Public Sector Forums

Local E-Democracy: Dead, Alive or in Hiding?

Published: 15 January 2008 by Ian 'Cuddles' Cuddy

(In response to signficant interest in this article - and in the interests of creating as full and varied a public debate as possible about the issues it raises - all PSF members can now view this page. Ian)

Four years have passed since the launch of the £4.5m Government-funded National Project for Local E-Democracy, an initiative billed as harnessing the wonders of technology to usher in a bold new era of online people power and thrust e-Participation, e-Consultation and e-Engagement to the top of Town Hall agendas. It's perhaps an opportune time now for a quick stock-take of what impact has been made so far.

In certain respects, things do not appear to augur well.  Just before Christmas the DCLG announced the Councillors Commission had released an important report on how local democracy could be revitalised and strengthened, looking in detail at how residents could be encouraged to engage in local issues and elected members better supported to play a leading role in their communities.

Despite the glaringly obvious potential for technology here, the Commission’s report, ‘Representing the Future’, contained just one sentence on this – which was just about how councillors could avoid having to attend council meetings in person. About online surgeries, ePetitions, texting, personal websites, webcasting, podcasting, eForums, discussion groups, Facebook, YouTube, RSS feeds, mailing lists, even the much-publicised ‘blog in a box’ for councillors being produced by ICELE (aka the International Centre for Excellence for Local e-Democracy, the successor to the national project) or the rest of the myriad of other e-partiicpation tools on offer, there was absolutely nothing. Not a sausage. Zilch. Zero. Nada.

Balancing out lost opportunities like this are the perservering and enthusiastic activities of a small vanguard of e-Participation champions – Bristol, Wolverhampton, Lichfield most notably – to stoke up interest in the subject among other authorities. Promisingly, last November, 23 local authorities in the North East attended the launch of a relatively little-known ‘Community Leadership and eDemocracy Programme’ being funded by ICELE and the region’s Improvement Partnership. North East Connects, long a well meaning e-democracy advocate, also produced this guide for councilors on engaging - which the Councillors’ Commission clearly must have somehow overlooked.

Just as things seem to be looking up, we chanced upon our travels this intriguing and hitherto-unseen (by us anyway) piece of ‘strategic research’ prepared for ICELE last year, one of the centre's official launch surveys back in October 2006. The work was intended to help shape ICELE future direction as well assess how far things had progressed since similar research on ‘barriers to e-democracy’ conducted by the National Project the previous year.

Sadly from what we can gather, only around 44 or so people participated in the survey, so we shouldn’t - can’t - read too much into the results, for which we can pick out very general trends. The survey participants were asked ‘Which of these do you think are relevant?’ and given a list of issues which included the following:

- Lack of public demand of e-Participation?
- Bad marketing of online calls-to-action?
- Lack of public belief that e-Participation can facilitate change?
- Lack of interest in democracy and local issues?

Around half of the respondents apparently answered ‘Yes’ to all of the above.

In terms of actual usage of eParticipation tools such as those mentioned earlier – and we underline again these figures must be treated with caution – the research found very limited take-up. More positively, those who reported using them did, they said, generally find them useful. But when participants were asked they had used these tools themselves as local residents, most clicked ‘no’.  It’s perhaps worth noting those responded to ICELE’s survey, by the simple act of taking part, would probably be considered more enthusiastic about e-participation than others.

However despite this somewhat confusing picture, the good news for ICELE and the other local e-demistas is e-Democracy could very well be in for a resurgence of interest across England from all councils great and small.  If only by dint of the fact that from April 2009, local authorities will have in addition to the requirement on them to consult with residents on service planning, a new statutory ‘duty to involve’ local people – or more accurately, 'representatives' - in local decisions, policies and services where deemed appropriate.

This new duty to involve’ is being introduced under the auspices of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, which even the most sceptic would concur marks a major change in principle in how councils will be expected in future to engage, requiring a ‘corporate approach’. Very recently the DCLG published draft statutory guidance setting out what this meeting this duty involves for councils and “how local communities are to be engaged and empowered in shaping the future of their area”.

According to this, councils are required to embed ‘appropriate engagement’ as standard practice throughout the authority, making it ‘central to service delivery, policy and decision-making’.

Councils must also have evidence to demonstrate they understand the interests and requirements of the local community, that they use this to ensure information, consultation and involvement opportunities are provided on the right issues, targeted to the right people, and accessible. Residents must also feel their authoritiy provides ‘relevant and accessible engagement opportunities’ and know how to get involved in them. All of which will no doubt give fresh impetus to those keen on driving the eParticipation agenda.

The guidance advises councils to consider providing opportunities for ‘representatives of local persons’ to give feedback (the DLCG cites as an example a ‘Have your say’ section on the council website).

Councils and other authorities subject to the statutory duty (eg national park, fire and rescue authorities) have until 12 February to respond to the DCLG consultation, Various questions are prompted here, not least, will this top-down, mandated approach result in another box-ticking exercise or foster genuine two-way engagement? And do local people actually want to be engaged and to what extent?

Send your views to ian.cuddy@publicsectorforums.co.uk or post  your thoughts over in the Forum.

PS We thought we'd give a quick mention to the eParticipation conference being organised by the DCLG over at www.empowerment-symposium.com next month, which looks like fun.