Lack of an eDemocracy strategy is 'hurting Parliament'

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Over the last couple of months, two things have made it apparent that Parliament is being hurt by the lack of a UK strategy for eDemocracy.

First came the news that the government is revamping its ePetitions system, and is linking them to parliamentary procedures so that those with over 100,000 signatories will be guaranteed a Commons debate, and the most popular being introduced as legislation.

One of the most important parts of this plan is that the ePetitions system will be hosted on the government's DirectGov website, and not on the parliamentary site.

This means a government website is being used to (partially) drive the agenda in Parliament, and the public's interaction is with government rather than Parliament. But Parliament is compelled to act on this dialogue from which it has been left out.

The importance of this constitutional point has long been recognised within Parliament. It is the reason why its domain name is parliament.uk rather than parliament.gov.uk.

And a 2008 report from the Commons procedures committee emphasised that "Parliament should be the primary recipient of petitions from the public".

"Introducing e-petitioning would reinforce the House's historic role as the proper and principal recipient of public petitions and would help ensure that the public has a better understanding of the work and role of Parliament as distinct from Government."

In its response, even the former government acknowledged that it would be "more appropriate" for some petitions to go to Parliament rather than government.

But, given the apparent inertia or lack of interest within Parliament, these principles have been pushed aside so that the government can get a system built in order to deliver its manifesto commitment.

And without a strategy to set out where and when these online services should be built, Parliament loses out.

Who owns the legislative process?

This brings us to the second development; the government's plans for a Public Reading Stage for legislation.

As far as I can tell, it dates back to October 2009 when the Conservatives promised "a new and radical policy to throw open the doors of Parliament by introducing into the passage of legislation a public reading stage, using modern technology to allow the public to give their comments on the details of proposed new laws before those details are settled".

And in November 2009, the Wright committee on modernising the Commons concluded that individual citizens have "few opportunities for involvement in the legislative process" other than lobbying their MP.
The committee supported moves to open up the legislative process, but specifically concluded:

"Opening up the process of legislation and giving a real opportunity to the public to influence the content of draft laws should be a priority for consideration in the next Parliament. That is an issue for the House and not for Government."

Which brings us to the current pilot scheme being piloted by the Cabinet Office with the Protection of Freedoms Bill.

Once again, the technology behind this is not being taken forward not by Parliament but by the government.

It is a government website on a government domain, the responses from which will be fed across to Parliament.

This seems at odds with the original intention which was to "throw open the doors of Parliament". Instead, government opens the doors and takes the credit for letting people in while Parliament gets to clean up afterwards.

Constitutional mess

This state of affairs is, to say the least, disappointing.

I've written previously about some of the excellent technical work that Parliament is currently undertaking and which has the potential to engage many more people with its work.

But while it may have the technical expertise to deliver these kind of improvements, the political will to undertake them is clearly lacking.

And so, without an agreed strategy, the government improvises its own solutions independently of the wishes of Parliament.

The views of committees are ignored and a constitutional mess ensues in which government websites are used to set the agenda for what should be parliamentary processes.

This is an inversion of the normal democratic principle, with the government's websites being used to provide greater legitimacy to Parliament.

Hopefully the potential damage to Parliament of these two developments will prompt MPs and bodies like the procedures committee to reassert themselves over the executive and insist upon their proper online primacy just as they frequently do over the provision of printed documents.

Next steps

In the short term, Parliament should insist that the technology it is working on to allow the public to draft amendments to Bills should be used as the mechanism for gathering feedback during the public reading stage.

This would, of course, run completely counter to the government's stated aim of using the Protection of Freedoms Bill pilot as a trial run of the technology, as this technology would have to be discarded.

That's a small price to pay, however, for sticking to constitutional principles.

Similarly, Parliament should insist that whatever ePetitions software the government comes up with is transferred to its own website, even if it stands apart from the rest of the site with a separate subdomain and design.

As I noted previously, the government has devoted over 450 pages to its eGovernment strategy, yet when it comes to eDemocracy we have ad hoc developments lacking both clear principles and an understanding of the end-point which we hope to reach.

For a while this state of affairs, I think, has just about been acceptable.

Technology and how people use it has changed rapidly. Strategies were out of date almost before the first draft was finished. And as technologies changed, politicians, parties, parliaments and governments improvised and piloted varying ideas.

But now, just as the government feels able to develop a comprehensive eGovernment strategy, it is possible to understand what the elements of an eDemocracy strategy would be.

Parliament should take the lead in defining the principles which will shape the use of technology in the democratic system over the next decade. If it doesn't, this will both symbolise and exacerbate its declining relevance.

Perhaps a prime minister who has talked about how it is "time to strengthen Parliament so it can properly hold the government to account on behalf of voters" will also recognise the need to let the institution reassert its authority over this area.

For any of this to happen, though, the leadership from within Parliament must improve, becoming more agile in its approach to technology and developing a greater understanding both of how it will be shaped by technology and in turn how it can shape technology.

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