Downing Street spurred by online “success”

Posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 6:48pm in Media, PR General, Technology  | 

The latest edition of New Marketing Age (magazine version, can’t find it online) mentions that Downing Street is to “ramp up” the usage of user generated content on the Downing Street website after the “success” of the e-Petitions section which was introduced in November last year.

The news has been awash lately with the story of the e-Petition against the vehicle tracking and road pricing policy which almost reached two million signatures. The petition, which ended on the 20 February, has 1,806,187 signatures.

The e-Petitions have been called “a small revolution in political communication” by Downing Street’s head of digital communications, Jimmy Leach. Mr Leach also says that they are using other forms of online communication such as webchats, podcasts and web TV interviews. And they are, take a look on the website.

It still looks like only one way communication to me. It would be good to see some comment areas too. However, the article does say that Downing Street plans to roll out a “user content” section so it should be interesting to see how it develops in terms of the interaction between the public and the government.

I think this is a great idea. In a time when the government seems less out of touch with the public than it’s ever been and where more people vote on X Factor than they do in the general elections you get the sense that this is the step in the right direction. Dare I say it. Government 2.0 may help bridge the gap.

Still one question remains: With two million signatures and Dowing Street labeling the e-Petition as a success, are they going to abolish the vehicle tracking and road pricing policy?

Sidenote: In May of last year I commented on how the government were investigating the value of blogs. Independent government research firm, the Hansard Society recently published the findings of their research which you can find here.

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9 Comments

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Simon Wakeman

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 7:20am

Interesting stuff - the real value of this to the end-users (citizens) will only be realised if they see participation as having true influence. If “big” topics such as the road pricing petition don’t seem to have influence I suspect a degree of user cynicism will creep in.

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Heather Yaxley

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 11:43am

I agree with you on the importance of the Government recognising it needs two-way not just one-way comms online. Simon is right about the risk of user cynicism, but I think people power seems to be getting some momentum and even if the big numbers don’t sway policy yet, social media is going to remain vocal and able to offer the challenge to political behaviour that doesn’t seem to be coming from within traditional politics or mainstream media.

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Stephen

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 12:02pm

Thanks guys. Heather I think you’re right. Like Simon, I questioned the cynicism of the general public if nothing is done after a large public opposition but, like you said, the whole concept will gain more momentum as time goes by.

What is worth noting about the particular e-Petition I mentioned was it was driven heavily by the mainstream media too. I remember seeing it on the TV news quite frequently which, of course, would have helped to increase the number of participant signatures.

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Alex Pearmain

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 1:48pm

Also interesting to note how many of the signatures came from the Daily Mail, re-inforcing the idea of the intersection with traditional media.

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Simon Collister

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 10:41pm

Hi Stephen, I’ve been following this for a while… latest post with Heather Hopkins’ stats is at http://simoncollister.typepad.com/edemocracyupdate/2007/02/tracking_online.html
sorry for the lengthy URL…

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Michael

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 11:22pm

I know this might be a bit off-topic now, but since I see you guys talking about “Government 2.0″ I remember this really revolutionary party you once had in Britain: Your Party, which seems to have disappeared somehow.

I don’t see any dramatic political revolution in switching from paper-and-pencil petitions to e-petitions. In my eyes, this is a mere evolution (which is certainly not to be sneezed at though). However, I loved the idea of Your Party – this was something truly new to me, it was unadulterated “Politics 2.0″. Can anybody tell me what happened to them? This time even Wikipedia doesn’t help me out… :-(

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Stephen

Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 11:50pm

Mmm, not sure. Keeping in tune with the whole web 2.0 thing though it should have been called MyParty.

Get it? MySpace, MyParty? Get it?

I’m so funny at times…

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Michael

Monday, February 26, 2007 at 12:06am

Yeah, MyPrty Beta ;-)

But seriously: I found it an amazing idea, and now I’m not able to find any more updated infos about them than this. Although there are 1,240,000 Google results for “Your Party”… ;-)

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How Politicians are Being Taught to Engage Online | The Copywriter’s Crucible

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 11:06am

[...] I was notified of a research project, to teach political bodies how to engage with voters online, by a post from Stephen Davies aka PR Blogger. [...]

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