UK Items – 10K to MPs, RSA Event, Innovation Exchange, and more
David Wilcox keeps on humming with his Designing for Civil Society blog:
- MPs get £10,000 each for improved communication: responses mixed – He quotes my list of suggestions from the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange on what I’d do with 10K if I were an MP. I want to endorse Tom Steinberg’s call for a shared e-mail response tool. In fact as I noted to TheOpenHouseProject in the U.S. the missing project in the UK TheyWorkforYou.com, WritetoThem.com, and HearFromYourMP.com collection is “ListentoPeople.com.”
- Designing for Civil Society: Free conference on new media and society: old-style event – See THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF THE WEB: Society, Government and the Internet at the RSA – Special event | 25 May 2007
- No 2.0 could be the reality check on Innovation Exchange – The Innovation Exchange reminds of my research for the OECD on “public net-work” (a shortened term like e-democracy that I made up but in this case died on the vine.) This does bring up the question – why is e-democracy/e-participation in governance still focused primarily on input and rarely on collaborative output or participatory implementation of public priorities??? As far as I can tell the interactive tools are pretty much the same. Say if you are working on a bid, why not propose building on the open source GroupServer platform (or other open source platforms) so the technology costs can be brought down around the world and enable similar value-added exchange! I’d be glad to collaborate.
- Social media challenges and opportunities for nonprofits
My further response is that the parliament itself should supply joint tools starting with an enhanced member directory – yes, one size fits all experience the rare decent MP websites will offer individually – as an option like the award winning Minnesota legislature does (click on a members name and see contact info, picture, intro video, commitee assignments, news releases, e-mail newsletter tool, rss feed, podcast feed, deep links to bills authored, etc.). I also want a million dollars to commission an open source tool to help elected officials around the world read, understand and respond to their incoming e-mail.
No parliament will build a tool and share it with other parliaments much less local city councils – an outside source of funding for the sharing is required.
– I like this Yes 2.0 and No 2.0 disussion.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
e-democracy.org
dowire.org
