E-democracy and social media

Today I'm going to talk about what I see as the uneasy relationship between democracy and web 2.0.

My examples will mainly come from the party political field, but I think a lot of the learnings apply across all areas of government.

I don't need to tell anyone in this room this, but it's worth stressing that the system by which we are governed in this country is one of representative democracy.

We give our politicians a mandate at an election, and they run with it until we go to the polls again. That's where they're used to being judged. On the whole, we as citizens have accepted that.

There have been occasions when the electorate has expressed its displeasure with their leaders between elections, whether that be in the form of the poll taxt riots or the anti-war marches, but as a general rule we've accepted the status quo.

But things are changing. More and more politicians and government officials are embracing web 2.0, which means we can tell them what we think of them on a regular basis.

And we expect change to happen, because that's how web 2.0 works.

I can edit an entry on wikipedia for example.

You can comment on my blog and pick holes in my arguments. If you change my mind about something as a result I'll tell you - and I'll share that in a public forum.

The concept of co-creation - another web 2.0 type concept - has gone beyond us sending photos of the floods to the BBC.

Dell has begun to release versions of its products based on the feedback of contributors to its IdeaStorm forum.

It's great that the more forward-thinking politicians and government officials are beginning to use blogs and Facebook groups and the like to inform and to listen to the people they govern.

But informing and listening aren't enough. Does our input into those forums make any substantive difference? Can we see any changes as a result of our participation? Have any laws been changed as a result of the petitions people have submitted to the Number 10 website for example? Nope.

We now have a voice, but the power still rests where it always did - in Parliament, in Whitehall, in the town hall.

And it's worth comparing the impact on government of the e-petition site, and some good, old-fashioned real world protesting.

About two million people signed the e-petition about the government's plans to impose road charging.

A handful of lorry drivers blockaded fuel depots in 2000. I think we all know which of those activities had a greater impact on government thinking.

As Tony Benn once said, riot has played a bigger part in British politics than we are ever allowed to know.

It'll probably stay that way unless government listens to - and engages with - the virtual riots taking place in the blogosphere and on Facebook.

Now I'm not saying the laws should change every time a virtual petition lands on the number 10 website or a Facebook group reaches a critical mass.

Government by referendum is likely to be inefficient, and the active online community is hardly representative of the national mood. Two million people is an impressive number, but it's still only a tiny percentage of the voting population.

The e-petition site is potentially an enormously powerful tool.

But if you go through the offical responses to the petitions that have been submitted, you end up feeling rather depressed.

They're written in typical government speak. It's nice to get a response, but that repsonse tends to be a very polite message explaining why no action will be taken on the issue you care so deeply about.

Is this e-democracy in action? I'm not so sure.

Many of the candidates for the deputy leadership of the labour party set up Facebook groups and MySpace pages to support their bids. Some of them had Twitter feeds as well.

And I'm not sure we learnt much about the candidates as a result.

Why? The big danger with Facebook when used for 'top down' political purposes is that you end up preaching to the converted.

The vast majority of Hazel Blears' hundreds-strong group of Facebook friends will almost certainly have been her supporters anyway.

And with that number of people joining her network, she couldn't possibly have learnt anything meaningful from them. There's no way to tell the well-informed critic from the slightly bonkers stalker.

After all, there's a Facebook group called "I've made friends with a politician but I don't know or like them".

The size of your Facebook group is clearly not an accurate measure of popularity.

Peter Hain demonstrated another crime against social networking during the deputy leadership campaign. I visited his MySpace page two days ago. The latest blog entry it links to is 25 June. It was only set up to support his deputy leadership bid, and has not been touched since that contest ended.

If you're going to start the conversation, you can't just let it drop.

You can use this stuff for tactical purposes, but I was disappointed to see that Hain had given up so soon. It makes his effort smack of political opportunism rather than a genuine desire to connect.

Alan Johnson used Twitter to keep his followers informed of his progress on the campaign trail. Half way through it was outed as a fake - it was being written by one of his flunkies. Big mistake that. Authenticity is also at the heart of web 2.0.

There's a lot at stake here. Rather than becoming a way of engaging the electorate and wiping away some of the cynicism and apathy that plagues British politics, politicians' use (or rather, misuse) of web 2.0 could actually make things worse.

They've given us a platform to air our views and led us to believe we can effect change, but we're just as impotent as ever. In fact, they're rubbing our noses in our own insignificance.

But to stress once again this isn't just about politicians - these points extend to all areas of government I believe.

If you're going to embrace web 2.0, then everyone involved needs to look at the way in which their particular piece of the government machine operates and to initiatiate the kind of cultural change that web 2.0 requires.

Web 2.0 is all about honesty and transparency, conversation and collaboration.

Clearly, some serious corporate re-engineering is required if you're going to embrace it.

But unless that happens, the divide between 'them and us' will remain as wide as ever, and the general population will remain as cynical as ever.