Category Archives: Online politics

Cross-posted from The Wardman Wire:

Last week, Orange launched their report “The Future of Politics”. In the words of the accompanying news release, the reports shows “how British politicians can learn from Barack Obama and embrace technology to bring public involvement back into UK democracy.”

The launch press release picked out five main themes from the report:

• A challenge to UK politicians to keep up with a new generation of ‘digital natives’ who expect MPs to get up to date with 21st century technology so they can have two-way meaningful conversations with the public and not just a one way online presence through a static website.
• Citizen politicians could be at the heart of the political process, both on the internet and in Parliament. In the future Prime Minister’s Questions may allow a regular slot where the public can ask questions about the issues of the day.
• Wikilaws will allow the public and experts to have their say on legislation. MPs and the public will be able to keep in touch with debate and scrutiny in real-time.
• MPs can matter more, leading online campaigns and bringing government direct to the public. Digital technologies will place MPs at the heart of their constituencies and allow instant multichannel communication between constituents and public services to solve surgery problems.
• The political long tail must be grabbed. Obama raised $280 million in small donations under $200, demonstrating the dramatic impact new technology has on the political process. British political parties will have to follow this lead and rely once again on mass participation not a few large donors.

But what the report doesn’t do is really examine the question of why these opportunities are not being taken. Somewhat cheekily, Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb pointed out how the launch itself was a meeting with four talking heads at the front, followed by questions. As Steve put it, if all these technology opportunities the report talks about are so good, available and effective, why was the launch meeting itself so old-fashioned?

None of this is about technology that isn’t already widely available at reasonable cost. So is it just the case that the political process is just stuffed full of Luddites who don’t get it? Or is it the case that the technology zealots are failing to understand the structural issues restricting better use of technology? Practical limitations in terms of cost and effort which perhaps also explain why the launch meeting itself was so decidedly old-fashioned?