E-Petitions And Their Outcomes

Can’t really let this one go past without comment. For all the controversy and debate stirred up by the number 10 e-petitions site over the last year, this one may have legs.

A user has submitted an e-petition to the site that, through being kept nice and simple, has got round some of the barriers to petitions being of a political nature. It simply says “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign.”

It’s been building over time, and at the time of writing has over 21,000 signatures.

Now, certainly Number 10 isn’t going to be happy over this one being there, but it flags up the same old point once again. e-Democracy isn’t about software, or ‘tools’ as people tend to call it, it’s about what you do with that software.

On the one hand e-petitions as a concept work well. They’re simple, quick to engage with, and mimic an already understood offline concept. As this one and others are demonstrating, others can promote them around the web easily enough.

On the other though, they pose real risks. Is the Prime Minister really going to resign over a petition? Of course not. Once again an e-Democracy project is going to lessen, not increase, the feeling of democratic power on the part of those taking part.

The one place to which this petition can bring additional power is to the hands of the already politically engaged; opposition parties. A petition like this creates a story for them when released, occasional stories as signatures reach various milestones, then of course a perfect story once closed that can feed into all manner of areas, from the mainstream media to election leaflets. Its results are a voodoo poll of course, but since when have election materials been averse to using those?

In this petition, Number 10 uses the email addresses to respond to those who sign petitions, and I wouldn’t want to be the person writing the response to this one. But in other authorities, the person creating the petition has the ability to respond, creating an authority funded target mailing list generator for political parties in the area, once again centralising power in the hands of the already engaged.

Any issue is open to being hijacked by political and vested interests for their own purpose, although the simplicity and efficiency savings created by the use of the web for this make it more likely online than offline.

However, the success of such approaches should only really be measured by the degree to which they actually hand power and a sense of empowerment to those currently without. Very often, systems such as this may just be giving a veneer of democracy to a situation that actually assists the further centralisation of power in the hands of the already engaged, and contributes to a feeling that no matter what you say, no-one listens.

It’s worth saying that these problems aren’t unique to e-petitioning, they hold true for other e-democracy or e-participation projects too. However, the key point within all of this is the need to move away from the focus on ‘tools’, on what software can technically do, and towards processes. What should it actually do, and what should be done with it?

EDIT: Iain Dale’s been having similar thoughts it seems, especially around the ability to sign e-petitions under false names. Reminds me of sitting in a meeting at Bristol City Council with councillors, and them looking through an e-petition on a projector, only to see their some of their own names down as having signed it, when apparently none of them had. You can imagine the result.