E-Petitioning – Asking the Scottish Parliament to debate funding for the Scottish Civic Forum
Over the last decade Scotland has been a hot-bed of democratic renewal. Recently, funding for the “active citizenship” building Scottish Civic Forum has been cut by the Scottish Executive. In past years you’ve heard me praise the Scottish Parliament for their online activities and e-petitioning. For those interested in e-petitioning within -formal- representative process this is one to watch. Be sure to note the discussion feature of which I was not previously aware. What is so important about this online process is that it formally accommodates “anywhere, any time” participation within the construct of official representative processes. I suppose a question with the Scottish Civic Forum, is to what extent should the representatives support the general voice of civil society and active citizens outside of parliament/the executive versus dealing with relatively resource rich interest groups. (From my experience, few citizens want to individually donate to “democratic overhead” unless it advocates for their beliefs – so foundations and governments are the only real source of support for “active citizenship.”)
Before a bunch of non-Scots sign on, Prof. Stephen Coleman raised some good questions on the Do-Consult forum about the call to sign the petition, which is shared just below:
Before signing such a position, or agreeing that the forum should be
funded, I would like to know more.How many people use it?
What affect has the forum had on decisions made by the Executive or
Parliament?Has the forum been independently evaluated?
What arguments has the Executive given for not supporting the forum?
Let’s form a balanced judgement before rushing into this. (And just how
many petition signatures from non-Scots is the Executive supposed to take
notice of, anyway?)
Here is the call as forwarded by Lorna Ahl to the do-consult group:
From: “Debbie Wilkie” debbie .wilkie@civicforum.org.uk
Date: Thu Oct 27, 2005 10:01 am
Subject: Just a minute …..or less
To: “CIVICFORUM” civicforum @civicforum.org.uk
Dear friend,
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to sign the e-petition asking for the implications of not funding the Scottish Civic Forum to be debated by the Scottish Parliament. It is not too late to make your voice heard – but almost!!. There is just a week to go for collecting signatures to the petition lodged by Edinburgh’s Active Citizen’s Group, so please could I ask you to take just a few seconds to add your voice. If every Forum contact was able to add just 6 signatures to the list it would make the petition one of the largest submitted to the Parliament. So, if you think it is important for citizens to be able to participate, please consider supporting the petition. You can do this by clicking on this link:
epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=70
It was agreed by all political parties at the time of devolution that a civic-led organisation was needed to support new participants to get invovled in the Parliament’s work. The Forum has provided opportunities for participation in debate on issues of the day in over 40 different locations in Scotland over the last two years and has involved over 3,000 people. 70% of those responding to a survey said they hadn’t had any other opportunity to participate in a discussion on the subject of the event. These opportunities for people to participate will soon be lost unless the decisions of the Parliament Corporate Body and Scottish Executive not to fund the Forum can be reversed. The feedback the Forum has had is that a lot of people, particularly those working in small community led organisations and individuals often do not know how to find out what is going on or how to participate. Lack of knowledge was cited recently by MORI as being one of the main barriers to participation.
Please also circulate this e-mail to your contacts, friends etc.
With thanks in anticipation,
Debbie Wilkie
Director
Scottish Civic Forum
Fòram Catharra Na H-Alba
The Tun
16 Jackson’s Entry (From the Royal Mile turn into Crichtons Close opposite
Geraldines – SCF is on the left just past the Scottish Poetry Library)
Holyrood Road
Edinburgh
EH8 8PJ
www.civicforum.org.uk
t: 0131 524 9395
f: 0870 051 1192
October 27th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
November 1st, 2005 at 4:04 am
As part of the Local eDemocracy National Project, Bristol and Kingston piloted the same software that the Scottish Parliament are using (built by the International Teledemocracy Centre at Napier University). The systems have now been live for over a year and in Bristol, interest and use of the site is increasing steadily with a recent epetition about recycling plastics gaining nearly 5000 supporters.
The accompanying discussion forum is an important part of the process as it allows us to analyse the support and opposition to the epetition. For example, a epetition about building a bridge over Bristol’s harbourside showed that people agreed with the issue in principle but as long as certain considerations were taken into account (eg that tall ships would not be prevented from coming in to the harbour) and other epetitions have comments in disagreement with the issue. These are important ways of improving the democratic process and the analysis of the discussion forum accompanies the list of signatures when the epetition is submitted.
We also analyse where people have signed from (analysed by ward within Bristol, by neighbouring authority and other UK or international). This is seen as particularly useful by the councillors/decision-makers – we didn’t want to exclude people who weren’t within Bristol’s boundaries but our constitution needs to focus primarily on them.
More info about the NP work is posted at http://www.e-democracy.gov.uk/knowledgepool/default.htm?mode=1&pk_document=350