Digital Democracy

Can your MP use their email once parliament is dissolved?

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:38:00 GMT

Once an election is called and Parliament is dissolved our MPs (and their staff) have to contend with some significant changes to the way they can use IT (and other parliamentary services). From the day of dissolution, their status changes and they can longer do many of the things that, since being elected, MPs have taken for granted. Traditionally (and fairly obviously) this includes using House emblems on stationery and free postage (although postage for existing case-work can be claimed back).

This time around, restrictions will apply to IT. From 5pm on the day of dissolution, members who are seeking re-election won’t be accessible via email or be able to access their files through the parliamentary network (members standing down have access until the day before the election). This presents an obvious challenge but one that can be easily got around by nominating a forwarding email address, to which email is automatically redirected until after the election.
It’s made clear that the cost of this new email account can’t be claimed on expenses.

Assuming re-election, everything returns to normal post-election, so MPs need to make sure that email accounts that will be restored don’t include any staff who might leave during this time. If you don’t get re-elected then network access gets turned back on for ten days… then it’s gone for good!
Remote access to the parliamentary network goes west at 5pm too. MPs need to backup anything that they need ahead of this. Forget to do this and, once the network goes off, you’ll have to wait until after the election to get at your files and contacts. Given that all but emergency IT support services are also withdrawn at this time, there’s not much else an MP can do.

During the campaign, MPs and their staff don’t have access to their Westminster offices, so they have to take their own computers back to their constituencies. If they’re seeking re-election and intend to carry on with constituency work during the campaign, then they can make use of parliamentary supplied laptops but not desktops. These can’t be used for election-based activities – or if they are they must be ‘rented’ from Parliament for the duration of the campaign!

The guidelines are clear about it being OK to carry on with case work but make it clear that you can’t identify yourself as an MP during this time. The same rules apply to electronic communication. So websites, blogs and social networking profiles must be changed and so must email addresses, Twitter accounts and anything else that includes the letters ‘MP’. Websites that are paid for out of public funds or use the term ‘MP’ in the domain name will have to be suspended until after the election. Whether this means closing them down or providing a click through link remains to be seen (I can’t imagine automatic redirection being acceptable).

In a world of following-by-identity, this presents some challenges. A number of MPs have already created new online personas for the duration of the campaign at least and others will have to follow suit. It’s unimaginable to think that party HQs aren’t monitoring the situation closely too (I know at least one has done an audit). Having to abandon an online brand at a time when visibility and public awareness is even more important might just make some politicians reconsider the strategic value of a brand that relies on the term ‘MP’!

And finally, in case you were wondering, yes MPs lose their gym membership too!

Andy Williamson

First time voters want a conversation with their MPs

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:43:00 GMT

Our new report, Parliament 2020: visioning the future Parliament, asked first-time voters, parliamentarians and parliamentary officials about their visions for a future Parliament. We found that all groups wanted to see Parliament using new technologies to more actively engage with citizens.

The top priorities for all three groups (first-time voters, parliamentary officials and MPs and Peers) were:

Greater use of new technologies
Interactive communication

The main concern of MPs and Peers was the modernisation of procedures in Parliament, and while parliamentary officials, MPs and Peers prioritised access to information, first-time voters prioritised:

Education and outreach
Transparency and accountability
Diversity of representatives

In the wake of the recent expenses scandals, this report follows a sea-change in British politics where the whole political system is now subject to a level of interest and scrutiny not seen before and this includes the inner workings of Parliament. The research consisted of focus group discussions with three key stakeholders: first-time voters, parliamentary officials and MPs and Peers. The groups were asked to focus on how Parliament works and to think about what a Parliament of the future might look like and how new digital media will affect and influence the way that citizens engage and communicate with Parliament and MPs.

First-time voters want Parliament to engage with them through activities such as MPs visiting schools or through popular websites and social networks. They want to better relate to their representatives, identifying with them as members of their community and part of a more diverse Parliament. They wanted to feel that their MP was ‘real' and practised what they preached and they wanted to build trust in their MPs by increasing the links between MPs and their constituents, as well as improving transparency and accountability.

Parliamentary officials, MPs and Peers prioritised informing the public but focused less on engaging in two-way communication. MPs and Peers were more interested in modernising procedures and using new technology to make parliamentary processes more efficient and understandable for those both within and without parliament.

Andy Williamson, Director of the Hansard Society eDemocracy Programme and joint author of Parliament 2020: visioning the Future Parliament, commented: ‘There is a clear divide between the internal groups of MPs, Peers and parliamentary officials and the group of first-time voters. Both the internal groups were more interested in informing the public as opposed to two-way communication. While utilising new technology to modernise procedures is long overdue, there is a danger that if Parliament remains in ‘broadcast' mode it will alienate first-time voters who demand more engagement, transparency and accountability.'

The report includes 21 recommendations to refine and improve how Parliament communicates and engages with the public, the technology and information that support this work and the procedures around how Parliament works.

Download the Parliament 2020 Report here.

Digital citizens and democratic engagement

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:39:00 GMT

Digital citizens and democratic participation: An analysis of how citizens participate online and connect with MPs and Parliament - shows that for Britons who are already online, the internet has made it easier to take part in civic and political activities and that half of them prefer to use the internet to take part in democratic life.

With over two thirds of the British population online, this report explores how people use the internet to connect with their elected representatives and also the trends in online digital engagement across civic and political life. The research draws on two samples. The first was a national survey of individuals who were already online and the second was a sample of ‘digital leaders' -people with a strong interest in social media and politics. The first group demonstrated how Britons currently use the internet to participate in politics and civic life and the second group identified trends for future and developing technologies.

70% of respondents agree that the internet makes it easier for them to participate in civic and political activities
49% agree that they would generally prefer to use the internet to participate in civic and political activities
Age is not a barrier to digital engagement when it comes to contacting one's elected representative
People aged 55-64 are the age group most likely to contact their MP online (54% did so), and people aged 18-34 were more likely to use the telephone (including mobiles and texting) than any other age group

Among the digital leaders group, the majority (69%) used the internet or email to contact their MP. They use websites, Twitter and blogs to contact or keep informed about their MP. They would most like to see MPs embracing online tools that allow for conversation and opportunities to engage with citizens. Finally, the group wanted accurate, up-to-date, available information and open data standards which would make data accessible for individuals and groups to use.

Andy Williamson, Director of the Hansard Society eDemocracy Programme, and author of Digital citizens and democratic participation: An analysis of how citizens participate online and connect with MPs and Parliament commented: ‘Citizens do not want the passive, broadcast-only relationship with their MPs that has existed until now, they wish to communicate and engage, to track and contribute to the democratic debate. Higher levels of engagement and wider participation in the democratic process will happen when citizens feel that they are a central part of it. This presents a challenge for Parliament - both for MPs and the House authorities.'

Download the full report here...

Birds of a feather?

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:43:00 GMT

Following Tweetminster's analysis of the state of play in ‘Twitter and UK Politics', Iain Dale updated his list of top 20 political twitterers from each the two main parties. Dale is annoyed that the Labour twitterati have jumped on the Tweetminster comment about Twitter being the tool of the ‘Tory machine' and ‘Labour's grassroots activists'. He raises a good question that neither he nor the Tweetminster paper answers, ‘how representative of the party are the comments posted on Twitter?' In reality, the answer exists in a continuum between @Conservaties and @DanHannanMEP populated by @ericpickles, @grantshapps, @mayoroflondon and @torybear!

A purely quantitative ‘follower' count is interesting but inherently problematic. Not least, we know that Twitter is notorious for ‘follower spam' and it is difficult to assess the quality of listening or level of engagement (if any) - which is what matters. Tweetminster has the advantage of having lots of data and so can take a much more nuanced and robust view of Twitter usage. They focus on reach by analysing not only followers but more importantly the number of times an account has been retweeted (forwarded by another Twitter user) or mentioned in a third-party Tweet. Where this analysis falls short is looking at the nature of mentions and retweets; positive or negative!

Dale puts Sarah Brown at the top of Labour Twitterers. But her tweets aren't political, certainly not party-political. Indeed, it's likely that her popularity is exactly because she is not seen as a politician (Tweetminster include her too). She might be associated with the Labour Party but clearly is not pushing a party message, policy agenda or anti-Tory rhetoric. Kerry McCarthy on the other hand clearly does all of the above and ranks 9^th in Dale's list of followers. McCarthy, Labour's ‘Twitter Tsar', is first by a huge margin in terms of most mentioned and retweeted MP (but McCarthy has also suffered from negative Twitter campaigns, so again it is difficult to suggest value from this).

In Tweetminster's Top 10 mentions for MPs are two Liberal Democrats and one Conservative (Nadine Dorries, who ranks 15^th in Dale's list). For re-tweets, Eric Pickles makes the top 10 and only Nick Clegg (2^nd) remains for the Liberal Democrats. In both lists all other places are taken by Labour MPs.

Previous Hansard Society research on Twitter shows that Labour MPs were taking to Twitter in much greater numbers than Conservatives in Westminster but this levels out for PPCs. Tweetminster data shows about 75% more tweets from PPCs than MPs in the last year but both remain dwarfed by tweets emanating from news sources, journalists and political bloggers. It also shows that Labour-supporting Tweeters have considerably more followers than other parties. Tweetminster's findings echo our own in terms of Conservative PPCs being more effective users of Twitter than their MP counterparts. Louise Bagshawe and René Kinzett (PPCs for Corby and East Northants and Swansea West respectively) rank second and third for mentions, although Labour's Paul Smith comes first. Outside the top three, Esther Rantzen's decision to stand as an independent candidate makes her the 6^th most mentioned PPC and Ian Parker-Joseph, standing for the Libertarian Party ranks 9^th. Again, the other places are filled with Labour candidates.

And let's not forget, the public has yet to engage with Twitter, fewer still use it as a tool for following politics. Preliminary data from our soon to be published Audit of Political Engagement 7 suggests that only 2% of the public surveyed use Twitter to follow a political group or politician (twice as many use Facebook). Most of those using social media do so to keep in contact with friends and family or follow celebrities. Worse still, feedback from Hansard Society focus groups suggests that the public are sceptical of politicians using social media; that they are doing this ‘to look cool' or ‘to curry favour' and because ‘some adviser that has told them to do it'.

So what influence can Twitter have beyond the Westminster bubble? To what degree can it shape political debate in election year? In terms of followers, Downing Street has 1.7 million and Sarah Brown has 1.1 Million but, by contrast, the top UK elected politician by far is Boris Johnson with 64,000 followers and the top MP is John Prescott, who has 14,000 followers. Further afield Barack Obama has 3.2 million followers and Britney Spears 4.2 million - almost one thousand times more than Kerry McCarthy!

This isn't to write off Twitter as an important tool simply to contextualise reach of political twitterers as narrow and their ability to influence at this stage limited to political activists, insiders and the media. Kerry McCarthy is clearly the politician with the greatest digital reach, but that's largely because of her role within the Labour Party and her influence beyond these circles is perhaps limited. And, as McCarthy knows only too well, not all coverage on Twitter is positive, so measuring retweets and mentions only goes part of the way to determining influence. Influence in fact would appear to be determined by two things. Primarily it's about an established real-world profile (either within or outside established party structures) and, second, an ability to say something controversial (preferably at odds with or which could embarrass the party). Examples in the former category include @nick_clegg and @johnprescott and in the latter, @danhannanmep. For this election at least, it's all about creating a profile amongst the media commentators who follow Twitter and it is through this filter bed of mainstream media that twittering has its ultimate but limited potential to influence the election. Twitter's value is going to be as a conduit to the mainstream media or as a foil for the story itself - launching an otherwise uninteresting policy in Twitter can make it news!

Andy Williamson

Digital Papers: Twitter: Communication tool or pointless vanity?

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:07:00 GMT

The social networking application Twitter has become an increasingly relevant and much talked about tool for the digital politician. As recently as December 2008 only two MPs were regularly dispatching 140-character ‘tweets', as a twitter message is known. Today, this has risen to 79 or just over 12% of MPs. That's about the same number with a blog but fewer than the 30% with a presence on Facebook. This rapid rise has led to the portrayal of Twitter as either revolutionary or a pointless fad. The reality lies somewhere in-between, a continuation of the increasingly fast news and information cycle that started with the printing press and evolved through radio, TV and blogs. As Labour MP and the party's ‘Twitter tsar', Kerry McCarthy, suggests, any MP who uses Twitter ‘is doing what we've always done in a new setting'.

Labour MPs who account for 61% of parliamentary twitterers and the Liberal Democrats, always early adopters of new media in the House, have a quarter of their MPs twittering. Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone was first in early 2008. Conservative MPs are the least likely to use Twitter, which might not be surprising given David Cameron's recent remarks on the subject. This reflects a strategy that places less emphasis on digital campaign tools for incumbent MPs but much more for prospective parliamentary candidates, where the Conservatives lead the league table, just slightly ahead of Labour.

Twitter's 140 characters are most widely used as a broadcast medium, replicating the other web tools. But it offers much more and, used well, becomes a platform for engagement and to listen. Some say that 40% of Twitter traffic is just ‘pointless babble' but are 60% of face-to-face conversations meaningful? Abbreviating the message does not mean losing the meaning but condensing what you say into a short, sharp 140 characters (roughly, this sentence) is a real skill.

An MPs Twitter audience bears little resemblance to their geographical constituency and, like blogs, Twitter's reach is far wider. This dislocation from the traditional constituency can be a boon for politicians wanting to raise their wider profile. As Labour MP Tom Harris noted, it is a chance to have a say beyond the constituency and portfolio. However, the extent to which the Twitter constituency is cultivated and maintained clearly varies. In New Zealand, candidates used Twitter during their 2008 election campaign to rally support only to switch off afterwards, the online presence of many going suddenly quiet.

There are benefits for the wider public too. Twitter has given us a different view of Parliament. It is now common to see MPs tweeting directly from the House during Prime Minister's Questions and a considerable number of tweets were made from the chamber during the election of the new Speaker in June. As we saw with the viral ‘#welovetheNHS' campaign, Twitter gives ordinary people the chance to directly shape the political agenda.

All of this highlights a challenge for politicians: being effective on Twitter means following and listening as much leading and talking. Citizens want their MPs to listen more but also prefer to engage with them in relatively shallow ways. Those who are already online prefer to connect online and so Twitter offers a new place for old style street-corner politics, suiting MPs who want to feel the pulse of the electorate. In Twitter, those who have always aimed to engage the public in constructive discussion will find a new space and a valuable new tool but it's not the ‘killer app' of digital politics and unlikely of itself to transform the political landscape.

Download a copy of our paper on MPs and Twitter here...

Read about and download the audio from our October 2009 Democracy Forum: Twiter: Communication tool or pointless vanity? here...

Digital Papers: MPs on Facebook

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:38:00 GMT

This new research paper 'MPs on Facebook' is the first in a new series of Digital Papers and examines how parliamentarians are using social media. In this paper, we describe how MPs are largely using Facebook as a one-way publishing medium and how this ignores the real benefits of social media. In our view, the key to harnessing this new generation of tools is conversation and engagement; where citizens can communicate with their MPs and get a response. Most MPs have a long way to go before they can claim to truly understand the power of social media.

MPs on Facebook shows that while over half (51%) of Liberal Democrat MPs have a presence on Facebook, the figures for Labour and the Conservatives are 15% and 9%, respectively. The research identified three main types of usage: campaigning, communication and personal:

46% of MPs are using Facebook primarily as a communications tool
31% of MPs are using Facebook primarily to canvas and campaign
13% of MPs are using Facebook primarily for personal information
10% of MPs’ Facebook pages are ‘inactive’

The research also examined the frequency and nature of online activity of MPs’ Facebook pages:

42% of MPs publish at least one item daily
17% regularly make multiple posts in the same day
23% publish no more than once a week
6% publish less than that

Download the report now: Digital Papers: MPs on Facebook

Our top five priorities for the Director of Digital Engagement

admin — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:54:00 GMT

With the new Director of Digital Engagement taking up his post on June 2, we thought it would be a good idea to review the recommendations of the Power of Information (PoI) Task Force in order to set our own priorities for the role.

The PoI Task Force recommendations are excellent and make a good starting point for this discussion but we've also taken on board the suggestions from the UserVoice site ‘I'd like the Director of Digital Engagement to...', set up by Steph Gray, who is Head of Social Media and Stakeholder Engagement at the DIUS. The following list is in no particularly order:

Give civil servants access to the social media tools that the public use and make sure that they know how to use them properly and effectively. As part of this, it will be necessary to train and mentor civil servants in how to engage effectively and genuinely with the public.

Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. We like the PoI suggestion of adopting the ‘backstage' model and support this but we're also keen to see a culture of innovation develop where creative, fast-to-market tools are created, deployed and shared. We want to see this go further, not just a percentage of the budget to seed innovation but a percentage to seed engagement too. We're not advocating greater spend because we also see the value in a parallel systematic review of online spend to ensure it is being targeting correctly.

Open up the policy dialogue, within government and beyond to citizens. This leans heavily on the two priorities above but is important in itself. We want the policy dialogue to be open, transparent, accessible and timely.

Integrate government data into civic life, make information - data - available now, online and for free. Unless there is a good reason to restrict access the default position is that data is shared. We don't just want a whole new series of PDF downloads and websites, this data needs to be provided in a range of formats, including being made available through simple to use APIs so that others can work with it dynamically.

Promote digital inclusion. Online government doesn't work without online citizens so it's important not to lose sight of the ‘customer'.

Andy Williamson

The internet is a great tool for transparency in public life

admin — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:03:00 GMT

Perhaps it is one of those eternal truths that we are more likely to try and get away with something when we think that no one is looking. There are many examples of this, not least the current MPs' expenses debacle.

Who is to blame for this is perhaps not as important as the fact that the system - the processes by which Parliament manages MPs' expense claims - is at best opaque. At last night's Hansard Society event celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament, former Scottish Deputy First Minister Lord Wallace noted that there has been little controversy or scandal over MSPs' expenses. Why? Because the system was designed to be transparent and publish them online every three months. A system such as this leaves little ‘wiggle room'.

This is a clear example of where the internet becomes a powerful ally of democracy. By using a system that automatically records and then publishes expenses data, the Scottish Parliament has not only avoided the sort of unseemly controversy that now dogs Westminster but it has gone further in creating a feeling of openness and accountability to the electorate.

At the UK Parliament, David Cameron has led the call for the online publication of expenses. The Conservatives have followed this up with publication of the Shadow Cabinet's expenses this week and other MPs are individually following suit. Veteran Labour backbencher Frank Field was one of the first to publish and remains one of the few MPs not just to publish a summary but scans of all the documentation relating to his expenses.

These are the first fledgling steps to a more transparent system and it is only with such a system in place that Parliament can start rebuilding public trust in it. The internet's role in this process is pivotal as it allows easy access to the information. More importantly, open data enhances accountability even more and expense claims published through an accessible API will allow others to analyse them, map them and create mashups using the data.

Andy Williamson

Director of Digital Engagement appointed

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:05:00 GMT

The Government has announced the new Director of Digital Engagement, Andrew Stott. It's highly likely that those outside of government have never come across him. Despite the rhetoric that this was to be a radical new appointment, that new blood was needed, that this job required a good knowledge of social media, of Web2.0 and how the world outside Whitehall worked... we get a life-long Whitehall insider.

The new Director has a lot to prove. A lot to live up to. There was (and is) an expectation amongst those passionate about better digital engagement that this job would be a conduit between citizens and government that, like Web2.0 itself, would transform government thinking.

Our work with Digital Dialogues has shown that a culture of risk aversion, of ‘government knows best' fails to engage citizens. What we've also seen is reluctance on the part of government as a whole to digitally (and effectively) engage. Despite small pockets of hope, there seems to be a shift afoot that draws engagement back into the central hold of government and tries to manage and control it. This is not a positive but we hope that the new Director of Digital Engagement will lead a change from the centre, promoting open, flexible and real engagement that listens, responds and acts.

We have to give Andrew Stott a chance, of course. We will, like many others, be watching his appointment with great interest.

What do others think? Andrew Lewin has a really good summary on his blog, linking to a diverse range of opinions on the appointment.

Andy Williamson

Under the bonnet: The engines that drive digital democracy

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:51:00 GMT

The internet is having a dramatic and transforming affect on politics. This might not be obvious or even visible to many people yet but it is happening and it matters.

Daily Politics on BBC2 finally made mention of the speech by Daniel Hannan that the rest of the British media ignored. It's not the speech, the speaker or the argument that is important here but that the speech became newsworthy solely because of the power of the crowd to report and the power of the internet to disperse an incident that otherwise went totally unreported in the UK. By the time it hit the BBC, it was ‘old news' in the blogsphere.

The BBC story angle was more about the way that Hannan's speech spread virally through YouTube as it was about the content. This worries me as it continues the fashionable mainstream media trend of seeing the internet as a novelty, even a danger to the future of the civilised world. Of course, that isn't the case but it is, thankfully, a direct and powerful threat to the power of the mainstream media.

The power of the digital crowd worked in two ways in the Hannan case, both increasing the speed and range of distribution. Uploading to YouTube isn't enough, people need to know it's there and watch it - you've got to spread the word. This happens in two ways with Web2.0 - it happens through dissemination of the link, much as would have been the case with email but much more quickly thanks to blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools.

Second, it's about creating multiple entry points into the same piece of content. This is the clever bit because every additional click decreases the chance the user will see it. The power of YouTube is not their website per se, it's the engine that lies behind their website. One giant repository of video content that can be linked to and - most importantly - embedded in anyone else's content.

It's too simplistic to say that it's just the mainstream media that doesn't get it, it's that the mainstream doesn't get it. That includes political parties. For now. The internet will be a catalyst for the reinvention of political life in the UK. The only question is when. The transformation likely to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary but it will be nonetheless significant.

Andy Williamson

Achieving a 'Digital Britain' in five not-so-easy steps

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Ofcom's latest research shows that people with internet access are more like to participate in democratic activities. The internet creates the potential for new frontiers for civic engagement where citizens can become architects of their own democratic engagement. Unfortunately though, access is unequally distributed with 40% of citizens in the UK still failing to get online, rising to a disturbing 60% in deprived areas. In parallel, many citizens claim that they do not wish to participate in democracy, figures from the Hansard Society of Audit of Political Engagement suggest that 57% choose not to be involved and 40% of them say that lack of time is a reason. Ofcom's Digital Citizen's Participation research, published this week, reports similar findings, 45% lack the time and, of more concern, 41% of people in deprived areas lack any interest in getting involved.

Whilst the internet can't increase the motivation to become involved it can lower the barriers.

It's common at this point to talk about a digital divide but this is too simplistic. Any digital divide is a consequence of other, wider inequalities, namely socio-economic and educational (as Ofcom's report shows). Going further though, it is also clear that a lack of digital access exacerbates other deficits, including a democratic one and so moving government participation and services online without addressing this issue is compounding this exclusion.

Whilst a universal service commitment (USC) is a positive step, it is a physical solution and alone won't solve the digital deficit or, for that matter, any democratic deficit. USC is one piece in a more complex jigsaw that needs to be addressed in a holistic way. This it seems is the only way we have of letting everyone who wants internet access and wishes to participate in society and democracy do so. So how do we go about this? I want to suggest five factors that need to be considered together:

Access must be fast enough, cheap enough and close enough - proximity of access makes a difference;
Information literacy is needed so that citizens have the skills to find, evaluate and work effectively with a wide range of digital content;
The right content and range of content is needed otherwise the motivation to be online is not sustained;
Accessible tools are required to turn consumers of content into creators of content; and
Finally, tools for the equitable dissemination of content are vital and this is where social media and Web2.0 become a powerful part of the digital engagement picture.

Digital Britain and other strategies start to address these issues but they stop far short of what is needed. It's still all too narrow, too siloed and far too strongly focussed on broadcasting.

Let's look at some examples of what actually happens online. Take Wikipedia and other Web2.0 tools, where only 1% of users create the content, 9% make occasional changes or comments to existing content and the other 90% consume. Is this a problem? No! So-called ‘lurking' is still productive and educational but one challenge has be to develop the motivation, tools, technologies and processes that can increase that 1% year on year.

Closer to home, the UK Parliament is a microcosm of wider society in its use of digital media. As our MPs Online report shows, 92% of MPs use email but that means a significant number still don't. One quarter are social networking online and the number of Twitter users as risen from two MPs before Christmas to around 50 only three months later.

I started off with a vision of citizens as the architects of their own engagement and laid out five areas that need to be addressed for this to happen. And whilst there is plenty of space for citizen-led innovation, it will take more than citizens. We need a coherent whole-of-government strategy to implement whole-of-society solutions: Joined-up government meets an energeitc and innovative civil society! Those who control the processes of engagement must recognise the viral and emergent nature of the internet and accept that, today, participation happens in a wide variety of ways and forms - on citizens' terms as well as governments. There are indications that this is starting to happen in small ways but to work long-term and on the scale we need the risk averse culture of government needs to change to embrace citizen-generated content and fresh thinking.

Finally, we need a national commitment to digital literacy across every level of society and recognition that this is a not only a key life skill but a basic human right in our knowledge society.

Andy Williamson

Twittering isn't just for the birds

admin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Birds tweet. To the untrained human ear this random cacophony of noise is not unpleasant but it is just background noise. So to Twitter. Twitter has emerged as the de rigueur tool of the political commentariat. Because of this, it has also come in for criticism from members of that class who lack an understanding of how the internet has encroached positively into political life.

Rachel Sylvester's article in The Times is a good example. Sylvester completely misses the point about Twitter and as a result dismisses it and all who Twitter as social-outcasts desperately in search of validation. She makes the classic mistake of linking a tool to a technology to a stereotypical socially inadequate geek. What Sylvester fails to notice is that Web2.0 has dragged us out of the cubicle, sidelined the pony-tail and made online communication not just fashionable but - and this my point - useful.

Twitter works because people use it. It is not a broadcast medium - although it can be used in this way. The value of Twitter lies in a whole slew of semi-random and often disconnected conversations. Twitter is awash with snippets, ideas, announcements, leads and comments.

As someone who has been immersed in the world of digital communications for far too long, I struggle to keep up with what's new and who is doing what. Twitter really does help with this. I twitter (note use as a verb) not to raise my self-esteem or in the hope that someone will one day affirm my existence through it. I do so because it is a useful way of releasing thoughts, ideas and even frustrations that collectively might add some value to our body of knowledge on digital engagement. In a fast-changing digital landscape, ideas are perishable so delivery to market needs to be fast for maximum freshness.

So why wouldn't MPs twitter? Tom Harris MP said at our recent MPs online report launch that he started blogging because, as a minister, he was limited to speaking on a very narrow portfolio, yet he had lots of other ideas and opinions that he - as a politician - wanted to express. Twitter is simply an extension of this, including personal ‘tweets' simply a way of humanising those who twitter.

Is Twitter the future of politics? Who knows! Probably not. But it adds not just colour but real value and a democratising potential to political (and wider) discourses. Digital media can challenge the power structures and the political elites and surely that's a good thing?

Andy Williamson

MPs are stuck in 'send' mode

admin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:14:00 GMT

A new Hansard Society report, sponsored by Microsoft, MPs Online: Connecting with Constituents, reveals that MPs are using the internet primarily to inform their constituents rather than engage with them. The most widely used digital media are those which are mainly passive in nature, such as websites. Interactive forms of media which could be used by MPs to develop a two-way dialogue with their constituents, such as blogs and social networking, are used much less commonly. Where these tools are used, it is often in passive ‘send’ mode with few MPs exploiting their full interactive potential.

Key findings from the research are:

92% of MPs use email
83% of MPs have a personal website
23% of MPs use social networking
11% of MPs blog

The MPs Online research draws upon findings from a survey and focus group of MPs. It demonstrates that while there is almost universal use of email and adoption of websites, MPs’ use of social networking tools (such as Facebook or MySpace) is more variable: with factors other than party-led strategy proving more influential:

London MPs are highest users of social networking tools (43%); MPs from Wales and the Midlands are lowest users (20%)
Younger MPs (born after 1960) are highest users (38%); Older MPs (born before1940) are lowest users (14%)
MPs elected in or after 2005 are highest users (40%); MPs elected in or before 1986 are lowest users (5%)
The marginality of a constituency has little affect until the MP’s majority exceeds 30% - when there is a sharp decline in adoption

While blogging is popular with the media and internet users, it is less so among MPs. Only 11% have a blog and many of these do not enable the comment facility. Factors such as age and marginality of constituency do not appear to be a barrier but time, resources, the abusive reputation of the ‘blogosphere’ and the need to prioritise constituents’ needs all make blogging unpopular with MPs.

Andy Williamson, Director of the eDemocracy programme at the Hansard Society and author of the report, commented:

MPs are transmitting and not receiving. They use the internet as a tool for campaigning and for organising their supporters, rather than opening up two-way communication with constituents. The use of the internet for direct political engagement still remains a largely untapped area and, on the whole, one that is not well understood by MPs. One indication that this is changing comes in the rise of social networking tools, the use of which is up substantially in the past three years (from 3% in 2005 to 23% today) – suggesting the potential for greater engagement in the future.

Download the report here...

Parliament 2020

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:57:00 GMT

Parliament 2020 - 'Visioning the future parliament' is a set of visioning exercises that aim to identify how new and emergent technologies can be used to transform the processes of parliament and its relationship with the public. To do this, the project will undertake a number of discussion sessions through face-to-face focus groups and online consultations with a range of stakeholders - these include MPs, parliamentary officials and the public.

The focus of this project is not on the technology, rather it seeks to identify how these technologies might support new models for democratic engagement and to identify what the barriers to implementing these might be. The project aims to develop a report that presents a vision for a digitally enabled parliament along with practical ideas and a road map for incremental change.

Parliament 2020 is a joint project between the Hansard Society, the UK Parliament and four other national parliaments.

Download the Parliament 2020: Focus group guide
Watch a short video on our Lego Serious Play focus group
Read the press release and download the Parliament 2020 UK report

MPs Online

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:47:00 GMT

Twenty-four hour news, the internet and mobile telecommunications shrink distance and change our expectations of immediacy, contact and intimacy. These same technological shifts offer MPs scope to improve business and information management but also to improve communication and information flows with constituents. Previous research has identified how the internet has been used by sitting MPs as both a communication tool and as a tool for political campaigning. However, the majority of the research available focuses on external analyses of digital media resources and only limited research exists on MPs’ attitudes to digital media and their perceptions of its use and value.

Whilst much has been written about the external view of MPs websites and their online presence, this research attempts to understand how MPs themselves feel the internet affects the way that they work and communicate with their constituents. The research includes a survey of MPs and a focus group of MPs and their office staff.

The final report was published in February 2009 and is available here for download. This research was supported by Microsoft.