Citizens have leapt to the digital barricades – what now?
By Steve Hodgkinson
17 Dec 2008
Online consultation is a hands-on activity – the only way to build skills is to jump in and give it a go. The challenge for governments, however, is to structure the passion of bloggers into constructive dialogues. After a period of deep thinking, the Australian government is now taking its first steps towards the Web 2.0 world of online policy debate – which is to be commended.
Despite the fact that the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, is himself an experienced blogger, it has taken the Australian government a while to launch forth into two-way online dialogue with its citizens.
In this regard, Australia is somewhat behind its counterparts in other jurisdictions, many of which now have extensive experience with politicians’ blogs, online consultations and e-petitions.
The first of a series of online consultation trials was launched last week. This follows a year of policy debate that culminated in the release in June of a report entitled Consulting with Government – online.
The first trial is a policy discussion blog launched jointly by Minister Tanner and Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. The blog is hosted by Senator Conroy’s department, and will address a range of policy topics relating to digital economy future directions.
Tanner’s experience with his own personal blog means that he is under no illusions about the no-holds-barred nature of Web 2.0’s so-called ‘architecture of participation’. The government has gone into the trials with its eyes open.
Citizens have leapt to the digital barricades – what now?
After the first week the blog received over 1,200 comments, spanning more than 120 pages. While it is difficult to scan all the posts, it is readily apparent that the overwhelming majority, approximately 80–90 per cent, are negative comments regarding the government’s proposal that all ISPs must provide clean feeds or online filtering to block ‘inappropriate’ content such as pornography – even though this was not one of the discussion topics suggested.
There is a scattering of constructive comments relating to improving the blog and other elements of digital economy policy, and quite a few comments commending the blog initiative, but the overwhelming feel of the ‘dialogue’ so far is that of an impassioned rant – a flood of emotion and opinion about ISP filtering.
The government’s challenge is to architect a dialogue out of hundreds of monologues
I remember hearing Clive James, the Australian writer and wit, once say on radio that a dictatorship is characterised by thousands of monologues conducted in silence behind closed doors. Democracy, in contrast, at least attempts to bring monologues out into the open so that they can become public discussions.
However, there is plainly a real challenge in actually architecting a constructive online dialogue with government. Throwing hundreds of individual points of view into a blog may be a way to make transparent the opinions of other bloggers but it is far from useful as a technique for either purposeful dialogue or representative democracy.
The department’s blog team responded on Friday with a post titled ‘We hear you …”, at least acknowledging the comments and feedback received thus far – though predictably stopping short of entering into a debate on the pros and cons of their Minister’s Internet filtering policy.
The lessons learnt from the blogging trial so far seem to be that:
Australians will indeed contribute to a government blog
it is easier to open Pandora’s box than it is to close it again
an online consultation needs to be structured to be purposeful.
A series of sequential rants does not a conversation make – though it may provide the catalyst for one, which can nonetheless be a good step forward.
Perhaps an e-petition facility, such as on the UK government’s Number 10 Downing Street website, would provide a useful vehicle for people to express support for, or opposition to, specific policy options.
Of course, not all petitions will align with government policy. My personal favourite on Number 10 is a petition to “Ban broccoli as an edible foodstuff and reclassify it as a toxic substance” – though this was rejected as beyond the Prime Minister’s remit and powers.
Steve Hodgkinson is a research director in government at Ovum
