Last week we announced a truly radical policy that will transform the way Government works. If we win the Election we’ll run a competition to come up the best new technology that will let large groups of people get together online and develop new policies. We’ll put all of our Green Papers on this new system and allow the public to comment on new legislation during a Public Reading Stage.
This is exactly the sort of decentralisation of power that the internet allows and something that I’ve talked about before. As I said in the Telegraph a few weeks ago technology should allow politicians to reconnect with the electorate. By encouraging a genuine dialogue over difficult policy issues it has the power to transform the relationship we have with the people who give us our jobs.
As with all genuinely radical ideas it got a bit of stick. And sadly, the reaction from the other major parties shows just how badly most politicians misunderstand this whole area. Some critics focused on the prize element of our announcement. They seem to have missed the fact that many Governments over the years have used prizes as a way of incentivising certain activities. Both NESTA and the Ministry of Defence have used them recently for instance.
More worrying is that both Labour and the Liberal Democrats argued that there were already plenty of ways of using social networking sites to consult the public. Indeed there are – and the Conservatives make full use of Facebook, Twitter and blogs. We’ve even designed our own at www.myconservatives.com
But this isn’t what we’re talking about. We want to develop a new platform that allows people to comment on policies, that aggregates these comments, and presents them in a usable way. We want to find a way to make use of people’s comments in a constructive way. Perhaps they could be ranked depending on their expertise or particular experiences. This isn’t more of the same but a really exciting and new use of technology.
There’s no platform out there as yet that fits this bill. But if we win the next election I’m sure there’s someone out there creative enough to provide one. In my mind that would be £1m well spent.
( 24 comments ) Tags: crowdsourcing, myconservatives, policy development
Comment by Paul Topham on January 5, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Jeremey,
It is best to do more research into using the existin social networking sites rather than building a whole new set of tools.
We need more open policy making rather than promoting a policy during election time and then doing something else later.
The UK needs a whole new party or a Leader such as Obama. Thanks.
Comment by cyberdoyle on January 5, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Shows how out of touch the conservatives are. Labour is crap but this idea is dafter than any of theirs. Half of the country have such poor internet the last thing they will spend time on is a govt. site. Get real. The ones with decent connections (ie in the cities) already have apps for crowd sourcing. They won’t want another… Jeremy needs to concentrate on getting decent infrastructure to the rural areas and not listen to the telco spin. He also needs to study FB, twitter etc. himself. These are what the people use, and not a half baked political site. I sincerely think it is time the conservatives talked to some real people instead of consultants trying to rip them off.
Comment by Stuart on January 5, 2010 at 4:28 pm
I think we’re talking about a cross between Twitter (limited comment) and a Feedback system (similar to eBay) that people can use to vote on those proposals.
Look forward to it.
Stuart
Comment by Martin Le Jeune on January 5, 2010 at 4:33 pm
This is an idea whose time really has come. It requires politicians who are brave enough to live up to the rhetoric about empowerment and decentralisation. Keep going Jeremy!
Comment by Jamie P on January 5, 2010 at 6:19 pm
I suppose not disimilar to the CPFs but with a more centralised, de-centralised decisioon making and contribution ability to policy making.
Comment by Ray Turner on January 5, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Not sure about this. Look at some of the results from those Top 50 greatest ever… countdown shows on the telly, various talent show winners etc. Some crowds are collectively as thick as two-short planks…
Comment by Paul Topham on January 5, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Not sure about this. We need better leaders to govern the UK. The three major parties including the Conservatives do not offer strong and effective leadership.
Comment by Nick Johnson on January 5, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Great Move. Obama (and Howard Dean before him) have proved the value of the net in engaging with voters and motivating new groups. Estonia has led the way on putting many official transactions online. Let us be next and it will do more to re-engage people in politics and contributing to their own future.
Comment by Sam Goddard on January 5, 2010 at 9:35 pm
This website sounds exacly like something I have been thinking about, discussing with friends and planning for weeks. I have even bought a suitable domain.
If this is to be made a reality I would love the chance to discuss how the people in charge think it may be implemented and to give the insight of my planning and discussion.
If someone could contact me it would be a great way to start a policy of reconnecting with the electorate!
Comment by Paul Topham on January 5, 2010 at 9:46 pm
More than social networking sites we need real Leaders to vote for. Then the software may be of value.
Comment by George on January 5, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Really good idea. Made even better by the fact that many will not understand what you are trying to do, yet still you have the courage to announce the policy.
There is a wealth of talent and expertise in our communities which can now be used to improve policy making and implementation. Please follow through when in government and get this done as soon as possible
Comment by Claire on January 6, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Good idea though we still need good Leaders. Obama did not need to declare the need for new tools. Her ealised that it is best to use the existing tools already in place.
I cannot see Cameron as the Leader for the UK.
Some how in the UK we need someone like Obama to appear. May be the existing mode of how Labour and the Conservatives conduct affairs has stopped this from happening. US have a better system in place.
I may vote Labour to ensure Brown maintains a hand on the economy or LibDem to try and cause a change.
In many ways I have concerns – after all these years as the Shadow party, the Conservatives have failed to be an effective force for good. Do not see why we should have MPs fighting rather than debating to establish the right solution for the issues we face as a nation.
Camerons speaches on the economy and his attacks may in fact indirectly slowed recovery as the economy is very much linked to confidence. Browm at least implemented the right and needed actions.
Claire
Comment by Jack Hughes on January 6, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Do politicians really need a new way to ignore the public?
Comment by Helen on January 7, 2010 at 12:35 am
Another IT project £1M now and soon will be £10M more plus later developed by some expensive internet or IT managememt big4 consultancy.
What is wrong with using the existing tools on facebook, blogs and twitter. Everyone else manage us them.
So out of touch. The state of UK Poilitics!!
Comment by Chris D on January 7, 2010 at 5:30 pm
The proof of success of such a system would be not so much the facility to allow people to contribute, but more a case of whether the politicians on the receiving end will actually READ it and act on it. So far, the standard method of imposing new policies in a democratic manner is to allow the people to shout and scream, then ignore them and go ahead with government’s own, pre-determined plans.
Comment by Tim Woods on January 7, 2010 at 5:46 pm
I would look at a company called Imaginatik. They have a software tool that is ideal for this, called Idea Central. Already being used in similar fashion in other countries – plus big business like Pfizer, IBM, Kelloggs, CSC. British company as well. They also have in-depth expertise way beyond just software.
All round, good idea.
Comment by Alpesh Patel on January 7, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Applying game theory to the election, for the Tories to win, given the mountain they have to climb, they have to convert some Labour constituencies in which they are third behind the Liberals.
Their optimal strategy is not simply the cyclical punch-throwing statements above, since their own voters will vote for them anyway and core Labour voters won’t. Rather the optimal strategy is to assert Conservatives will win countrywide (a credible but not certain proposition) and a vote for Labour or Liberal candidate would mean a local MP sitting on the opposition benches and therefore less influential.
But that’s a strategy relating to power. What of strategies to do with issues? When I was knocking on doors as a law undergraduate canvassing in Bradford South in the 1992 General Election a couple of things became very clear. First, people felt the government had come to ask their opinion. They would talk at length about what bothered them. Second, what bothered them in a Labour constituency was that they did not trust Tories with what they trusted Labour – such as the NHS. At that time I told numerous Tories, ‘why are the Conservatives not the Party of the NHS?’ Why have they not positioned themselves thus?
Eighteen years later it appears this week David Cameron understands that as a matter of game theory at least, your optimal policy strategy is to position yourself at the heart of your opponents issue turf. It’s what won Labour the election in 1997. Your core supporters won’t hate you for it, they’ll always support you. The other side’s core supporters won’t be moved either. But at the margins you’ll win a few over because you’ve reached further across.
Of course that’s strategy, some may say Machiavellian and as I said politics at its best is about the people – so the better reason to have the other side’s core concerns at your centre too is because if so many people care for those things as to put the other side in power and make elections close to call, then you should care about them too because you care about all the people. And for the non-idealist, the cynic: you do it to win.
Comment by Hawkeye on January 8, 2010 at 10:07 pm
What a bunch of negative comments. Let’s try it and see if it works. It is certainly very plausible and I would like to know more about it.
Comment by M. Ewing on January 9, 2010 at 12:21 am
Sounds to me like something that will be handed over to a quango while the Tories are handling the real issues closest to their hearts – like overturning the hunting act so they can watch small animals get ripped apart by dogs. As bloodsports minister, Jeremy will be too busy planning the return of the Waterloo Cup!
Pingback by Platform 10 » Blog Archive » From sofa to table on January 12, 2010 at 4:10 pm
[...] but I hope that minutes of meetings where decisions are made will be published too) or the crowd-sourcing of IT [...]
Pingback by Could ‘Crowd Sourcing’ a boost democracy? « The PR Blog is Dead on February 1, 2010 at 9:35 pm
[...] a good argument that there is a real place for social media in a democratic society. In a recent post on the Conservative’s ‘Blue Blog’ there was an article that hinted at the delivery of a system [...]
Comment by Jonathan on February 28, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Where should power lie and at what level? With individual citizens and their communities, with elected representatives of communities, with national leaders?
Many people, undoubtedly the majority, feel successful and equate social status with becoming more influential in their field, gaining personal credit for an achievement from their pears and people generally, and obtaining increased personal wealth. All of these self-motivating factors are increasingly available the more power one obtains, therefore the prevalent tendency is for power to move into the hands of the powerful, and for power to be shared amongst a progressively smaller group. Few within society would struggle for power to be shared amongst a greater number, would willingly release the power that they have, and would champion the rights of others to have greater influence than themselves.
This tendency for power to increasingly move into the hands of the powerful, operates both within and between the different levels of established civic/political structures. Between individuals and their communities, between the elected representatives of communities (MPs), and between the national representatives of MPs (the cabinet). Indeed, there exists a tendency at any level in a civic hierarchy to take over decision-making responsibilities from the level beneath. Reasons for this are often cited as concern that lower level decision makers don’t have necessary experience and breadth of knowledge to make good decisions. For example, overwhelming public support for capital punishment is regularly cited as a reason for withholding decision-making authority from the masses of un-empowered people. This is a very real concern but it fails to embrace a critical consideration,
People learn to make good decisions, and gain wisdom in this process, through experiencing the consequences of having made bad decisions
If common people are excluded from decision making for fear that they lack experience and wisdom, then their capability to make good decisions will reduce, and a negative feedback cycle is established that is very difficult to break. Our existing decisions making structures are characterised by this unfortunate situation; we have an intrinsic belief that all people should be equal, and in the righteousness of democracy, but we fear the consequences of subsidiarity, as in the short term this will almost certainly result bad decisions. For many years this situation has paralysed our nations progressive democratic development and has directly resulted in the passage of power away from people and their communities, into the hands of their representatives and upwards. Consequently, people are feeling increasingly impotent in their ability to affect the outcome of even local decision-making. Of late, there has been a movement from democracy towards autocracy.
We now know that the majority of people desperately want to be involved in the decisions that affect the quality of their lives but feel excluded and consider that their involvement will ‘not make a difference’. This is evidenced by the report of the Power Inquiry. Helena Kennedy QC, in her foreword to this report, states that the evidence presented to the inquiry suggests that voting itself seems irrelevant to increasing numbers of people and that there is a feeling that their is ‘no choice’ despite our living in an era where choice is the dominant political mantra. Commenting that the world has changed enormously during the last 50 years and that lives are being lived in very different ways she suggests that the political institutions and main political parties have ‘failed to keep up’. Drawing attention to the way in which people continue to volunteer to raise money for charity, join protest marches, undertake voluntary work within their communities and sign petitions, Helena Kennedy comments that political apathy is a myth. However, people ‘no longer want to join a party or get involved in formal politics’ and the solution is to download power by ‘rebalancing the system towards the people’.
To summarise, movement towards autocracy is propagated by the fear of those who hold power over the consequences of less experienced people exercising power. In addition, movement towards autocracy is propagated by individuals desire for the increased social status concomitant with holding power. So how can we reverse this trend and ‘rebalance the system towards the people’? Most importantly, breaking free from this negative cycle requires the creation of fora where people and communities are able to gain experience of making decisions and are fully exposed to feedback relating to the consequences of those decisions. But most importantly, where society is protected from the consequences of bad decisions.
Even if the established decision making structures were to accept the need for a greater involvement of people and their communities in decision making, there remains the technical issue of enabling effective representation of all citizens in the decision making process, due to the sheer number of people that would wish to be involved in any decision. However, with the development of the internet, and the capacity for mass on-line voting and discussion on any issue, this is no longer the case.
I am the director of a social company called Democratise and about a year ago we received an investment from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to create an experimental online democratic forum. I would like to invite visitors to Power 2010 to both comment on my post, but also to visit the web site Digital Democracy, http://www.digitaldemocracy.org.uk . This website is a vehicle that will enable all people to influence the outcomes of decisions that affect their lives. It is the first of its kind in the world and is only possible at this point in the twenty-first century due to advancements in cloud server technology and processing power, coupled with geographical information systems. It can manage meaningful democratic interactions between millions of people.
Comment by David Woods on April 22, 2010 at 3:11 pm
We have recently created an online policy forum that achieves many of the aims outlined in this idea.
All the existing party policies are available on the website, and people can also suggest their own. Anyone can vote on these ideas.
http://www.virtualparliament.org.uk
Comment by Reginald Fah-Fah on April 27, 2010 at 6:57 am
Marvellous Jeremy! Jolly good show! Keep up the good work!
This is the reason why I have been out campaigning for the next Prime Minister David Cameron. I have suggested to all my friends, family, business associates to vote Conservative, and they all agree that David Cameron is being more ‘up front’ and he is ‘not confused’.
For my ‘door to door’ campaigning in Hendon, I would lbe delighted to get my hands on one of George Osborne’s yellow ribbons and his booklet about a Hung Parliament. Great…Marvellous!
I say… I have been fully supporting our outstanding candidate Matthew Offord.
9 days to go and it look like a good sport! To the battle-buses everyone!