Politics, Public Policy & eDemocracy?Some thoughts and challenges for the

Networked Society

Outline

• The State in Crisis?: a view from the academe

• Political Campaigning: The Obama Effect

• Public Policy 2.0: What works; what doesn’t

• Just what is eDemocracy?

The State in Crisis: Manuel Castells Vertical, hierarchical organisations are collapsing into horizontal networks

Major challenge for parties, governments and states controlling the flow and use of information [power] in networks

Internet, in particular, is driving growth of ‘informational politics’

Peer Production: Yochai Benkler

Commons Based Peer Production:

“the emergence of a new information environment, in which individuals are free to take a more active role than was possible in the industrial information economy of the twentieth century.”

Political Campaigning: The Obama Effect

US President in 3 easy steps!

Took messages to existing online communities

Empowered individuals to tell the ‘Obama Story’ on their behalf

Understood the network effect and built solid foundations ready to scale accordingly

The Obama Campaign By Numbers

Insight 1. Long-tail Donations

Growing trend of micro-financing political campaigns

Insight 2. Death of the Soundbite

Voters watched campaign content – all the way through

Up to 17 mins per video

Insight 3. Networks vs Campaigns

Network is more powerful than Campaign Messages can spread much faster and effectively

Networks are resilient, but not nimble If you have a network of 5,000 bloggers and one says something stupid then it’s not the end of world. However, if you take away the central co-ordinating point they’re not easily corralled

Networks and campaigns can be allies, but they ultimately have cross-purposes Campaigns share tasks but not authority with their supporters

LabList vs ConHome

“Labhome is a community for people to talk to each other - LabList will be a content engine, offering insight, thoughts, news, [about Labour]."

Public Policy 2.0 What works; what doesn’t

Guido Speaks...

“The Wiki idea is a good one for collaborative projects. Politics is not collaborative. The reality is that politics is a clash of ideas and ideology as well as parties. Only a deluded wonk would overlook that non-trivial detail.”

“Miliband does not really care what the "citizens" think. The Wiki was a PR exercise in sham consultation ...”

Just what is eDemocracy?

eDemocracy: a definition

“making [democratic] processes more accessible; making citizen participation in public policy decision-making more expansive and direct to enable broader influence in policy outcomes and keeping the government closer to the consent of the governed thereby increasing its political legitimacy.”

...but what if...

eDemocracy: an example?

- MPs' expenses, by amount, on a map

If you get it, share it...

Further reading: Felix Stalder (2006) Manuel Castells. Yochai Benkler (2005) The Wealth of Networks.

Dave Briggs http://davepress.net FutureGov www.futuregovconsultancy.com Extended Reach http://extendedreach.wordpress.com

Digital Gov UK on Delicious http://delicious.com/tag/digitalgovuk

Thank You!

Simon Collister

Head of Digital

Weber Shandwick

www.simoncollister.com

linkedin.com/simoncollister

twitter.com/simoncollister

07971 612857