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Posts under ‘Digital inclusion’

Should ‘don’t knows’ be discouraged from voting?

There is nothing that annoys politicians more than people who just don’t get around to voting. For months, the parties are knocking doors and getting pledges. In a tight fight, every vote will be counted on, and a well-resourced team will manage to knock on doors a half-dozen times until the name is ticked off [...]

Local budget consultations

I was out-and-about the other day and came across this advert: My local authority want me to have my say in how they spend and collect their money. When I got home, I visited the www.barnet.gov.uk/budget site accordingly. It was quite good. It  went some way towards explaining how the council is funded and what it spends [...]

How to increase the ‘chatter’ level on a policy area you care about

If you will permit me a small plug for some work I’m doing, I’d like to tell you a bit about The Centre for School Design – a project that was launched on Monday evening by the British Council for School Environments (BCSE). I’ve been very interested in Ty Goddard’s work for a while now [...]

The myth of easy engagement: Evans’ Law?

Just a quick response to Tim Davies’ verygood post about ‘The Myth of Easy Engagement’. There is one argument that supports his general position that, I think, he misses. I’m sure that sooner or later, some will come up with a frivolous law (like ‘Godwin’s Law‘ or ‘Muphry’s Law‘) but if they don’t, let me [...]

Social media scepticism

It’s very hard to disagree with anything in this post:- the whole thing deserves a visit though: “For starters: social media is a stupid term. Is there any anti-social media out there? Of course not. All media, by definition, is social in some way. The term interactive media, a more accurate term for what’s going [...]

Eating the Elephant

Shorter version: Often, the minor technical obstacles mask a wider small-p political obstructionism to the promotion of a more interactive form of government. Having written this post about the small obstacles to open e-gov a few weeks ago, Tim Davies got such a comprehensive response in his comments thread that he’s rolled them out into [...]

Director of Digital Engagement

Well, the Power of Information Taskforce appears to have reached it’s conclusions. The job has been advertised. Dominic Campbell has a few very perceptive bits of advice for whoever the successful candidate may be. This phrase leaps out of the job ad: ” …the job requires someone who would be acknowledged by their peer group [...]

Universal Service Obligations

This is an important policy issue that I think we often forget when discussing how people can be engaged online in helping to form policy. More on this in the not-too-distant I hope, but I’d be really interested to see how this plays out in the Digital Britain discussions.