Open Left

Not a campaign: e-democracy (0.00 / 0)

Matt, thanks for the interesting post on MySociety. I think what you're getting at here is the e-democracy aspect of e-government. Unfortunately much of the work applying the Internet to government problems has been in a client-services model, not in an e-democracy model. IE, governments spend considerable money to build online forms that provide one-to-one service, but neglect engaging people in democratic processes or involving them in decision-making or governance.

The UK has been a global leader in exploring how government can foster e-democracy, sinking some serious money into the problem. Local government units even hired the Minnesota-based e-democracy.org to set up community websites for them with government funds.
http://e-democracy.org/uk/

For my part I am interested in how technology can be applied to urban planning, one of the areas were participation is most important since the field is already committed to involving the public. I think the biggest barriers are technical literacy and appropriate technical tools.
http://goodspeedupdate.com/200...

In addition to MySociety, the British company LimeHouse has an interesting platform, and is signing up lots of U.S. clients ...

---

by: rob.goodspeed @ Wed Jun 25, 2008 at 14:08:54 PM CDT