The committee asked for views on three areas: the purpose of ePetitions; managing the website; and the handling of the petitions by the House.

While nothing much was said about ePetitions in the report, I think I can now publish the submission I sent, which sets out some ideas for how the current system could be improved.

Big thanks are also due to the people who contributed to some of the ideas below. 

Executive summary

1. The ePetitions website should use the postcode data supplied by signatories to show how much support a petition has across the country.

2. The same data should also be used to show which petitions are most popular in each constituency so MPs and the public can see what other people in their area are concerned about.

3. Acting on the basis of what is most of concern in their constituency, individual MPs can opt to use the range of parliamentary and political tools at their disposal to seek information or resolution for petitioners.

4. Any MP acting in this way should be allowed to post their updates onto the petition's web page for all to see, and to provide email updates to those signatories who live in their constituency.

5. This would provide a more transparent system, move the focus from the number of signatories to the validity of the issue in question, and provide responses to more petitions while putting Parliament and MPs more firmly at the centre of the process.

6. There could be an enhanced role for select committees in taking on the vetting and approving role that departments currently undertake. For petitions which they believe raise genuine concerns, select committees could seek written responses from the departments they shadow.

7. Parliament should consider carefully whether it has the right project management approach, as well as the resources, to continually develop the ePetitions website.

8. But maintenance and development of the website should not be confused with its branding and presentation to the public, nor with ownership of the petitions process as a whole.

I. Introduction

9. I have written this submission with the aim of encouraging the committee to consider how technology can help address the problems it has identified with the existing ePetition system. The issue is not just how parliamentary processes should change to deal with these petitions, but also how the website can change to better fit with how Parliament works.

10. The impact of technology on the political system has been a long-standing professional and personal interest, and I write about it at www.eDemocracyBlog.com.

11. The ideas and opinions set out here are provided in a personal capacity.

II. Public engagement: What is the purpose of ePetitions?

12. The ePetitions system has two aims. The first is to deal at a micro level with the issues that individual petitioners might wish to raise, and the second is the macro objective of deepening public engagement with the democratic process.

13. It is a quirk of how ePetition systems work that it is possible to go some way towards meeting the second objective while doing much less to address the first.

14. The reason for this is that the vast majority of signatures are added to a very small number of petitions, so by developing an effective process for dealing with these few petitions it is possible to show to large numbers of citizens that their concerns are being heard in Parliament. While the use of the 100,000 threshold may be arbitrary, it does have the merit of ensuring that there is some process for handling these high-profile petitions which account for most public interest and interaction.

15. However, by placing such importance on the number of signatures, the existing process obviously reduces the focus on the merits of the argument when it comes to delivering an official response (albeit that a petition must have a some kind of case in favour if it is to get 100,000 people to sign it) and disadvantages those without easy access to the media or other campaign tools.

16. Instead of the single option of 100,000 signatures resulting in a Commons debate, a more flexible system is required which allows greater scope for decisions to be taken on the merits of the petitions, and a range of responses to be given accordingly.

III. Process and procedure: Handling of ePetitions by the House of Commons

17. Parliament is currently experiencing a mild version of the internet-enabled disruption that sectors of the economy such as publishing and music have already experienced. The ePetitions website is asking questions about the ways in which the UK political system works, and how responsive to the public it is prepared to be.

18. But this disruption and the solution to it are usually two sides of the same coin in that the problems experienced by traditional ways of doing things are usually caused by the emergence of new mechanisms which offer better alternatives.

19. This leads me to ask whether it is possible to imagine a way of using technology to address the committee's main concerns – lack of time for Commons debates, engaging with petitions below the 100,000 threshold, avoiding the expense of a new petitions committee, improving communications with petitioners, enhancing the involvement of individual MPs – while also bringing greater transparency and usability to the ePetitions website and limiting the scope for narrow interests to hijack the process.

20. I would suggest that the ePetitions system, through its use of postcode data to verify petitioners and signatories, already has the information needed to effectively address these issues.

21. The technology exists (see for example http://www.theyworkforyou.com/api/docs/getConstituency) to convert postcodes into parliamentary constituencies without great difficulty.

22. This would make it possible to generate a 'heatmap' of a petition's signatories by constituency, which could show what proportion of the petition's signatures come from each constituency.

23. As well has having this petition-based view of the data, it could also be displayed on the website in a constituency-based view which would allow the user to see which petitions are most popular within an individual constituency.

24. This change should be coupled with an opening up of the feedback mechanism to individual MPs so that they can email a message to the signatories of any petition who gave a postcode located in their constituency. These two changes would have a number of beneficial effects.

25. First, it could be used to address the issue of a lack of time for Commons debates. Parliament could reasonably require that for a Commons debate the signatories should cover a broad geographical area. This would help identify issues of genuine national concern, and would also mean that campaigners who wish to secure a Commons debate are encouraged to reach out around the country. Debates which failed this hurdle could be debated in Westminster Hall as recently proposed by the Procedure Committee.

26. Second, any individual MP (along with the general public) would now have access to data on which issues are generating the most interest in their constituency. They would then be free to make individual judgements on whether or how to they might want to take any of the issues forward, using the range of options open to them such as adjournment debates or written or oral questions. This would help to take the focus off the time allocated to the Backbench Business Committee and allow for a range of graduated and proportionate responses instead of the current all-or-nothing Commons debate.

27. Third, as each MP could decide for themselves on how many signatures a petition might need from their constituency before they act on it, it could be managed within existing office resources.

28. Fourth, it would help to move the focus from the arbitrary 100,000 threshold and towards the actual importance of the issue at stake. This also deepens engagement by encouraging MPs to engage with their constituents regardless of the numbers. Some local or regional issues might merit responses from some MPs but not from others. This approach would allow sufficient flexibility to deal with such cases.

29. Fifth, those MPs who use the system would have a mechanism for communication with (potentially) hundreds or thousands of their constituents, and provide feedback to signatories which shows the value of the democratic process and the ways in which Parliament can act on their behalf even if this is short of delivering a change in government policy. These communications could also be used, for example, to explain the role of MPs and Parliament in the democratic process and set out how this differs from the position of government.

30. Sixth, MPs might also use their knowledge of the constituency to email signatories about means of engagement which do not require action by Parliament or government, such as suggesting that issues are referred to local councils or other public bodies, local voluntary organisations and campaign groups, or web forums where the issue is also being discussed.

31. Seventh, by publishing on the website alongside each petition any responses and actions from individual MPs, constituents will be able to see who is and is not responding, increasing transparency and giving voters the ability to make up their own minds about how good a job their MP is doing. This kind of openness would also act as an incentive for MPs to make at least some use of the system.

32. So making better use of the geographical information already being collected and allowing MPs to email constituents and/or publish their responses online would be an advance for Parliament in that it puts MPs at the heart of serving their constituencies without adding to the pressures on the limited time available on the floor of the House or in Westminster Hall. It also creates a new mechanism for MPs to communicate with their constituents and monitor their concerns. And it allows constituency-level judgements about the merits of an issue and the amount of support it has while opening up the range of available responses.

33. The committee has also sought views on the merits of a Petitions Committee. In general, the reason for having a Petitions Committee would be to provide some level of engagement with petitions which fall short of the 100,000 threshold.

34. The proposals outlined above are an alternative means of achieving the same end. It could be managed within existing resources according to the priorities which individual MPs choose for themselves.

35. Another option would be that select committees take over from the departments they shadow the responsibility for approving new petitions, ensuring they comply with terms and conditions, rejecting duplicates, etc.

36. For those with over, say, 5,000 signatures (a manageable 64 open petitions at the time of writing) the committee might seek a written response from the government if it believes such action is merited and publish this on the petitions website and/or email this update to signatories.

37. Again, this would provide further opportunities for petitions to generate feedback to those who have signed them, and would not preclude the option for individual MPs to also seek further information or redress on behalf of their constituents.

38. It may be worth addressing the question of whether this risks duplication of effort with multiple MPs plus a select committee potentially all chasing action on the same petition. Should this be the case, it is most likely to be because the issue has been repeatedly judged by those involved to merit further action. In this sense, it would be no different from any other significant political issue on which numerous MPs might also be raising concerns.

39. There would be cost implications of select committees taking on the petitions moderation work. The government should be able to supply some information on how labour-intensive this is for departments at the moment.

IV. Parliament and the Executive: Management of the ePetitions website

40. This is not my area of expertise, but I think it is worth the committee noting that there are three separate issues here.

41. The first is what the internet address of the website is and how it should be presented to the public. As the main promise of the site is clearly (at present) to have an issue 'debated in the Commons', and it is suggested here that MPs should take on a larger role providing responses to petitioners, it clearly makes sense to simplify the process under which the Leader of the Commons currently notifies the Backbench Business Committee (this simply adds a layer of complexity that many petitioners might not understand) and move the website to a parliamentary address and have parliamentary officials monitor the petitions.

42. Moving the website from its current epetitions.direct.gov.uk address to epetitions.parliament.uk and changing the branding on it should not be a difficult task.

43. The second issue is who maintains the site and provides future updates to its technology as they are required. I would note that the Government Digital Service (GDS) has, in general, taken an agile and iterative approach which offers the prospect of regular improvement to the service.

44. If maintaining and upgrading the service becomes the responsibility of Parliament then it must first be confident that it can continue to offer similar improvements to the service at a reasonable cost in the future. Alternatively, Parliament could consider an arrangement where the GDS continues to maintain the service even though the web address at which it is accessible is a parliamentary one.

45. The third issue is who should own and control the ePetitions process. On the basis of the proposals outlined here, it seems clear that this should be Parliament. But again, those ultimately placed in charge of the website must be committed to regular review and improvement on timescales that reflect the pace of internet developments, not the usual pace of parliamentary reform.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | One comment |

As the committee which allocates Commons time to debating ePetitions, I'd been hoping it might say something interesting on the issue, particularly as it had specifically invited evidence and held a seminar on the subject.

In the event it didn't, though it did note that the seminar was moderated by the Hansard Society, which will shortly publish "an account of the session and its own thoughts on the future of ePetitions".

Strangely more interesting than the report itself, though, was the appendix in which the committee published the responses of MPs to a series of questions about how the BBC had worked.

There was obviously some concern amongst those who responded that the ePetitions system is being 'hijacked' by organised campaigns and vested interests in 'collusion' with the media.

The most strident comment on ePetitions was this one:

"It is not a surprise that the e-petition has now increasingly being reclaimed from Parliament by the real powers in politics—the media and the Government/alternative Government. E-petitions circumvent rather than rebuild MPs' representative abilities and were always going to end in an even greater belittling of the MP's role.

"Like the 'e-campaigns' that flood MP's in-boxes, most of the 'e-debates', far from being spontaneous are highly organised by vested interests, most appear to be 'got up' at the tabloid editorial meeting, even frontbenchers are now openly colluding with newspapers to fix the agenda for debates.

"Some MPs have no value to add, some appear to be willing indeed enthusiastic conduits for the raw sewage of populism. Because there is so little self confidence in the role of MPs and an independent Parliament, there is no coherent and uniquely Parliamentary response to this—the BBBC has to fill this gap even at this early stage in its maturity. If they don't then local/backbench/constituency issues will be squeezed out and the BBBC will become the e- petitions committee giving away hard won backbench time to whatever is the most intimidating media bandwagon."

While other comments were not as vehment as that, there was still a concern that time given to debate ePetitions is time not available to debate other issues of concern to MPs.

"I quite agree that e-petitions should not be able to randomly eat into the main allocation of BBCom time, given the role that media and powerful players often have in getting a high number of signatures. I wonder if one solution to that could be to argue for additional 'ring-fenced' BBCom time for e-petitions. For example, two three-hour debates every quarter? That would only be an additional four days time over a year—(or even one three hour debate every quarter, only two days) and I understand BBCom currently gets 35 days in a Session."

"You do not need me to tell you that the current arrangements for e-petitions are ill thought through. Nor do I believe it right for select committee reports, which may well be dull and worthy but deserving of a debate should have to jostle with sexy backbench ideas. There should perhaps be a set amount of time for each—20 days for e-petitions in Westminster Hall on a 'Take Note' motion, 10 days for select Committee Reports, 30 days for true backbench business."

"Congratulations to the Committee on their great progress. It has been a reform of major significance but it is not right (or Wright) yet. Those who have control of the levers of powers have speedily used e-petitions to advance their causes. The critical approach adopted by the Committee to their work is very welcome. Well done!"

"The Committee should beware of orchestrated campaigns promoted by the media or professional lobbyists. Applicants should be routinely questioned on who is funding or promoting their applications."

"Topicality or importance must NOT be determined by e-petitions promoted largely via the media—too much of recent debate has been controlled via this route and it will ultimately denigrate the ability of backbenchers to truly influence debate in our society and to hold Government to account."

So that's what at least some MPs think about the ePetitions system. Tomorrow I'll publish the ideas I sent to the BBC as a small submission to their review.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | No comment |

There was also agreement on the need to better inform petitioners of the next steps they should take when their petition reaches the 100,000 threshold.

The government and the procedure committee did, however, get themselves into a bit of a muddle over the form of words to use on the ePetitions website to explain both the impact of petitions on public policy and that after reaching the 100,000 threshold the government would pass the petition to the BBC but that it would be eligible for a debate rather than guaranteed one.

Elsewhere in its response, the government disclosed that:

"In the six months since the launch of the site, over 3.5 million signatures have been submitted to the more than 11,000 petitions on the site."

And it appears that the ePetitions website is also proving a useful source of intelligence for departments and ministers:

"Officials in Government departments have also indicated that they regularly monitor e-petitions, including those which do not reach the 100 000 signature threshold, to examine public feeling on issues. In some departments, officials have used popular e-petitions as a prompt to commission briefing for Ministers, and where petitions quickly increase in signatures, as a prompt for looking in details at specific policies. This is especially true in the case of e-petitions covering issues which have not received widespread parliamentary or media coverage."

The BBC has also published a few thoughts on ePetitions, which I'll cover more tomorrow.

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Image from 123rf.com

I discussed one headline from the Electoral Commission's report on improving the electoral register through data-matching in yesterday's post, and today plan to delve into the issues a bit deeper.

The summary, in essence, was that the pilots showed some potential but in the final analysis were "inconclusive".

When it came to finding new people to add to the register, the report concluded:

"On the whole, these pilots did not prove very effective at getting people on to the register. Despite the efforts invested by authorities in the pilots, very few additions (only 7,917) were subsequently made to the registers."

And when it came to finding people who were on the register but should not be, "most of the pilot schemes did not test this objective".

"This was in part due to a primary focus on identifying missing names and in part due to the volume and currency of the data received."

I can't help but think this was not a well-designed set of pilot schemes, but at least those involved now know what they don't know.

There seems to have been a lack of understanding between the data providers and the data users, which was exemplified by this line from the report:

"Many of the potential new electors suggested by the match with the DWP Centric database proved to be based on out of date or incorrect information. The problems posed by this could have been reduced by the inclusion of the date when the DWP record changed – something which DWP were willing to provide but were not asked to do so."

Another important point from the report was just how bad the public sector is at dealing with addresses, given how important they must be to delivering services and assessing needs.

The report said:

"The absence of a unique identifier attached to each address on the public national databases was a key issue for the pilots."

However it did add that this might be improved by the "planned inclusion of Unique Property Reference Numbers (a unique identifier for each address held) on the DWP database".

Finally, the Electoral Commission concluded that those running future pilots should "stay abreast of developments" in the government's identity assurance programme.

That is interesting, because if the source data was as difficult to use as it appeared to be, it does raise questions about how the ID assurance scheme itself will validate people against records.

For example, the tender notice for the scheme says:

"Verification will be performed in an appropriate channel (web, telephone or face to face). The provider will verify that sufficient evidence exists to verify that a person presenting on a given channel is the owner of the claimed identity"

Yet the Commission report indicates how difficult it is to match the DWP data to other official sources, let alone use it for authentication.

"There is substantial variation across local authorities regarding the level of match between the electoral registers and the DWP Centric database ranging from 45.7 per cent to 85.3 per cent.

"In total, 1,925,336 register entries were sent for matching and 1,370,006 were found on the DWP Centric database. That equates to a match level of 71.2 per cent.

"The percentage of register entries sent for matching but not found on DWP Centric varied across local authorities from 12.4 per cent to 47.6 per cent."

That said, though, part of the data-matching problem in this context was put down to the fact that electoral registers are address-based databases while DWP holds databases of people where the address is secondary.

These pilots also failed to allow enough time for proper address cleansing on both sets of data.

However, allowing for those issues the report said that in Greenwich some 11 per cent of those contacted said that a person expected to live at the property no longer did so (if they ever did), while in Camden it was nearly 14 per cent and in Wigan it was eight per cent.

So what might this mean for identity assurance and the DWP? The report says:

"These issues with the accuracy of matches or mis-matches relate primarily to the matching process used rather than the data held by DWP. The matching process was designed by Cabinet Office to allow for a wide range of possible matches and it was therefore inevitable that some apparent matches would prove to be false.

"However, it is also the case that the responses to the pilot follow-up activities are likely to understate the inaccuracies in the data as relatively few people who were written to responded either to register or to say the name 58 was incorrect. Indeed the fairly low numbers registering from the control groups compared with the overall canvass response (excluding the attainer-focused pilots) suggests that the level of inaccuracies in the data is high.

"The detailed results provided by Wigan on their control group are revealing as these names were subject to the full canvass. Of 1,138 names tracked through the canvass, 58 per cent of responses resulted in registrations that were not for the person named by the DWP at that address.

"The Colchester pilot used canvassers to follow up names suggested by matching with DWP and found similar results. The canvassers achieved 936 responses to their enquiries. Of these, 54 per cent indicated that the person had moved out, was unknown at the address or was deceased.

"DWP have indicated to us that they are aware of issues with the currency of some of the data they hold. Specifically, that the likelihood of someone having an up to date address on the DWP Centric database is related to how often they interact with DWP or another agency that feeds data into the DWP data warehouse.

"For example, DWP think it is more likely that people claiming some form of benefit will have an up-to-date address, as this is required in order to receive the benefit. On the other hand, people do not need to update their addresses in order to continue to receive their pension and many may fail to do so. DWP have also indicated that at the outset they highlighted the issue of variable data currency to the Cabinet Office as a possible issue for these pilots."

It will be interesting to see how the ID assurance programme attempts to square this circle.

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My scepticism was based on the fact that the evidence available up to that point had suggested that attempts at any such matching had proven pretty difficult.

Now the Electoral Commission has published its report on the data-matching pilot schemes and in a couple of deeply buried paragraphs has accused the Cabinet Office of lacking evidence to back up its claim.

The report says:

"While it is true that the results show an average match rate between the electoral registers and the DWP Centric database of around 65%, it is important to note that these pilots used a new, previously untested, matching process.

"In addition, very few of the pilots set out to confirm the accuracy of entries which matched, but to see whether those records which did not match were people missing from the electoral register who could be encouraged to reply...

"Given the government's intention to consider this route as a way of verifying register entries (and the timetable for the implementation of individual electoral registration (IER)), we recommend that further piloting take place urgently to assess the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach.

"At this stage, in our view, the evidence from these pilots is not sufficient to support such a significant change to the registration system."

It seems that the Cabinet Office and the deputy prime minister have jumped on some statistically unreliable numbers in order to relieve the political pressure they were under from claims that their plans would see large numbers of people drop off the electoral register during the switch from household to individual registration.

More should be made of this.

I'll assess the pilot evaluations in greater detail in another post tomorrow.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | No comment |

"The evidence we have received... suggests that data matching will be of limited effectiveness, especially in identifying potential electors."

So it was slightly surprising to read the government's latest electoral registration proposals which suggest that checking the register against other official databases will "confirm the accuracy of the majority of entries on the electoral register".

Ministers have rethought their original proposals so that anyone on the existing household-based register whose existence can be confirmed by a separate official database will now be automatically transferred onto the individual electoral register.

The government says:

"Over the past year we have carried out a series of data matching pilots, comparing electoral registers in twenty-two areas with a range of data from public authorities. While the final evaluation is still being concluded, the evidence so far suggests that comparing entries on an electoral register with information held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) allows us to confirm as accurate a significant majority (an average of two thirds for that data set alone in the pilot areas) of entries on the registers concerned.

"Subject to the results of the full evaluation, and further testing this year, we are therefore minded to build on this to simplify the transition to [Individual Electoral Registration] for the majority of electors. It is now our intention that the names and addresses of all individuals currently on an electoral register will be matched against the data held by public bodies such as the DWP and local authorities themselves. If an elector's information can be matched, the individual will be automatically placed onto the new IER register and would not need to take any further action to be registered under IER. Only those people who cannot be confirmed automatically will be invited to provide identifying information to be verified. This should simplify the transition process for the majority of electors, reducing the number of people required to provide personal identifiers and will also allow [electoral registration officers] to free up resource to target the smaller group of people whose information cannot be matched and those who are currently missing from the register."

The new Cabinet Office publication also includes the first hard data on how well those data-matching pilots are going.

The table below shows matches between the DWP customer information system (CIS) and the electoral register in different areas.

Its stands out just how badly the data matching has performed in some parts of London, and raises the prospect of differential transfers between old and new registers in different parts of the country.

Potentially, parts of London (and perhaps other inner city areas) could see far more people drop off the register than other areas of the UK if this table is any guide.

Although there will still be other work to encourage people to re-register, such as advertising campaigns.

The government says:

"It is our view that this finding, if confirmed, opens up a significant opportunity to simplify the process of transition to IER. Our proposal in the White Paper was that all electors will be asked to apply individually in 2014-15 and provide identifiers which will then be verified against the DWP CIS. Instead, our view is that if data matching could be used to verify the majority of entries currently on the electoral register as these results suggest, a majority of people can be transitioned into IER without having to take any further action. Each entry would still be individually verified but without requiring an individual to provide any extra data. We believe that this will simplify the transition for the majority of people, reducing the data burden (so less new personal data is required) while providing assurance about the accuracy of the register. It will also enable more focus on electors missing from the register."

The document also suggests that some problems with attempts at data matching occurred because the DWP supplied old records to the councils involved in the pilots.

"We have learned lessons from the pilots in terms of making the process of data matching more effective and efficient and have put some of these lessons into practice to provide nine of the twenty-two pilots with more up to date DWP records."

The Electoral Commission is expected to publish its full review of the data-matching pilots in the next few weeks.

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The post sets out how the gov.uk team is using as a working definition of policy "statements of the government's position, intent or action".

This includes mandatory information on the issue and actions being taken in response to it, plus optional information on the policy background, who is engaged with it, who is being affected by it, the legal framework, partner organisations and related news and publications.

It highlights just how much unpacking the simple word 'policy' seems to require.

Occasionally the government talks in a language that implies there are policies and meta-policies.

The original motivation behind the development of departmental business plans was not so much for Whitehall to achieve something itself, but for it to put in place the frameworks, systems and incentives for others to achieve it.

In which case the 'policies' may become more diffuse, being developed and implemented by a variety of local providers and getting blurred with the day-to-day decisions and delivery, operations and implementation.

Anyway, this post aims to suggest a couple of ways in which the presentation of policy information online could be used to significantly enhance political accountability, in line with my personal definition of eDemocracy.

There are two classes of information, open data and freedom of information releases, which might implicitly be covered by the phrases "statements about actions" or "related publications" but which would benefit from being explicitly mentioned given their potential importance.

They might not be relevant in every scenario, but as well as the statements and speeches about what the government says it is doing, policy pages should also include the datasets which might provide some kind of evidence about what it is actually achieving.

Given that some of the most significant policies (those in the departmental business plans at least) have targets or intended outcomes associated with them, and deadlines, it should be possible to pull out the data from the information strategies which is being used as an indicator for delivery success.

Progress on each of the business plan objectives is already being tracked in monthly updates, but more could be made of this information than is currently the case.

Some data visualisations of this information might also be a massive step forward for visibility and accountability, certainly on the headline commitments if not on every last detailed policy.

Further down the road, gov.uk could also go further on some of the other open data that's out there and relate spending figures to policies so everyone can see how much a policy costs.

Another significant step would be to publicly assign the policy to people or bodies in the departmental organograms which are available now, so it is also clear who is responsible for it.

Adding in this kind of information (gov.uk might be planning some of this already for all I know) – and making it available for re-use and publication anywhere else – could significantly transform the quality of information available to citizens about what their government is both trying to do and actually delivering.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | No comment |

Their video of the event is below, and I've also pulled out a few of the tweets from the event that raised some of the most interesting issues.

For me the most remarkable thing about it was how mainstream the idea has become since the last election (hard to get much more establishment than the IfG).

For all the flaws, which are often more in the implementation than the concept, the idea of crowd-sourcing is now firmly established as a tool in the digital engagement armoury.

Some tweets

Govt could have more transparent deliberation of pros and cons of policy, not just taking 'input' and locking selves away. #ifgcrowds

January 23, 2012 8.11pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@cath_haddon

Catherine Haddon

This is a really important point about the 'black box' of the policy making process. It also applies more widely to issues such as freedom of information and open data. I've previously discussed the benefits of more openness in policy-making in a post on the slightly unusual subject of the Iraq war and eDemocracy.

Still not sure about the added value of crowdsourcing beyond it being a innovative form of surveying #ifgcrowds

January 23, 2012 8.09pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@Kateblatchford

Kate Blatchford

An interesting point which is also related to this tweet:

.@sburall poses interesting Q: should gvt be playing guessing game with public or consulting experts in particular fields? #ifgcrowds

January 23, 2012 7.53pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@amyjsmith

Amy Smith

Those two tweets raise a couple of issues.

The first is, do you really trust your crowd-sourcing exercise? This relates to a range of issues involving participation, self-selection, representativeness, etc.

The second question that follows on from that is even if you trust the validity of the inputs, does that make the outputs right?

The answers to those questions go into a deeper set of issues around deliberative mechanisms and user-led service design.

Are civil servants supposed to 'represent' the public, as @alex_butler says at #ifgcrowds ? Or is that the job of politicians?

January 23, 2012 7.45pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@owenbarder

Owen Barder

Last time I considered this point, I came to the conclusion that social media might well invert traditional roles and require civil servants to do more to represent the public than at present.

And for some more on the event, Simon Burall of Involve (one of the participants) has posted his thoughts on the issue.

The video

And here is the video, which is worth watching.

© eDemocracyblog.com 2012. | Permalink | No comment |

The two main conclusions of the inquiry were largely as predicted in this blog's previous post on the committee's inquiry.

Most importantly, the procedure committee says debates should take place in a dedicated time slot on a Monday afternoon in Westminster Hall, rather than in the Commons chamber.

"We recommend that the Standing Orders should be changed to allow the Backbench Business Committee to schedule debates on Government e-petitions between 4.30 and 7.30 pm on a Monday in Westminster Hall. The sitting would only take place if the Backbench Business Committee had set down the subjects of e-petitions for debate. The debate would take place on the motion 'That this House has considered the e-petition from [petitioners] relating to [subject of petition]'. We recommend that this change should be introduced on an experimental basis for one year and that its effectiveness should be reviewed at the end of that period. "

It has been argued that moving the debate out of the Commons chamber would suggest to the petitioners that their concerns are given a lower priority, though the committee rejects that and notes that frontbench spokesmen would be required to set out their positions during the debate.

Arguably more significant is the change to the format of the motion being debated.

Whereas last October's Commons debate on the Hillsborough disaster was on a motion which "calls for the full disclosure of all Government-related documents", presumably the new equivalent would have been that the Commons "has considered the e-petition relating to the disclosure of Hillsborough documents" – a much weaker formulation, with a vote not on supporting or opposing the actual disclosure but on agreeing just that the issue had been discussed.

Unless I have misunderstood the proposal, that seems like a backwards step.

The somewhat less significant recommendations call for clearer text on the ePetitions website and improved communication with the sponsors of the petitions. The committee says:

"We recommend that the Government should remove the sentence 'e-petitions is an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK' from its e-petitions  website and replace it with a statement that more accurately reflects reality. We propose: 'e-petitions are an easy way for you to make sure your concerns are heard by Government and Parliament'.

The aim is to essentially downplay what might be achieved by an ePetition. And the MPs also call for more information for the petitioners to help them understand the process better, particularly when it comes to ensuring they know to contact an MP to take their petition forward.

For example, the ePetition on pensions uprating has reached the 100,000 threshold but so far no MPs have told the backbench business committee that they are prepared to lead a debate on it.

The committee says its report is focused on dealing with some of the more obvious flaws in the ePetitions system and does not address deeper issues of public engagement with parliamentary processes.

"We have not, in this short inquiry, sought to address wider questions about public engagement with Parliament, reform of the House's own procedures for petitions, the treatment of e-petitions other than those submitted on the Government's website, and the role of the Backbench Business Committee. We believe that all of these subjects are worthy of more considered examination by us in the future."

So another review of these issues seems likely, and could further improve public engagement with Parliament at some point in the future. It might be after this that the whole ePetitions system is transferred from the government to Parliament.

The committee also said that there should have been more consultation with Parliament before ministers took the plans forward.

"We agree with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Natascha Engel, that 'a lot of the problems that have arisen were perfectly foreseeable and had there been a debate, and perhaps even a vote, they would have been highlighted.'

"We regret that the Government did not see fit to refer its proposals for its e-petitions system to us or to place its plans formally before the House for debate and decision before the scheme was introduced."

I think the MPs are right that plenty of the problems thrown up were totally foreseeable.

That said, however, the government's use of ePetitions as a test of its move towards more agility in IT was always likely to involve something of a culture clash when pitched against the less-than-agile decision-making processes in Parliament.

If it had been left to Parliament, it seems more than possible that assorted committees and officials would still be pondering the £1.3m price tag previously estimated for the first year of such a project, while the government got it built and running for around £132,000.

It isn't ideal, but this is an issue where the 'just do it' approach was probably the right one. If the committee and the House wanted more control over the system then they could and should have built it themselves (although the procedure committee would probably argue that no time was ever given to vote on its previous proposals, which is a separate set of problems).

Without the government getting on with it, however, the significant level of public interest and engagement which has been generated (and which the committee welcomed) would never have materialised.

Disruptive technology wins out, and can now be iterated and improved having been introduced. Not a smooth process in this case given the inter-institutional tensions, but on balance probably as good as it was going to get. Better some innovation than none.

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The latest minutes of the Cabinet Office's transparency board suggest business minister Ed Davey faced some scepticism when he discussed the PDC plans at the October meeting.

The Board told the minister "they were likely to be challenging in order to get a solution which achieved their aims", say the minutes.

"Clearly their main focus would be on how the proposals could best support Open Data and Transparency objectives, but they were also concerned on behalf of all users of the PDC's data."

During the discussions the Board also indicated that the PDC proposal has damaged the government's reputation on open data.

"It was important that the Government was able to make a clearer statement soon, in particular to reassure some parts of the Open Data community that the Public Data Corporation would be a step forward for Open Data, not a step backwards.

"Members considered that the consultation paper had already negatively affected the global credibility of the UK Government's commitment to Open Data.

"It was essential not only that governance of the PDC had opening up data at its core but also that it was driven by the needs of all data users."

Other points made at the meeting were that the value of the data was in its use rather than its sale and there should be "a clear road map" for releasing more data after the creation of the PDC.

There was also concern that "if there was greater involvement of the private sector (in line with one of the PDC objectives), the public interest in and ownership of core reference data was safeguarded"

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