4 November 2002

Digital Democracy - Seizing the Opportunity

By Margaret Moran MP

Things are stirring in the quill-pen world of Parliament. Not only has the advent of a centrally-sourced technology put more MPs online, but UK parliament is now well placed to lead the world in eDemocracy - if we are bold enough to seize the opportunity.

The recent report of the Information Select Committee^* set out what could be a quiet revolution in the way MPs communicate with citizens. It sets principles for e-engagement, central of which is that constituents should be able to communicate with MPs using whatever medium that most suits them. And correspondingly, MPs should be so enabled.

This is not about giving another channel to the "usual suspects" but engaging with those who otherwise would not have the opportunity to participate.

It is an opportunity for parliamentarians who recognise that the credibility of politics and parliament will increasingly require us to use the technology to connect with those who see politics as remote. And these views are endorsed by the Modernisation Select Committee's recent report.

They quote the Womenspeak project, which I initiated as chair of the APPG on Domestic Violence. Where else have survivors had such an influence on policy and legislation? And how else could parliamentarians have so easily, cheaply and anonymously have heard the voices of Irish women travellers and Bangladeshi mums; some of the first participants online? Unless we hear these voices how can we claim to be truly representative?

The Modernisation Select Committee recommendation that select committees and other parliamentary bodies step up their use of ICT to increase e-participation by the public in the parliamentary process is welcome. But as the Information Committee reports says, we need also to enable individual MPs

How do we get to from where we are to where we could be?

Email-phobia is still with us. I remember in 1997 when a keen MP suggested all MPs' email addresses could be made publicly available and almost got hauled before the chief whip for subversive notions. It is out there now. But we need to provide some safeguards. My suggestion of a "concordat" or a set of "rights and responsibilities" for the use of email is one recommendation, which will be further developed by the committee.

We must have better filters and sadly, but urgently, mechanisms to lock out certain websites. I was utterly appalled that a senior officer of the House has allegedly been caught downloading child porn. This in a Parliament, which has been the most active on protecting children on the net. Irritating rather than dangerous is the fact that the email system regularly keels over under the weight of spam emails for Viagra, porn and Nigerian financial scams.

Having suggested we "walk the talk" in gathering evidence for the select committee, we held a video-conference with one of our counterparts in Canada where MPs routinely use this for meetings. Yet for us video-conferencing isn't readily available. Similarly, webcasting is an easy way of bringing our work as constituency MPs and the business of the House to life. These should be essentials if we are to take the recommendations forward.

But by far the most exciting opportunities outlined in the report are those, which enable MPs to carry out a range of e-democracy initiatives. Some MPs are ready to go. I have done cyber surgeries and a cybersoap box with Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, as well as "Virtual" visits to the House.

We need also to be able to run online surveys, to engage in online debate including video streaming and chat rooms focusing on particular subjects. The example of an adjournment debate and a simultaneous online debate on back pain in the Scottish parliament, which elicited hundreds of responses, is an example which shows that citizens are interested, online and willing to share their experience to inform our work

The opportunities for select committees to engage via online pre-legislative scrutiny with those whose voices are not usually heard in our hallowed portals are enormous.

All of this is relatively new. There are few examples of how to "do" e-participation. We need external moderators for discussion or bulletin boards, as well as assistance to MPs to pilot e-participation initiatives. We need to build on existing examples and create a portfolio of best practice. This means, as the information committee suggests, not being held back by the slowest but encouraging innovation. We need to involve small, bright companies and voluntary organizations like the National Grid for Democracy (NGfD), which have run e-democracy projects and can guide and enable.

But nothing will happen unless we as MPs, and parliamentary groups, have a separate budget allocation for e-participation. It will be bizarre that while the e-Envoy makes funds available for e-participation as part of the recommendations in 'In the service of Democracy', the Mother of Parliaments sets out its radical intentions without resources to back them up.

The Leader of the House needs to lead but the e-Envoy has a role in facilitating our Parliament as an exemplar. God knows it is needed. Local government has been desperately slow to learn from early experiments like "Lewisham Listens", which I started when leader of Lewisham Council in the early '90s. This initiative tried a range of engagement techniques from the first citizen juries to ITC, kiosks and other forms of eGovernment and e-engagement. The empirical evidence was that a disproportionate number of elderly and minority groups got involved. And, a lesson for Parliament, our polling showed that our voters valued us because we listened. With the advent of citizenship in the curriculum, we urgently need a political presence to encourage youngster engagement with the work of parliamentarians. This may be our only or best way of ensuring the next generation feels that parliament and indeed politics is something of value in their lives.

We were overwhelmed with the numbers of young people who came to the PLP Parliamentary Affairs Committee, which I chair, to debate voting at age 16. A similar exercise online would be an excellent kick-start to the citizenship debate.

But the community, particularly those least likely to otherwise become involved, need to be enabled to get online and involved. The e-Envoy needs to prioritise funding and revenue budgets to focus on building community capacity online in the most deprived and hardest to reach communities

Traditionalists will say this has nothing to do with the process of parliament. I say do or die. How can we best scrutinise legislation other than by being as widely informed as possible? And those who claim that the digital divide makes nonsense of all this should simply look at who is online.

With parliament's standing at it's lowest since the introduction of the vote, we need to bring the commons into the 21st century. We have been urged to be bold. This an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

*Digital technology: working for Parliament and the Public
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cminform/1065/106502.htm

Margaret Moran MP is Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Department for Work and Pensions, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary E-Democracy Group and a Member of the House of Commons Information Select Committee.

http://www.margaretmoran.org