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 its money [...]
Posts under ‘Digital inclusion’
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 dibs [...]
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 on…”
And [...]
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 a [...]
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 to be [...]
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.
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
