Dr. Andy Williamson on BBC Newsnight commenting on Government's new Your Freedom website - July 1, 2010
Dr. Andy Williamson, the Hansard Society's Director of Digital Democracy, took part in a discussion on BBC2’s Newsnight talking about the Government's new Your Freedom website. The site allows citizens to suggest laws that they would like to see repealed and for others to comment and vote on their ideas. Dr. Williamson argued that while the principle behind the website is worthwhile and to be encouraged, it will inevitably suffer from "too much noise" created by people's individual obsessions. He asserts that engagement through digital platforms such as this is an important development for our representative democracy but adds that, as the Hansard Society’s Digital Dialogues project shows, if it is to work then submissions must be acted upon and the process made clear and transparent to the participants.
To watch,
follow this link to the programme on the BBC iPlayer. The package assessing the Your Freedom website starts at approximately 36 minutes in.