The Open University has released a series of podcasts on Reading Political Philosophy. This really is an example of The Internet Gift Economy in action! And on the subject of podcasts, I’d strongly urge anyone who hasn’t already subscribed to the BBC’s ‘In Our Time’ podcast to do so – there have been plenty of [...]
Posts from ‘June, 2009’
Never place 100% of the blame for failure upon the shoulders of someone with a veto.
Neil Williams has a good post up about the need to break some institutions into a more interactive world slowly. The Hansard Society’s Andy Williamson had a similar post up here a while ago: Innovation fails when the people with the ideas aren’t matched by the ones with the skills and power to make those [...]
Should MPs and councillors take up cases on behalf of individuals?
Chewing over Parliamentary reforms, here’s Jenni Russell from the Guardian last week: “One experienced Commons civil servant is blisteringly critical of the way in which most MPs have accepted the culture in which they now operate. While some committees and chairs are excellent, many MPs can’t be bothered. “They’re just not interested in the core [...]
Schools design a new Parliament
If you’re hanging around Westminster between 7 and 17 July, pop into Westminster Hall to check out what sounds like a fun exhibition. The Royal Institution of British Architects have run a competition for schools to design a new Houses of Parliament. The nine shortlisted entries will be on display in the oldest part of [...]
Political Innovation Camp at Reboot Britain
I thought I’d offer you a bit of an outline of the PICamp (Political Innovation Camp) strands that are making up part of NESTA’s Reboot Britain event next week. You’ll see that the sessions that are planned reflect a lot of the issues that come up on this blog regularly. We’re offering these because we [...]
Reality scores from the rebound
Direct democracy experiment MyFootballClub was featured in recent online movie Us Now. You’ll remember the MyFC website took over Ebbsfleet United (the former Gravesend and Northfleet) and promised its members all the experience of running a real football club, team selections, transfer listing players, and the rest. According to a piece on the When Saturday [...]
A think tank of your own
Here’s Joanne Jacobs on the Australian ‘Government 2.0 Taskforce’ making a fairly universal point: Even where a public fund is used to identify new tools, the majority of these will either slip into obscurity after launch or will be greatly applauded for a while but not widely adopted or contributed to, by the policy makers [...]
Denham: Going centralist?
Over on the LGIU blog, Jonathan Carr-West is not impressed with John Denham’s conditions for the devolution of powers to local government: “So we find ourselves re-rehearsing the chicken and egg of earned autonomy. Councils need more powers to deliver better services and increased public confidence, but to get more powers they need to deliver [...]
A new deputy in town
At the risk of loading expectations onto someone, it’s very good news to see that Bill McCluggage has been appointed as Deputy Government CIO in Cabinet Office. I did some work with Bill over the last eighteen months in Northern Ireland where he was a very powerful advocate for getting local councillors and councils to take [...]
The Whitehouse is using MixedInk
Readers of this blog could be forgiven for believing that I’m on some sort of commission scheme for Debategraph and MixedInk. Like the best ideas in this field, these two projects have focused their energy on getting the idea right and the initial project out of the door. That’s a long way of saying that [...]
