Earlier today, UK Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off a consultation exercise on ways to reduce government spending. Together with Nick Clegg he has written to public service workers asking them to share their ideas on where to make spending cuts.

A Spending Challenge website has been launched to solicit suggestions from Britain’s 6 million public sector workers. The challenge states that “Every single idea will be considered and the best ones taken forward by departments, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office”. Ideas will be analysed through a five step process:

1. All ideas considered by cross-government team
2. Serious ideas go to ‘champions’ team in Cabinet Office/Treasury
3. Most promising ideas sent to departments and Treasury spending teams to be worked up
4. Selected ideas reviewed by Ministers
5. Spending Review announced October 20th

The rational for the challenge is laid out in Cameron’s letter:

The biggest challenge our country faces is dealing with our huge debts – and that means we have to reduce public spending.

Reducing public spending will require innovative and challenging ideas, best developed by those working on the frontline of public services:

We want you to help us find those savings, so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontbench of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.

[...] Don’t hold back. Be innovative, be radical, challenge the way things are done. Every serious idea will be considered: by government departments, by the Treasury, by our teams in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office – and passed to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to make sure we don’t miss anything.

While the website states the government “will look at every single idea that comes in”, however, there is no guarantee any of the suggestions will make it through to the final Spending Review report in October. This will set detailed spending plans, with budget cuts of up to 25% over four years for many government departments.

The Spending Challenge will be opened to the general public from 9 July. A summary of all submissions will be published later this year.

Partner with Wikileaks

The Spending Challenge site will also monitor social media as a means of fulfilling its mandate to find innovative ideas for saving money. This represents a recognition that some of the most “out of the box” suggestions may be outlined by on blogs and forums, rather than a newly created government website:

Although this process allows you to submit ideas anonymously, we respect the fact that some people will not want to contribute directly to a government website.  As part of this exercise, we will monitor a range of blogs, social networks, forums and also http://wikileaks.org.

Save Award similarities

The UK Spending Challenge has many similarities to the Obama Administration’s SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award. On launching last year’s competition President Obama called for “a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better.”

David Cameron’s recognition that public sector workers often have the best ideas was outlined by Jeffrey Zients, chief performance officer and deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget, when he said it was important to listen to the voices of those on the front lines:

In the government and in the private sector, it is often those in the front lines that have the best ideas and who know the most… We are looking for ideas that save money, improves the way the government operates by lowering costs, simplifying processes, streamlining processes, getting rid of unnecessary red tape and that has an impact on citizens’ lives. It could be a wide range of ideas.

The competition was seen as a success with over 38,000 ideas being submitted in the three weeks of the competition. Given this, the SAVE Award was turned into an annual event with President Obama issuing his own “spending challenge” to government workers:

I’ve issued a challenge to every man and woman who works for the federal government:  If you see a way that government could do its job better, or do the same job for less money, I want to know about it

Saving through Open Source

The twitter reaction to the launch of the new site has been generally positive. The initiative is one of the latest examples of the coalition seeking to harnessing the collective ideas and experience of those working outside of central government.

As a nod to this the website itself is based on a WordPress theme developed by Simon Dickson for the recent Programme For Government site. Seeing the government use Open Source tools for the website, and reusing previous themes, demonstrates the spirit of the spending challenge.

The extension and reuse of such open source technology throughout government could help to bring down the cost of government websites. The axing of many government websites has already been proposed by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, but ideas from the public on reducing the costs of current sites e.g. through using free templates such as Govfresh’s Gov 2.0 theme, would be welcomed – especially when some current sites have a per visit cost of £11.78.

The winning idea from the US SAVE award is expected to save $2 million for 2011, and $14.5 million between 2010-2014. Any similar savings arising from the UK Spending Challenge should help establish the power of consultation with the public as a means of saving money and improving government efficiency.

Further reading

• Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized
• Measuring Government Website costs
• Government to axe hundreds of ‘unnecessary’ websites
• Technology in a Cold Climate
• Govfresh Gov 2.0 theme
• SAVE Award

With only two weeks left to vote in the POWER 2010 campaign, the top ideas have already amassed considerable support, with the introduction of a proportional voting system expected to top the poll.

There is, however, an idea that has considerable advantages and breaks new ground in how we think about major decisions facing local and national governments. Before getting into an explanation of the merits of Deliberative polling, it’s important to understand the background and aims of the Power 2010 campaign.

What is Power 2010?

The campaign is a truly diverse and mass discussion on the shape of British democracy. In just over 2 months it has received over 4,500 ideas from the public  to change how we do politics in this country.

The Power 2010 campaign explains itself as a means of giving “everyone the chance to have a say in how our democracy works for us”:

We need a healthy democracy that works for all of us and not just a powerful few. POWER2010 exists to help create it. It gives you the chance to have your say on how our democracy works so that together we can change it for the better.

Do you want cleaner funding? Fairer voting? More accountability? You decide. Tell us your ideas for changing the way we run our country. Those with most support will become the POWER2010 Pledge and the focus for our national campaign at the next election.

Deliberative poll (London, UK – Renewing British Democracy)

The POWER2010 campaign kicked off in early January with a Deliberative Poll in central London. Over 130 participants of all backgrounds and walks of life, were brought together to discuss proposals for democratic reform submitted by members of the public (phase 2 above).

The participants were representative of the population as a whole, and received balanced briefing materials detailing each of the reform ideas, with arguments for and against along with axillary background information. They deliberated in small groups with trained moderators and engaged in plenary sessions with experts. Participants’ opinions were gathered through confidential questionnaires before and after deliberations.

Together, by talking through the issues and cross-examining experts from across the spectrum of opinion, participants assembled a shortlist of reforms which they think can bring democracy back to the people.

Some of the comments from participants at the event illustrate the power of constructive debate amongst a diverse range of people:

“it has been good to meet people that don’t think like me, have completely different views, but then find out why”

“it’s quite a good learning process for me. I don’t think I knew an awful lot about politics and the processes, and I’m learning a lot here today…It has fired me up to find out more about the political process and perhaps I’ll be attending my local MP’s surgeries and raising a few more questions. ”

“In a few instances, I’ve.. been reformed to a different way of thinking”

While some of the participants were cynical about politicians, they were passionate about making government more democratic. During the event support for a more proportional system, rose from 48% to 53% and is now leading the list of reforms in the public vote.

Deliberative poll (Michigan, US – Solutions for Michigan’s problems)

Last month, Michigan public television stations broadcast “Hard Times, Hard Choices”, a special report on a  statewide citizens’ deliberation. Michigan is facing severe economic problems with rising unemployment and severe budget cutbacks due to the recession and its declining manufacturing base.

Over the weekend of November 13 – 15, 317 Michigan citizens traveled to Lansing to discuss and debate the state’s problems and what to do about them. The participants were a scientific random sample of people, representative of the population in age, education and political persuasion. Upon arrival the participants filled out a questionnaire to determine what preconceived notions and opinions each held on a wide variety of issues directly related to Michigan’s problems and any their views on possible solutions.

As with the Power 2010 event, the participants received background material in advance, debated the issues in small groups and then put their questions to a panel of experts.

The entire process was filmed by PBS to form the documentary below.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part One
Delegates are introduced to the concept of Deliberative polling and discuss jobs and education in Michigan.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part Two Delegates discuss the budget shortfall and the state’s options for taxing and spending.

Michigan Citizens Deliberate: Part Three
Delegates discuss Michigan’s future and the hard economic choices ahead.

The knowledge the participants gleaned over the weekend alone was enough to spur many to a new activism and sense of purpose:

Carol Selden (Spring Arbor): “I need to become more of an informed citizen, and when I’m informed then I’ll be able to the ideas the legislators need to have to make good choices for us”

Michael Petross (Detroit): “In this group I’ve listened to other people’s opinions and I’ve changed some of my opinions.”

Results of Michigan’s first Deliberative Poll show what the people of the state would think if they could all become more informed, and had opportunities to discuss the issues in depth within diverse groups. When participants filled out the same questionnaire on the final day of the deliberative poll the results, showed a dramatic swing in attitudes and opinions in several major areas:

• Respondents were much more willing to support increases in the state income tax and sales tax to eliminate cuts in education and some other social services.

• Respondents were persuaded that cutting both the Michigan Business Tax and reducing small business taxes were among the best ways to attract and keep businesses, thereby creating jobs.

• Support for increased investment in a “green economy”, agriculture, and tourism also went up significantly during the weekend, as did support for a high-tech, knowledge-based economy.

Summary

The resulting changes of opinion in both Deliberative poll examples offer some dramatic recommendations for both policymakers and the public. These events increase public understanding of complex issues, and demonstrate the large difference between people’s uninformed and informed views (witness the comments and changes in support for issues following both Deliberative polls).

Stephen Whitehead, of the new economics foundation, outlines the benefits of the idea succinctly:

Deliberation – getting together and talking about issues – is a powerful tool to produce wise, well-informed decisions. Whilst critics of citizen involvement worry that the public will produce reactionary, conservative or discriminatory decisions, evidence suggests that talking through issues with people from different backgrounds moves people to views which are generous, tolerant and sometimes even imaginative.

Deliberation offers an alternative to the tiresome tug-of-war between proponents of representative and direct democracy. Rather than trusting in political elites to make decisions on our behalf on the basis of a tenuous mandate, or investing power in populist schemes like referenda which can be vulnerable to kneejerk reactions, deliberative democracy aims to create the conditions where the public can bring their wisdom, experience and empathy to decision-making.

So let me join with Stephen, and nearly 600 others, in recommending you to vote for deliberative polling as a means of “putting political power back into the hands of the people best qualified to use it – all of us.”

Further reading

For more on Deliberative polling check:

• Hard Times, Hard Choices Results
• The Center for Deliberative Democracy
• Deliberative Polling (1-pager)
• Tomorrow’s Europe (European Deliberative poll)
• [Video] Channel 4 News Report on Power 2010
• [Book] When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
• Public Participation methods – Deliberative polling

For details on new ideas from the University of Michigan – (as mentioned in the PBS documentary) – check 1000 pitches.

The World Bank’s primary mission is fighting global poverty. Such an challenge requires the organisation to be open and responsive to communities and other organisations with which it works. The institution has, however, found itself in the firing line of late, with critics citing a lack of transparency in its policies and project implementations. They also cite a failure to include local insights in decision-making that directly affects the poor.

It was within this context that Alnoor Ebrahim, an associate Professor at Harvard Business School, recently appeared before the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. Congress. His testimony focused on the reform and accountability efforts undertaken at the World Bank over the past fifteen years.

While acknowledging many improvements in accountability at both project and policy level, he outlined 4 key recommendations to strengthen and enforce the primary challenge of the Bank i.e. to reduce global poverty. He noted the implementation of these as crucial for the legitimacy and effectiveness of the World Bank, and necessary to successful development outcomes. The recommendations include:

1). Establishing mandatory minimum standards for public participation, supported by improved staff incentives and performance appraisals

Ebrahim notes that public participation at policy and project level is usually ad-hoc and discretionary. The Bank generally only formalizes or requires it when forced to do so under external pressure. Consequently, he proposes that in order to enhance democratic participatory processes the Bank should develop two sets of mandatory process-based participation standards:

• A fixed administrative procedure for developing and revising Bank operational policies and strategies (i.e., policy level participation)
• A set of minimum requirements for public involvement in different types of lending operations (i.e., project level participation)

Such public participation mechanisms, however, are not absent from the Bank’s current operations. There is a wealth of Bank literature on how to implement high-quality, participatory decision-making. Rather, the issue lies with the inconsistent adherence to and reach of such participation policies.

While the Participation and Civic Engagement Group within the Bank focuses on themes of civic engagement and public participation, more formal processes need to be established to promote public involvement in all areas of the Bank’s operations. Participation can help to build public confidence and trust for World Bank policies and projects. Public engagement and the more innovative consultations should form the cornerstone of participation within the bank.

2). Systematically incorporate public participation in decision-making at each stage of its project/policy cycles

The Bank’s existing project/policy cycle already provides a structure for improving participation. There are, however, a number of improvements that can be made to improve the operation effectiveness of such engagements. These include :

• Ensuring all stages of the project/policy cycle are transparent and information is made available to the public for deliberation before key decisions are made;

• Requiring adequate budgetary resources to be made available for participation through all stages of decision-making;

• Ensuring public disclosure of all materials that can help citizens understand board decisions. These include committee minutes and reports, meeting summaries, and draft documents used for deliberation.

While the Bank already consults widely on policy – see an example of the current consultation process for it’s 2010 Environment strategy – it needs to embrace new mechanisms for participation especially among the poorest sections of society. Governor Schwarzenegger’s innovative use of Twitter to solicit budget ideas represents an example of how the public can be consulted easily. New participation activities – such as an upcoming Hackathon – are interesting examples of how the public can engage with the institution to solve major issues in innovative ways. Such innovative experiments should be encouraged as a means of reducing the effort necessary for the public to engage with the Bank.

3). Improve the transparency of its governance and operations, particularly for project-affected people

Ebrahim highlights transparency as the basis for participatory decision-making. It enables people to participate meaningfully in public decision-making by providing them with the information they need to understand, evaluate, and influence the actions of decision-makers. As such, he recommends the Bank’s current review of its information disclosure policy should include the following:

• A guiding principle of maximum disclosure, in which all information is subject to disclosure unless there is an overriding public interest in keeping it secret;

• An obligation to publish proactively key documents and categories of information, even in the absence of a specific request;

The model World Bank Policy on Information Disclosure proposed by the Global Transparency Initiative acknowledges the right to access information as a ‘fundamental human right, as well as a cornerstone of effective governance and development’. It provides practical provisions to give effect to this right, including:

• A commitment to the automatic disclosure of a wide range of information, including to facilitate participation in decision-making.
• Clear and progressive rules on the processing of requests.
• A narrow regime of exceptions (constraints) based on a clear risk of harm to protected interests and a public interest override.
• A broad right to appeal refusals to disclose information to the Inspection Panel, an oversight body which is independent of Bank management.
• A strong and yet practical set of promotional measures to ensure fulsome implementation of the policy.

Lawrence Lessig has sparked much debate recently, however, on the topic of ‘naked transparency’. While it’s important for the Bank to release information and data (as it does at worldbank.org/data), it should also provide context and tools for making sense of it.

More information on project spending should also me made available – perhaps taking a leaf from the new Recovery.gov site. Enabling the public to easily visualise where funds were being spent, how many jobs these projects are creating and how they help to alleviate poverty, would be an important demonstration of the Bank’s commitment to transparency.

4). Expand and protect political space for democratic and participatory decision-making in national political processes.

Ebrahim recognizes that while it is essential for the Bank to increase participation in its own governance and operations, it’s equally important for it to respect and support local democratic institutions and processes. This implies:

• Promoting better oversight by national parliaments, who frequently have little information on what the Bank is doing in their countries.

• In countries in which democratic spaces are limited, the Bank should facilitate the use of more inclusive and democratic domestic decision-making processes.

Promoting concepts such as Participatory Budgeting would be a good example of how the Bank could increase democratic decision making processes in other countries. The Bank has conducted research into various methods of improving civic participation, and should try to faciliate different means of civic empowerment within its projects, especially where such democratic ideals are in such supply.

Reform of disclosure policy

Many of the recommendations presented above are already being embraced by the World Bank. The President of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, mentioned these at its Annual Meeting in Istanbul earlier this month:

To serve the changing global economy, the world needs agile, nimble, competent, and accountable institutions. The World Bank Group will improve its legitimacy, efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, and further expand its cooperation with the UN, the IMF, the other Multilateral Development Banks, donors, civil society, and foundations which have become increasingly important development actors…

Our efforts include:

Promoting accountability and good governance, including with our global anti-corruption efforts, an improved transparency and disclosure policy…

Earlier this year the Bank completed a consultation on proposed changes to its disclosure policy. The consultation accepted comments online and also held live consultations in 33 countries. The wide range of responses from different countries is impressive and highlights the importance that was attached to the consultation.

The consultation outlined some of the issues with the World Bank’s current disclosure policy:

• Ambiguous rules for disclosing information
• Limited information available on project implementation
• Unclear rules for disclosing country-owned information
• Cumbersome and costly procedures for disclosing historical information
• No appeals process

The new approach was to be based on four guiding principles:

1. Maximum access to information
2. A clear list of exceptions that is easier to interpret
3. Clear procedures for processing requests
4. An appeals mechanism

The results of the consultation are contained in a revised approach paper entitled Toward Greater Transparency Through Access to Information: The World Bank’s Disclosure Policy. The new policy is due to come into effect in July 2010 and represents a paradigm shift from previous policy:

The proposed policy would constitute a radical shift in the Bank’s disclosure paradigm—from a policy that spells out what the Bank may disclose, to one that presumes the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions.

Unlocking the potential of Aid information

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has recently launched a consultation on ‘how to improve the availability and accessibility of aid information by designing common standards for publication of info about aid’. A series of recommendations are proposed  for the development of a standard for publishing aid information. These include:

• Aid information should be legally open
• Aid information should be technically open
• Aid information should be easily findable

As the Development 2.0 blog notes it also includes a number of recommendations for the World Bank in relation to how it releases data.

Future

With the implementation of Alnoor Ebrahim’s recommendations, the new Transparency policy and the recommendations from the IATI, the World Bank has the opportunity to become a beacon of transparency within the International Financial Institution environment. Its Transparency Scorecard will then be a model with which to benchmark other institutions against.

(Scorecard taken from Toward Greater Transparency: Rethinking The World Bank’s Disclosure Policy – Approach paper).

The EU launched a new website last week as part of an online debate to discuss new ideas for future innovation policy. The site aims to gather proposals on how to stimulate and promote innovation throughout the EU. This debate, and the ideas it generates, will then feed into a final report to the European Commission on how to shape the future innovation strategy of the EU.

The site is centered around ideas and proposals from a business panel established to provide inputs on the economic priorities for an innovation policy. This panel includes representatives from manufacturing companies such as Kone, financial institutions such as the Czech bank CSOB, as well as technology companies such as Cisco. They are due to provide a final report to the Commission in early Autumn, which is intended to provide a major input to the European Innovation Plan.

Initial consultation notes prepared by the panel discuss many of the shortcomings of current EU policy. They note that while Innovation has been a central EU priority over the last decade:

Europe has not achieved its full goal of being the most competitive global knowledge economy and is not investing effectively or appropriately in the infrastructure, competences, creative environments and businesses needed for 21st century innovation.

The panel believes the EU needs an innovation policy which is “decentralised, self renewing, and connected; and which builds on the unique diversity of an enlarged Union in an increasingly competitive globalised world.” They emphasise how building a knowledge society is not enough, and rather Europe must create an innovation society “where knowledge is utilised rapidly and powerfully for societal benefit and development”. Establishing such a society requires a:

systematic transformation from fragmented, single issue, closed approaches favouring large incumbents to networked, flexible and open approaches favouring new entrants and ideas.

Innovation ideas

The current proposals developed by the panel center around five main areas. These include:

1. Broadening the concept of Innovation – From business to social innovation
2. Speed and synchronisation - From fragmented bureaucracies to flexible partnerships, from better regulation to pro-innovation regulation
3. Invest in future infrastructure and unlock its potential – From bridges to fiber optic, from control to open access
4. Innovative financing models - From public vs private to public private partnerships
5. New places for new types of collaboration - From closed processes to the power of networks
   

The site is currently seeking new proposals and ideas from the public to enhance and build on these concepts. Google and others have already submitted proposals as part of this consultation. Google notes, however, that some issues have not been fully discussed by the panel. For example, there is no discussion of Copyright, and Intellectual property is only briefly mentioned. Also, there’s little discussion on new forms of grass-roots innovation funding (think 4IP/Social Innovation Camp, Social Innovation Funds etc), with the panel acknowledging public financing is frequently “directed to incumbents in mature industries”.

In order to gather together the innovative ideas necessary to make the EU’s fifth freedom (the free movement of knowledge) a reality, proposals from diverse interests need to be debated on the site. The issues currently absent from the panel proposals, represent significant hurdles to the innovation society the EU seeks to create. Ideas on new education models, sustainability and fundamental rights should be allowed to flourish and garner support on the site. Unfortunately, the current incarnation of the initiative does not allow for such focused debate.

Consultation implementation

Many of the ideas outlined in the consultation, such as Changing public procurement to support innovation, Opening up Government owned data and Improving broadband infrastructure, have been discussed at at length at conferences such as RebootBritain and in reports such as Digital Britain. In this vein, the ideas (e.g. as setout in the RebootBritain essays) and recommendations already progressed to enhance innovation, should be more visible throughout the site. Much detailed work has already been done on these topics throughout various EU countries, however, these recommendations are not highlighted in the current consultation.

David Osimo highlights the lack of Web 2.0 functionality throughout the site, and makes some good points about their means of ‘publishing ideas’. There is no facility available in which users of the site can publish their ideas and have these rated and commented on. Instead, ideas are sent to the panel for deliberation. The use of platforms such as Uservoice would provide a more user-friendly and democratic means for the dissemination of ideas. It has been used successfully to brainstorm ideas on how EU governments can use the Internet to transform public services, and would have been a useful addition to the site.

The UK Government has experimented with many different tools (e.g. Netvibes, Twitter, Commentpress) to encourage greater participation during consultations. Steph Grey from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has outlined ideas on how to improve online discussions about policy. One of the important characteristics is to enable the community to improve on, and enhance ideas submitted by others. This requires openness and transparency in how consultation ideas are published, so as to encourage a debate about the merits of different suggestions.

A Collaborative approach to developing government policy

This consultation would have benefited from a more structured approach like that taken by the Whitehouse. The mandate for their open government initiative was to be:

fully transparent in our work, participatory in soliciting your ideas and expertise, and collaborative in how we experiment together to use new tools and techniques for developing open government policy.

As such, they created a 3-phase process, with which to inform the crafting of an open government policy. This involved:

• Phase 1: Brainstorm – Ideas were shared and voted on using an Innovation management and Crowdsourcing application (http://opengov.ideascale.com)
• Phase 2: Discuss – The results of the brainstorm were discussed and distilled into topics to focus on in the third phase
• Phase 3: Draft - During this phase the public was invited to collaborate on crafting proposals originating from the discussion phase. This was done using a wiki at http://www.mixedink.com/OpenGov

This approached experimented with new and innovative tools to engage with the public, and allow for mass collaboration in the drafting of policy. While this approach generated some comments which needed to be deleted (and others seriously off topic e.g. UFO, birth certificate questions), these should not detract from the many excellent ideas it generated. The process would have suffered significantly were the ideas of the public simply solicited using traditional means, and not published in commentable format.

While I welcome the emphasis on soliciting ideas and comments from the public, the execution of the initiative has not exemplified the nature of the policy discussion. Crafting an Innovation policy deserves the utilisation of the most innovative tools appropriate. In this regard, the EU has fallen short.

Last week, the UK Government published the Interim report on Digital Britain. It was written by Lord Carter and was published on the website for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The report was published in both PDF and Microsoft word format only, meaning it was necessary to download large files to read it. Also, without a PDF or Word reader it was not possible to read the content within the report. Government Open standards were seemingly not adhered to in this case. (UPDATE: PDF is an open standard as of July 2008 – Hat tip: Christopher). Nevertheless, this was not the most vocal criticism of how the report was released.

Feedback by email

Tony Hirst describes the reaction of BBC technology columnist Bill Thompson to the report release. He was critical of the approach taken for feedback and commentary:

The widespread coverage has certainly provided a rich source of suggestions, comments, ideas and critical reviews to feed into the next stage of the process.

Unfortunately for those who lack access to mainstream media outlets like newspapers and broadcasters or their associated websites, there is no easy way to respond directly to its author. The report website has no information at all on how to make a contribution, and you’ll have to read through 72 pages of the report before you find a suggestion that “organisations or individuals interested in joining the discussion should register their interest at digitalbritain@berr.gsi.gov.uk”

Apparently the Digital Britain team will follow up these expressions of interest, which is nice of them, and we must just hope that Carter and his expert panel will be carefully reviewing every blog post and online comment to ensure they don’t miss anything important.

Seeking feedback through email is not the most efficient medium for commenting or debating the report. Email is primarily used for communication and is not an efficient medium for collaboration or public debate. The web page where the report was released did include an email address, but this seemed to be included as an afterthought, rather than as a productive medium for meaningful discourse.

Organisations or individuals interested in joining the discussion should register their interest at digitalbritain@berr.gsi.gov.uk.

There is a better way

Given the frustration with the lack of any appropriate public forum in which to have a detailed discussion on the report, Tony Hirst and Joss Winn decided – after some tweets – to setup a commentpress site. Commentpress “is an open source theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text”. In a couple of days they setup the site http://writetoreply.org, with the first document available for commentary as the Digital Britain – Interim Report.

The Digital Britain – Interim Report could easily have been published in this type of format when it was released by the Government. It could easily have been uploaded to Scribd or co-ment.net to allow for public commentary and embedding into blogs and other websites. After all, the demographic for which the report was intended is well used to using online discussion platforms to debate and engage in the report topics. By publishing the report using formats 10-15 year old (PDF, .doc) it was subscribing to a 1990s style Digital Britain that does not harness the participatory elements of a Web2.0 world.  Steph Gray correctly points out that

Publish something badly, and people will do their own thing to make their voices heard.

This is exactly what happened, and now the report has been made available on other platforms alongside writetoreply.org.

Results

After only a few days online the writetoreply site has generated dozens of comments, suggestions, criticisms and ideas. It has also enabled an active discourse to evolve between diverse parties, on various paragraphs within the report.

Tony Hirst notes how each paragraph of the report can be linked by a unique URI; for example, here’s a link to Action 1 of the Digital Britain Interim Report. This provides bloggers and others with an extended ability to dissect and elaborate upon particular sections of the report, while ensuring all debate is linked appropriately.

The witetoreply team also wrote an Open Letter to Lord Carter providing the rational behind the site and outlining how comments and ‘trackbacks’ have been enabled. The letter is available below, and Tom Watson MP has ensured Lord Carter sees the site. The reaction from Lord Carter will be interesting, as it will provide a window into how he views public feedback contributing to the final report.

The future

The writetoreply team have setup a blog and wiki documenting their progress and seeking further ideas of how to expand the site e.g. including other public documents to allow commentary on. The US provides some good examples of how legislation can be broken down and more finely reviewed by the public. PublicMarkup.org “gives you [the public] the opportunity to review and comment on proposed bills before they are even introduced—or while they are pending—in Congress”. Also, Readthestimulus.org provides a fantastic resource for the public to debate every aspect of President Obama’s Economic stimulus plan.

The ability to comment on government reports/leglislation should become more prevalent as the themes of openness, transparency and participation are embedded into the lexicon of discussion regarding government publications. The way in which the Power of Information Taskforce Report was published (in beta form), provides a good example of what can be achieved if reports are made easy for the public to review and provide feedback. The site has already generated over 100 comments on different sections of the report. Thse comments have ranged from grammatical mistakes/typos to more detailed policy discussions.  The ease at which content in the report can be annotated, allows for casual users to actively participate in a way not possible through the use of email. Thus the medium through which this report was released exemplifies its theme i.e. the Power of Information, and what can be achieved through soliciting public review and discussion before publishing.

In the same way as the Government has sought comment on the Power of Information Report before it’s final version is published, President Obama has promised that all non-emergency legislation will be open for public comment on Whitehouse.gov for 5 days before he signs it.

One of the first blog posts from the White House on January 20th said:

One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

While there have been some hiccups with this promise, it provides an insight into how the Obama Administration is implementing its Memorandum on Open government and particularly that concerning Participation:

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

The UK Government should think about whether a Memorandum of this kind is necessary to ensure all future reports – especially those seeking feedback – are released with an emphasis on the medium of public participation. It is the message after all.