How on earth will local authorities respond to the likes of FixMyStreet when they don't know about it? I see their (ICELE) role as linking-in with 21st century *representative* democracy as well as other sector actors such as private industry.

Of course you will want more evaluation, you are an academic…but this doesn't always capture their value, such as their presentation to London councillors just last Saturday.

Actually, I went to a co-hosted event in the North East where they just published some research on the use of ICT for councillors so I think some work is being done…just not being shouted about very loudly.

I think you are being a little unfair to an organisation which has done the most *tangible* work than any other in this arena. How much is being spent on the DEMO-Net project you lead and what real world use are the outputs experiencing?

I was just reading their ePetitioning guide the other day which was really helpful given the forthcoming duty to respond. Looking at VOICE it seems to have about 318 registered communities, which I didn't think was too bad. As Stephen said, ePetitions are still running in Bristol + Kingston.

Lexapro vs prozac. Prozac dangers. Prozac contraindications. Is prozac addictive. Prozac side effects night sweats. Prozac….

On another note:
1. It seems that we now have so many free web based tools that we don’t know what to do with them. So, we should move away from software/tool development and into concrete political methodology coupled to solid communication values and strategies. Sound project management is paramount also.
In short: More practice-less theory (we have enough of this, how about putting them to test now?)

2. It never stops to amaze me, when we talk about e-democracy projects, the lack of sound and comprehensive communication (I would say “marketing” if it wasn’t a bad word for some) campaigns to back them up. We need to get people to know about a project, we need to educate them, we need to make them interested and then sustain this interest all the way through. I have very rarely seen a project which deals adequately with this thinking, let alone prescribes a sufficient budget (european commission projects are notorious for this oversight). I will gladly stand corrected on this.

So, perhaps a new “ICELE” would after all have quite some new and interesting work to do apart from re-inventing the wheel.

Scott

In the letter, the Minister stated, “I would like to place on public record my Department’s gratitude for all of the good work ICELE has undertaken during the stewardship of you and your colleagues, Cllr. Bill Brookes and Cllr. Mary Reid, and to your support staff during the programme’s life-span.

I recognise that ICELE has taken forward the work of several components of the local e-Government programme including the Local e-Democracy National Project and disseminated these through your award winning website. In addition, ICELE has won some European funding to enhance understanding and good practice around eParticipation and ensured that assistance to local authorities has been available on the complex issue of local e-democracy when required.

However when ICELE was established, CLG gave a commitment of funding up to 31 March 2008 with a key objective for the Centre to “build a model for long-term sustainability beyond the programme life-span”. Regrettably, sustainability has not been demonstrated despite the successful bids for EU grants.

My Department remains committed to encouraging the use of ICT for empowerment in partnership with others to facilitate and enhance local democracy. As part of the Government’s work on the forthcoming Community Empowerment White Paper, we are actively considering how best to utilize new technologies to support community empowerment. ICELE has been very active in responding to recent consultations on a number of issues linked to the forthcoming White Paper and these have been gratefully received. However, in looking at this broad agenda, we have to assess the value, sustainability and potential benefits that other organisations could also offer in taking forward the work in this area.

In conclusion, I am of the opinion that ICELE, as a sponsored entity of CLG, should cease operations on the 30 June 2008 [other than core staffing support activities related to the Review]. I have instructed officials to conduct a further review in partnership with ICELE on the tools and products produced or managed by the Centre. This review will also seek to establish how best any successful elements of ICELE’s work might be taken forward and how sustainability might be achieved.

Finally, I hope that Lichfield District Council and all other users of the local e-democracy tools will continue to play a role in taking the agenda of empowerment using ICT forward. Improving public services and strengthening democracy by encouraging active citizenship is a shared political goal and offers real opportunities to revive our civic society. Your continued support and enthusiasm for making this happen at the local level, either through your blogging as a local councillor or through your advice and guidance to others as Chair of ICELE, is testament to your understanding and leadership over the past two years.”

For information:

• ICELE was officially launched in October 2006 by Communities and Local Government Minister, Angela Smith M.P., at the United Nations CIAPR Conference.

• CLG has provided core funding to ICELE of £386,000 for the Centre’s activities over the past two years and £234,000 to make the VOICE product fit for purpose.

• The Review of the ICELE portfolio will be conducted to investigate how best to take forward any of the tools currently being used. We cannot however continue to indefinitely support non-sustainable or non-viable e-democracy products or tools for which there is no demonstrated need. No decision will be made in respect of any of the tools and products until this has been completed.

• CLG, in partnership with other Government Departments, are actively considering how best to promote and utilize new technologies to support community empowerment as one of the strands in the forthcoming Community Empowerment White Paper.

Thank you for your response. I concur with your point that the next UK general election will be the most technologicaly-enhanced yet, however this does not address the need to have technology in action for our representatives outside of elections. I feel that this is what the Governemtn is turning its back on.

Similarly, I guess ICELE has failed to reignite the debate in that respect and kind of hoped that there would be e-petitions with meaning all over the country now rather than the wash out that is No.10 petitions and lots more. I don’t know how much money they got but they obviously could have done a lot more. My point is just that, that Government needs to invest in meaningful progress in using technology rather than creating a vacuum as seems to be the case.

We need real dialogue with meaning rather than no encouragement from the centre. We need real purpose in making things happen, no matter what the consequences may be because without risk there will be caution resulting in a lack of ambition, trust and belief in what is happening, otherwise we might as well have ‘Big brother reality’ situation for politics and no real substance. I don’t know what blog-in-a-box is but on the issue of bloggin, how the hell do the electorate find blogs of their local representatives, if they even exist, without some form of national directory. This is the sort of thing ICELE should have been doing as a pont of entry to the uninitiated.

The only way to make political enagagement more meaningful is to ensure that it is for the masses and not just the political and/or educated elite who have the access. We need to empower real people, not just those already engaged, and we need to empower the neanderthal politicians, who lets face it are hardly representative of our society. Government should be developing access to things that offer this such as through the use of languages and in our community centres and youth clubs. There is no point having a policy of access to technology if there is nothing there for them to really influence the environments in which they live.

Government is clearly not serving the masses but continuing to serve themselves. I fear the technology agenda may be discouraged in the short term and then governments will be playing catch up in being reactive rather than proactive in encouraging debate, untiy and real imaginative governance for the future. I hope I am wrong but am not optimistic for the immediate future. Afterall what good is a local or national petition if the election is years away and they don’t need to listen.

On P. Smith’s more interesting comment about the need for Government to offer ‘real alternatives’ to traditional forms of democracy, I am far less pessimistic than he seems to be. It strikes me that governments (and would-be governments) of all kinds are trying to work their way through the problem of how to make political engagement more meaningful. That they have rejected uncritical propaganda in favour of technocratic e-democracy and stopped investing in applications that seem to have limited value (Blog-in-a-box, for heaven’s sake!) does not mean that they have disengaged from the challenge of democratising representative democracy. I think that in the run up to the next UK general election and after it we shall see more technologically-enhanced democracy experiments.