Sadly, the week in question was two weeks ago and they aren’t now accepting any more questions.

I guess that amounts to a glass that was half full, but kicked over.

Since then we have discovered that the consultation probably made little or no difference to the end result. This attitude of not seeming to listen still persists today if there is any truth in the stories I have heard about the participant questionnaire for those who tried the pilot.

I think a moderated blog-like system would have be en better for getting more qualitive comments but does little to gauge quantitive matters like how many people agree/disagree with a position.

Certainly I feel that there needs to be both types of feedback when it comes to consultations.

However it doesn’t matter what systems are in place if people end up with the impression that the consultation was just PR and did not have any effect on the results.

I created this site http://www.consultationprocess.org/ to post documents such as the ID card consultation process as a blog, making it commentable and linkable down to the paragraph level.

In itself it acts as nothing more than a source for the document, i wanted to monitor the online conversation around the document using comments/trackback and blogs.

At the moment this is very small and quiet, but if we can encourage more people to move the dialog into linkable, searchable online spaces and source the documents from a single, linkable and accessible source then we might help create a better overall conversation.

mark.

There are a small number of really good examples. Simon Watkin from the Home Office and Nigel Hickson from the DTI both must have spent many man-months engaging with the ukcrypto mailing list, as frustrating as that can sometimes be! And I hope both would agree that government policy actually was improved as a result (although not nearly as far as we would have liked).

You can see their hundreds of posts in the ukcrypto archive:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achiark.greenend.org.uk+"Simon+Watkin"&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Achiark.greenend.org.uk+"Nigel+Hickson"&btnG=Search

A

And FIPR gave signs of frustration about the consultation process in what seemed to me its excellent and thoroughly constructive response on NHS confidentiality (I’d better dig that out and cross post it here).

What we seem to be seeing is that when on line consultation really starts to work as a medium, politicians and policymaking officials (with rare and noble exceptions) cant cope with unattenuated messages. They aren’t ready for it and give little sign of wanting it.

Well, that’s a problem in real life but not a problem for this “ideal government” exercise. Because what we’re trying to do here is simply to state what we want. And the further the present state is from what common sense people suggest is ideal, the stronger the case we can make on 4 Nov.

One part of what we need to articulate is “what do we want from an e-enabled process of political engagement?”

Accurate and thorough information behind policy decisions (and where are the limits eg about nuclear safety, preparations for terrorism)?

Considered answers to hard one-on-one questions?

Results of online consultations or lobbying exercises to be visibly taken into account?

Ways to be sure that “Gordon Brown” is *the* Gordon Brown?

There’s so much activity in this area – iCan, directgov, Hansard Society, MPs blogs, Parliament Live TV, theyworkforyou and faxyourmp….but can we get a wish list of *what we want* from e-enabled political engagement, based on practical situations where possible?