Recent E-democracy Articles

Failure to engage

Last week I wrote this piece for Liberal Conspiracy about how government websites aren’t exactly built to facilitate the new era of positive political engagement with the public we’re told our masters want.

Specifically, I highlighted Lord Goldsmith’s citizenship review, it’s call for the views of the public, and how if you don’t have the resources to print the review’s PDF pamphlets from the website, you are asked to contact the review team.

So, I did. I asked how I obtain a hard copy of the pamphlet ‘The Future of Citizenship Ceremonies‘. On November 6.

Still no reply a week later.

Let’s get engaged, Gordon

I’ve been giving some thought to positive engagement with political processes – I like the idea of producing a kind of rough and ready primer for the man or woman in the street who wants to get their voice heard.

The Queen’s Speech seems the ideal place to start. So, head to the Number 10 website. Click on the special section all about the Queen’s Speech and select the list of bills, draft bills and statements to see what issues were covered in the speech.

Let’s take a look the Citizenship and Immigration Draft Bill. They’re hot, emotive issues right now. There’s not a lot of detail in the PDF document (what is it about this government and PDFs?) but there is a link at the bottom to Lord Goldsmith’s citizenship review.

Except the link doesn’t work. You can’t click through to the review’s webpage from the PDF document. You can either type the web address manually into your web browser or try another angle.
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