There is no imminent change about to be made that I know of... and if/when it does come about I'd be pretty confident that they would transfer all the petitions and signatories along with it (unless there is some kind of data protection headache!).

I think we should separate the technology platform from the views being expressed on it. The technology is policy-neutral, and isn't to blame for people having views we might not like.

My feeling is that if there are people out there with these opinions then it is better to know about it and make the arguments about why they are wrong, rather than to just ignore it and hope the issue goes away.

Having the debate is an important part of the process by which free speech should deliver its intended benefits, after all.

I'm also not sure that because we have some other social problems, we should ignore everything else until they are fixed. While some things might be causing difficulties, it doesn't mean we can't try to make progress on other things. And in practice, politics is all about coping with and prioritising all of these competing demands anyway.

And besides, having people who are engaged with political arguments and activity of almost any kind is really a healthy thing for our democracy. Active citizenship is something that, I think, can help solve a lot of our problems.

If you look at the something like the 2002 Wanless report on the NHS, it set out how the more engaged people are with issues about their health (and to a lesser extent with health policy) then the better are the health outcomes for them individually and for the country as a whole.

Even a fan of eDemocracy like me wouldn't claim that ePetitions are going to solve the obesity crisis, but anything that spreads the idea of active citizenship can help us take small steps forward.

You might also find this post today by Simon Burall of Involve covers some issues of interest to you.

Many thanks for the info on Estonia, the Baltics do seem to be blazing something of a trail when it comes to eDemocracy.

I suspect the newness of the processes there is a positive factor. When I look at how Westminster and Whitehall tries to implement eDemocracy initiatives, it is the interface between new online elements and existing institutional processes which often seem to cause problems, particularly because they are so embedded and resistant to change.

Though there are also the problems of the political interface which I guess would be the same in any system.

Equally, I'm not sure if the smaller, more homogeneous population is a big factor. I would guess there would be a distribution curve for political opinions there that isn't too dissimilar to what we have in the UK.

The other thing which I suspect might be a factor is their infrastructure, particularly in being able to use their banking system, for example, to verify identity.

This gives the system more credibility, I think, so that politicians will know that petitions are not signed by "Mickey Mouse" and this also has the effect of increasing the pressure on them to respond, which creates something of a virtuous circle for the system.

I think that its current version is My Estonia (but they may have been a specific campaign). Check out this paper by Hille Hinsberg, who works in the State Chancellery, which is/was the government department connected with the site: http://www.jedem.org/article/download/45/39

I wondered if this kind of site had more opportunities for success in Latvia and Estonia because the countries are small (with a much smaller less diverse population than UK) or because the government machinery is relatively new. I can't imagine them working at a UK level, but I could imagine them working in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland (Estonia and NI have similar population sizes at 1-2m; Latvia and Wales have vague;ly similar at 2 -3M)

What do you think?
Which is the most important factor? Population size/diversity or age/flexibility of government processes?

without commenting on whether these are good processes or not, this does affect the way you can handle feedback on the interwebs.

There's also a bit more info here and here.