The recently released government IT strategy includes a couple of interesting commitments on public engagement.
It says that:
"To facilitate a two-way dialogue with citizens, departments will ensure that an online channel is included in all government consultations."
The commitment is to ensure this is done within six months.
There is plenty of room for improving government consultations, which too often still amount to little more than a pdf and an email address for comments.
Some departments, like the Department for Education and the Department of Health, have gone beyond that to at least have online feedback forms for consultations.
And the Department for Transport went further still with a site for its High Speed Rail consultation which included Google Maps, images and a postcode search for people to look at the route in their area in addition to the standard consultation questions.
One of the points the government has emphasised about its separate work on revamping its ePetitions software is that it wants to transform it into "a useful and mature tool for engaging with politics" rather than just something that people click on and then forget about.
As I told the E-Government Bulletin this week, if they apply that same approach to consultations and encourage departments to innovate and experiment then the outcome could be a big improvement.
It is important that the commitment in the strategy is to a "two-way dialogue", which is something that is often lacking.
There would be a big improvement if this pledge is linked to one of the other points in the new IT strategy, which is to "embed social media as a mainstream channel used routinely to engage with citizens and business".
If civil servants can participate more in these online discussions, even if it is just to answer questions with factual information, then the opportunities for improving public engagement with the government will increase further still.
This would also help avoid the worst outcome, which would be to hype up expectations only for the public's responses to then disappear into a departmental black hole with no feedback about what happens to them.
Indeed, there might be scope for linking up all the different forms of online engagement which the government does.
For example, if there is an ePetition related to transport issues then why not let the signatories know that there is also a consultation on High Speed Rail they might be interested in (if they have opted in to notifications)?
And better still, a public "two-way dialogue" with the department would be a step forward from just having individual 'atomised' views sent to the department.
Update:
By coincidence, the government has launched a new crowdsourcing website today.
Update 2:
And one other thought, I wonder if the site constitutes a step towards this:
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