Thanks again for all of the feedback on those open data posts recently. Just to recap, I’m helping to organise an open data project for some school pupils within the a London borough in the new year. One of the big tasks is to flush out all of the data that may be available. I’m [...]
Posts under ‘Democratic thought’
Finding all of the interesting data within one local authority area
A while ago, I posted here giving reasons why I thought it would be a good idea to start involving school pupils in the processing of public data. There are strong democratic arguments for doing this – ones that aren’t immediately obvious. There are also good ‘transparency’ arguments (but I’d make my usual point here [...]
The 99% and the False Consensus Effect
Apologies for the light posting here. I’m mid-project on a few issues that I’d normally blog about here, so blogging will be a bit uneven for the time being. In the meantime, here’s a quick stop-gap while IA while ago, I posted something here on the common misconception that many of us have about consensuses [...]
Will networked representation reduce the power of political parties?
“The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” George Burns Over the next few weeks, my MP (a newly-elected Tory) will go through the parliamentary lobby in support of a range of bills that he knows little about. Sure. He may have a few reflexive opinions on the [...]
Democracy & the healthy society: The chicken and the egg.
Amartya Sen has powerfully made the case that democracy brings with it guarantees of social justice. Summarising for speed, Sen has argued that democracies don’t have famines, that they provide regulatory minimum standards that ensure that earthquakes don’t result in huge death-tolls as poorly-built structures collapse, and so on. In a democracy, we are very [...]
Douglas Rushkoff on transparency
It’s late on Friday afternoon – here’s some brain-candy to chew on over the weekend. Here’s Douglas Rushkoff – one of the most established commentators on interactive communcations explaining the cost of transparency. It’s liberating stuff – yet a lot of it seems so straightforward in Rushkoff’s hands. It often reads like the bleedin’ obvious. [...]
Should local Councillors be given iPads?
It’s a good question that tells us a lot about some of the bigger issues in local government. The London Borough of Havering are doing it, and the argument for this is that it will cut printing costs. The good people at one of my favourite blogs We Love Local Government have done some sums: “…over [...]
Data, visualisation and the talking cure for local government
Toby Blume – my co-host of the session on data visualisation at Local Gov Camp (last Saturday in Birmingham) – has posted his observations from the session here. In addition, Nick Booth has been busy with two posts on the subject. A few standout quotes: Firstly, here’s Nick: “…there’s a false expectation that visualising data [...]
Conversational politics, and how we argue ourselves into positions
I started to write a second follow-up post on the Local Gov Camp data-visualisation session (I’ll probably finish it later today) when I stumbled on this post on conversational politics (in a very wide sense of the term) from my favourite US blogger – it made the point I was inching towards better than I [...]
Filming council meetings – for and against
Someone (not sure who) has set up a Wrangl board on the pros and cons of filming council meetings. Have a look!
