Janet Haven

Yikes! This is a couple of weeks old, but I just came across this article in the Beeb, in which Blair's outgoing strategy advisor, Matthew Taylor, frets about the internet's apparently disastrous role in civic engagement. He uses a particularly pungent phrase, the "shrill discourse of demands", to describe what he (and probably many other goverments around the world) sees emerging from the blogosphere. Oh dear.

Obviously, this is quite a different set of issues if you're talking about the blogosphere as a force for change in countries where the government isn't elected freely and fairly, or where the online world offers one of the only outlets for alternative voices in a repressive state. But in countries like the United States and the UK where (arguably, perhaps) the government is largely obligated to be resposive to its citizenship, it seems clear that governments simply haven't figured out how to deal with the rising tide of individual voices. And by "deal with", I don't mean "silence"; it seems to me like Taylor's hostility to citizen media is based much more on confusion and a lack of imagination within government circles over how to channel and respond to those demands effectively than on the fact that they exist.

My guess is that smart governments who do want to engage with their citizenry will need to start working with innovative groups to address this problem -- rather than having a blogosphere shouting at you, how do you actually make those engaged people work for and with you to solve civic problems? John Palfrey also recently mused on this problem: "One of the questions that’s always bothered me is why candidates who use the Internet to get elected seem to use the Internet much less effectively as they are governing", and points to one local example where a politician is trying to do differently.

A grander vision is put forward by a project I encountered recently, More Perfect. More Perfect, founded by Chad Maglaque and Timothy Killian, provides a wikispace for public policy discussion. From their site:

Imagine an entirely new approach to democracy where everyone is able to participate. Imagine a way to enable more direct public involvement and participation, creating a marketplace of ideas where the public can collaborate with each other on the matters that affect their daily lives. Fundamentally change the way policy makers and citizens approach the creation of laws today. That's our vision...

More Perfect allows individuals, public interest groups, local governments and elected officials to present their issues, policy proposals and positions to a diverse and engaged audience, gathering real-time feedback while potentially avoiding a time consuming, costly and often uncertain public outreach process.

So, I'm not entirely sure that moreperfect can replace public outreach processes by governments (and the organization also does some expectation-management on the site, noting that "More Perfect is only a tool. A powerful medium to be sure, but a tool nonetheless. It is not intended to replace, or even displace, existing institutions or legislative processes). I'm also not sure how easy it will be to get groups of citizens to debate potential laws with each other on the platform (to a large extent, I think blogs have claimed that space). However, the part that I think is really exciting is when responsive government actually gets involved, and starts to use a tool like MorePerfect to engage with its constitutents. Wouldn't it be great if every House Rep (sorry, this is a US-focused post) had a space on a tool like MorePerfect? Even better, what if that were simply part of the standard outreach toolkit for any elected official?

One of the lessons of online civic engagement I've seen over the years at OSI is pretty obvious: these tools work best when the people actually making the decisions are paying attention. Projects that try to put government officials in direct touch with constituents, like Kenyan Parliament watchblog Mzalendo and WriteToThem, a UK service that facilitates sending email or fax communications with representatives operate on the same principle. I hope MorePerfect focuses on this hard work of engaging both government representatives and constituencies on the same platform -- it's not easy, but I think it's going to be one of the answers to the "shrill discourse of demands" some government officials seem to be hearing from their citizens.