News
London ePetition Day
Published: Thursday 12th June 2008
On June 11th, ICELE hosted a free event in conjunction with Capital Ambition and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames to explore the theme of local ePetitioning.There was a great mix of people represented at the event, from consultation officers, democratic service officers to IT staff and solution providers. A number of expert speakers gave their views from a national and local perspective, joining panel debates on a number of issues such as the recent government notion of a "duty to respond".
Andy Williamson, Director of the Hansard Society spoke about the history of petitions in parliament and the future plans for ePetitioning at Westminster. In particular how MPs and citizens differ vastly in their overall perception of the mechanism as a democratic lever. Andy suggested that petitioning was, at the very least, a mass gateway to a ladder of increasing participation.
Kingston upon Thames presented to the audience next with a fascinating view of how ePetitioning had grown within the authority. Mary Reid, also vice chair of ICELE, spoke about how the Local eDemocracy National Project had stimulated citizens and elected members to get engaged. Ann Sweeney from Democratic Services did a short presentation on the how their system worked and the back-end processes which combine with the traditional approaches for handling paper petitions.
In the afternoon, Carol Hayward, Corporate Consultation Manager at Bristol City Council compared and contrasted their recently revamped ePetitions service on the AskBristol site. She spoke about what has and hasn't worked for them and provided some examples of where ePetitioning had made a real difference.
The day finished-off by exploring current ePetition technology with live demonstrations from Modern Gov and Public-i. This provided useful insight into how Local Authorities might adopt, adapt and integrate a solution.
Delegates went away from the day having learnt a lot about the practicalities of local ePetitioning, armed with ideas on how to tackle the various implementation and take-up obstacles, strikingly apparent from the debate.
ICELE has been endorsing ePetitions since it established pilots in both Kingston and Bristol through the Local eDemocracy National Project. We believe that the ongoing success of local ePetitioning among the early adopters, particularly in the context of a possible duty regarding a structured approach to dealing with petitions, should stimulate a number of new deployments. At the most basic level, we believe that local authorities should have a clear process for dealing-with and responding-to petitions.
Read our full response to the recent DCLG consultation on petitioning
Download or buy a copy of our local ePetitioning guidebook
View the presentations
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