I took part in an Petitions round table last week run run by the consultation institute. The round table format means you really get chance to talk through specific points and the group was all very fired up about what the new Local Democracy Bill will mean – and specifically what it will mean for …
Carl from Devon CC has posted his social web guidelines on his blog. You can find them here. I think this is a hugely helpful thing to do and something that all Councils need to be getting on and doing…..enjoy…. I think one of the trickiest things about council officers using the social web is …
Research proposal submitted!!! I’m enjoying a weekend of leisure having sent the final draft off last week – just have to wait for the research committee meeting next monoth now. Leisure is perhaps stretching the definition slightly as a lot of it has been spent cleaning and sorting in preparation for going off to the …
I have been out and about again over the last couple of weeks and the deadline for my research proposal is looming hence the lack of posts. I spent most of the weekend in the back of a VW campervan (hired from the excellent VWCampervans) on the Isle of Wight checking citations for the proposal …
I probably haven’t mentioned before but my ‘day job’ involves working with Local Authorities in order to help them use technology to enhance the democratic process – either by making old processes work online or helping them to create new models of democratic engagement (hence CitizenScape). The core of this – and our oldest product …
I have just spent a couple of days in London for the launch of our new EU funded project: Europetition which has been designed to do two things: To build up clusers of local petitioning organisations – usually Local Authorities – in our 5 pilot regions so that they can share best practice, protocol and …
I have decided to get on and set-up my pilot questionnaire in order to establish a benchmark of behaviour from the pilot sites so that I can then see whether or not the work at the sites is having any effect. I plan to administer the same questionnaire to all stakeholder groups as I think …
Looking at the world with a social captial filter on we need to remember the three types of social captial – Bonding, Bridging and Linking (Putman). One of the notable features about most online communities is their homogeneity – ie their bonding capital. Given the need for formal democracy to be inclusive I need ways …
Still at it with the actual research question so am trying to come at it from a different angle. This post is as I was at the dentist earlier in the week and trying to explain what I was doing to Charlie (the dentist) as an avoidance technique – which is of course foolish as …
The team is going to get together in December in Brighton and apart from finding somewhere really good to take them to dinner I want to be clear on the objectives for the meeting: There are as ever some EU project formalities which need to be gone over – not the least because we have a …