David of Debategraph has dissected the G20 communique, using his Debategraph application. Quite a brilliant idea, Debategraph. It does everything that a pro-democracy technology should do – it enables a wide range of people to rationalise a problem. Once that’s done, elected politicians can make and explain their decisions – not in terms of interests [...]
Posts under ‘Consultations’
Mixed Ink
I want to tell you about Mixed Ink – a really good concept in collaborative authoring that I encountered on my travels a few weeks ago. I was in Miami (‘ark at me!), touting a democracy project that I’ve been nurturing for years. The conference I was at was designed to showcase bright ideas in [...]
Will Victor be the eventual victor?
This blog is here to explore the concept of a more inclusive means of forming policy at a local level. So let me offer you two examples of the kind of people that we need to include in such processes. Our first case in point – let’s call her Mrs Meldrew (though it’s not really [...]
Getting the message out
Local government has been thinking a lot about community engagement and reputation management, and one of the unexpected side-effects has been an increased focus on how council communications support the democracy and participation message. Press releases are more focused on residents’ experiences, and repeat key messages about the council’s activities. Process description is kept to [...]
Listening in – better than asking for opinions?
They say that eavesdroppers never hear good things about themselves. This may be true, but they probably get a more honest appraisal than the more direct forms of feedback can afford. For me, this raises the question: Should we be asking people what they think about anything? Or should we be encouraging conversations and finding [...]
The lust for certainty – a sin?
In a very good edition of BBC Radio 4′s ‘Analysis’ programme towards the end of last year, the columnist David Aaronovich recounted a programme that he produced in the 1980s featuring the Archbishop of York, John Hapgood. The Archbishop, as far as I can see, had the kind of views that would appeal to a [...]
Vote for your park
Tiago – who’s blog is well worth bookmarking -has a good post up about how Londoners can decide where to allocate ten grants of up to £400,000 for London’s parks. Tiago’s conclusions: A bad start to a good idea.
Adversarial politics, transparency and independence – some questions.
Here’s a good post from an Australian blogger on the question: Is adversarial politics damaging to our democracy? (It’s actually an update on a previous post with that title). Here the adversarialism is opposed by a more attractive ‘deliberative’ model of the kind advocated here. The flipside of this argument is put very well by [...]
