I don’t think we will need to man the barricades to get the Charter widely adopted (around local govt, at least). The issues that we need to deal with to get the Charter adopted (ie the arguments we will need to win) will be lower level and less fundamental than Paul might think. It’ll be mostly a case of dealing with questions along the lines of “yes I can see this is a good idea in principle and we don’t want to get left behind, but what about when our staff go off-message in one of those new-fangled Tweet things?”. The answers that will work best will be “trust us – suck it and see” …

And once the Charter is adopted, there’s a vehicle for getting rid of the (mostly) absurd barriers in the way of interactivity.

Then, through usage, the big issues about how politicians interact will begin to be writ large.

A quiet revolution, if you will.

For politicians, it’s about the outcome. For bureaucracies, it’s about the process. I’m not as convinced as you are that no-one involved in the process has a visceral objection to using technology to engage with the public – my current work in Northern Ireland has provided plenty of evidence that civil servants are often not convinced of something that politicians are convinced of – and that this proves to be the root of the delay.

At a superficial level, imagine how easy it would be for a sitcom writer to get a lot of laughs out of a ‘Sir Humphrey’ figure being introduced to the idea that the minister was going to crowdsource a particular decision.

But let’s leave that argument aside for now: the interactive charter is a tool that allows people to say ’sod the process – I don’t want to wait for you to spend five years showing me your working to prove that you agree with me while coming up with an outcome that I don’t recognise as the one I want.’

Instead, it allows that person to have a ready outcome when they say ‘I want my organisation to have a more interactive capacity’. If anyone asks what they mean, they can say ‘we’re signing this charter and implementing it to a timetable – you’ll see what we mean once that’s done.’

The commitment to interact has to be a political one. This idea gives tools to politicians..

Sure, we’re at the thin end of a curve, but we’re climbing fast. The ‘forces’ at play here are absolutely bureaucratic and the objections are typically petty, technical and practical rather than principled or philosophical. I’ve met people who say it’s hard to manage, risky or a waste of time, but I’ve yet to find anyone – especially anyone in a political position – who thinks there’s something fundamentally objectionable to government use of technology to engage with the public.

My reading of the 50 hurdles is that there are lots of practical things delaying and frustrating the pioneers in this new field, and that these are so small, and so technical, that they can be fairly easily overcome if we pool our efforts and experiences.

In my book, adoption of the tools certainly isn’t about fear or the control of power, though their use can indeed be democratising. I don’t see how making this a clash of cultures helps the cause – this is a time for big tent engagement.