year old boy who received voting papers and managed to vote without any challenge as well as those who couldn't enrol in the first place.

The US electoral debacles, the Irish experience and the slightly flawed nature of local government e-Voting pilots in the UK might not have helped the cause either (as I write this, CNN is talking of ‘fixing' voting machines in time for the Philippines' election without actually explaining what that means). There are serious issues to be addressed with e-Voting and these cannot be under-estimated. But they can be managed and mitigated. In reality the problems aren't really technical or procedural, they are cultural.

If it's designed properly (and that's a big if looking at those responsible for the current system), e-Voting is more reliable, more efficient, more flexible and speeds up the count. We can limit this to voting machines in polling stations but equally here is a chance to include internet and mobile solutions, even to consider text voting, and extend the time period, making voting easier and more accessible too. The New Zealand Electoral Commission found that one third of New Zealander's said they would vote online if they could!

I'm completely convinced about the merits of electronic voting but until now I've doubted that there was any public desire for change. At this election our democratic systems have been exposed as flawed, failing and out of step. The public is losing faith not just in politicians (that went a long time ago) but in the systems we use to elect them; the voting process and electoral system are both rightly under intense scrutiny. Bringing in e-Voting is a small but necessary step towards rebuilding trust and confidence. After last week there is no compelling argument not to change. The biggest challenge in the ID-averse UK will be verification but whatever we do, how could it possibly be worse than the current system? My Oyster Card would be an improvement on what we have right now.

Andy Williamson

Tweeting the big night

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:57:00 GMT

The election is nearly upon us and, whilst this does not seem to be the first truly online election as some had predicted, there will be a number of tools available during election night allowing people to track what is going on both at the local and national level.

Sites such as BBC News, The Guardian, and The Times will have liveblogs and a number of political blogs will also provide coverage. For the first time in a UK general election, Twitter will be used by candidates, journalists, bloggers, and even a few ordinary citizens throughout the night. Below are a few ways that you can follow the election online through Twitter.

The #ge2010 hashtag has been created for users to search on and see tweets related to the election. This has already been used widely during the election campaign and should feature prominently on the big night. Tweetminster, The Guardian, and the New Statesman will be attempting to map voter turnout through Twitter by asking people to tweet the first part of their postcodes and the hashtag #ukvote.

At constituency-level, PoliticalBetting.com have attempted to introduce standardised hashtags in order to organise conversations around a particular area. Searching on these keywords will allow people to be able to track what is going on in a particular constituency on Twitter. Adoption of these hashtags has so far been relatively patchy, but if they are active in your area they may prove to be useful on the night. Twitterfall, which pulls in tweets containing specified keywords in real-time, could also prove to be useful on election night.

In order to follow particular candidates, you may find it helpful to search by postcode on Tweetminster for candidates on Twitter in your area. Some may be tweeting as the results are coming in through the night.

Perhaps most importantly, be sure to follow the trending topics in the UK. The big news and themes will develop naturally over the night, and Twitter's trending topics may direct you to some of the more interesting, offbeat, and humourous stories.

Freddy Fallon, Researcher, Digital Democracy

Calm down dear, it’s only a tweet

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:32:00 GMT

I've talked a lot over the last couple of years about the ephemeral nature of social media - it's a mayfly not an elephant. And last night's leader's debate was perhaps the first real opportunity to test out the veracity of this claim and indeed, to some extent, the value of social media as a democratic enabler. Tweets might persist in the ether but their half-life is in reality incredibly short. The second problem with Twitter is content or, as last night demonstrated, the lack of it. What the leader's debate confirmed was that Twitter is a great place to make a comment, state a strongly held opinion or make a joke or sarcastic remark. Last night it lacked much else and didn't add to the quality of the debate.

The leader's debate confirms that we use Twitter for posture, position and rebuttal. To signal agreement or otherwise (and disagreement is of course always more interesting), to forward and to endorse. Let's not forget that the instant nature makes it gaffe-prone too; @ericpickles's careless omission of the ‘r' in ‘shirt' turned a harmless retort into mass hilarity.

All of this makes tweets a good way to gauge instant mood and response. A handy thing at election time. But caution is needed because we're then obliged to look at who is tweeting and quickly conclude that this not a broad demographic, rather a narrower political and digital elite.

This isn't to dismiss Twitter and other social media, quite the contrary; Tweetminster's analysis on tweeting around the debate shows 184,396 related tweets from 36,483 people and, at peak time, over 41 tweets per second. Last night's sentiment analysis from Tweetminster was pretty clear cut too and generally in line with the follow-on polls (other than Twitter sentiment seemed to place Cameron consistently behind Brown, the reverse of the three post-debate polls, I've looked at). So Twitter did add a dimension to the debate.

On Facebook the comments were much less acerbic than those on Twitter. Was this to do with no limitations on size? I don't think so as they were largely short anyway. My guess is that the Twitter audience was more of the politically active and Facebook's the political interested. Again though Facebook sentiment reflected the opinions expressed elsewhere, with Nick Clegg rating highly.

To put all of this in perspective, Google's blog points to a lot of searches for terms relating to the debate but the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano and the closure of British air space overwhelmingly exceeded it in terms of public interest.

Welsh AM @bethanjenkins is starting to lose a bit of faith with social media despite seeing the crossover potential to get the political word out. I think Bethan's got a point here, Twitter's value remains firmly rooted in its ability to create cross-over into non-digital communities but doing this is difficult. And there was little to enlighten, educate or advance the debate coming out of it last night. As @RickyTicky said "Tomorrow's news will be full of what role Twitter played in the #LeadersDebate, when really we're all just making jokes...".

Andy Williamson, Director - Digital Democracy

The Digital Election: Bubbling but not boiling

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:07:00 GMT

The 2010 general election campaign has begun, and a number of different online tools have been created by the parties themselves and third-party organisations to help us make up our mind.

Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party have set up their own online campaigning tools; the Conservatives have deployed MyConservatives.com, an online community for organisers and campaigners (be they members or not), whilst Labour are using Campaign Creator, a back-end organising tool for their members. The Conservatives, Labour Party, Lib Dems, Greens, and UKIP have created their own mobile applications that allow varying levels of input from users.

Twitter has emerged as a preferred campaigning tool amongst PPCs in this election, but it’s not without risk as Labour PPC Stuart MacLennan discovered after being sacked over offensive tweets he sent out over Twitter. However at this stage it appears that the press and those in the ‘Westminster bubble’ are the biggest audience here, with citizens paying more attention to the mainstream media.

A number of third-party websites and tools have also been created during this election, such as a site that hosts parodies of David Cameron’s poster campaign, policy-matching tool voteforpolicies.org.uk, democracy campaign POWER2010, and the David vs. Goliath campaign on Progressonline which worked to raise funds for Labour Party candidates targeted by Lord Ashcroft’s donations. These have all appeared to attract a good deal of interest and support, however they do not appear to be setting the agenda during this campaign.

As our previous research has shown, UK elections are far less candidate-driven, and attract far fewer donations than in the United States. Whilst the parties have evidently invested in online front-end tools during this campaign, there has been little evidence that they have created any meaningful increases in participation during the campaign. What will prove to be important will be the internal use of the internet within the party and campaign offices in order to organise their efforts on the ground. Digital media serves to inform the press about developments during the campaign, and these will then trickle down to the mainstream.

So far, it does not appear that a direct link has been created online between citizen and candidate/party in this election.

Freddy Fallon - Researcher, Digital Democracy