e-Participation is still a new and growing area, moving forward in various directions and various speeds in various places. The audit of local authority e-consultation we’re about to publish has captured some really interested findings, and more on that soon, but as always, behind what people are doing online lie the forces that are driving them to do it.
There are many different factors that influence what an organisation does in terms of e-participation; seeing what others have done around them, being approached by a private company, encouragement from the government. This latter one, up until now, has generally been more carrot than stick, encouraging authorities to look at what they can do online and how they can do it better.
But with e-petitions, the game seems to have changed. Providing a facility for e-petitions is not going to be just a recommendation, it’s going to be something authorities have to do. Thing is though, will they? In a time of shrinking budgets and competing priorities, is an authority that doesn’t have the mechanisms in place to handle petitions once they come in really going to have an incentive to find the funds for an online system? Software can facilitate a process, but it’s a lot harder to expect software to create a meaningful one for you.
So here’s a thought. If government requires all authorities to do something online, shouldn’t it go some way towards enabling them to do so? Why not provide a simple e-petitions system which any local authority can sign up to and start using for free? We did something similar with Demgames, authorities can create their own customised version of them in just a few minutes without any work on our part.
The government providing access to simple and open tools for people shouldn’t necessarily preclude market forces from existing alongside. When I was small, there was always the option of free glasses on the NHS, but my local opticians still did a roaring trade. Adding more choice to a field of provision shouldn’t be a problem, unless that choice prevents other choices existing as well. If software is an optional extra, then it can happily be provided by internal or external labour. But once it becomes a compulsory requirement, shouldn’t it be made as cheap and accessible as possible?
It’ll be interesting to see what happens once compulsion to have a software system comes into being. On a broader scale, it looks like a debate that’s not going to go away.
