So you may have noticed that we were running this debate last night, ‘the internet: the saviour or corruptor of democracy?’, (with the help of the Henry Jackson Society, sponsored by MessageSpace and very graciously hosted in Parliament by Danny Alexander MP).
Our pretty prestigious panel comprised Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes blog), Peter Kellner (YouGov), Michael White (Associate Editor, the Guardian), Grant Shapps MP (Shadow Minister for Housing)… read more
This is interesting, a while back I signed a Number 10 e-petition that said;
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ask the Communities Secretary to require that all software produced by councils under the Timely Information to Citizens project be released under an open source licence.
It went on to say in the further information section;
…as citizens we cannot and do not support this substantial sum of public… read more
And so the time has come (at last!). Tonight we host a debate in Parliament on the subject: “The Internet: Saviour or Corruptor of Democracy?” For those of you who are not able to attend, you can follow the whole debate live on Twitter via hash tag #idebate.
Hosted by Danny Alexander MP, the panel is: Nick Robinson (BBC), Michael White (Guardian), Peter Kellner (YouGov), Grant Shapps MP (Shadow Minister for… read more
I randomly came across this lecture by Beth Noveck for the Stamford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar entitled “Technologies for collaborative democracy”.
Once she’d got over the introductory bits of her presentation of various e-democracy projects from around the world (which covered the usual Downing Street e-Petition stuff), she went on to make… read more
The good news is that Delib’s democracy and the internet debate has proved massively popular - with huge amounts of people wanting to attend.
The bad news is that there’s now no spaces left, so if you haven’t signed up then you’ll have to follow the debate virtually. There’s a number of ways you can do this:
- Twitter - we’ll be running a live Twitter debate alongside the real… read more
It may seem an obvious point to many but the importance of Twitter (and other social media) in the Iranian protests and their suppression over the allegedly fraudulent election has made a massive impact on how I view the micro-blog.
A few months ago, I was really struggling to see the utility of Twitter: I had seen it used pretty well as as an ideas-gathering device (’I'm giving a talk on… read more
Due to end of year accounts keeping people extremely busy of late we have decided to extend the deadline of the budget consultation survey to allow more people the opportunity to take part.
With budget consultation being such a pertinent topic at present, the survey is a means to share best practice principles across UK councils. Delib will subsequently be publishing a report on the the survey’s results, that will help… read more
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this year’s Reith lectures on Radio 4 – if you don’t already know, they’re being given by Harvard professor Michael Sandel on the theme of ‘A New Citizenship’. The latest lecture was entitled ‘Morality in Politics’ – now, I don’t want to reduce everything to a function of work, and the bulk of his talk was about making a case for acknowledging… read more
I don’t want to come over as some kind of sycophant but the White House just keeps on saying the right kinds of things at the moment, as far as I’m concerned. There probably are ways these things could be done even better or things they’re missing or wording that could be more radical or whatever but the fact is that this powerhouse of a democracy, which is currently reinvigorating… read more
After a couple of months of sorting out point of sale plans for aMap , and most importantly, sorting out the “call to action” messaging, we’re ready to take aMap into shops!
The most recent shop to stock aMap is the Arnolfini bookshop in Bristol - which is v.exciting. So far they’ve been selling aMaps without our super-newly designed point of sale device, so once I’ve managed to get… read more