Dominic Raab MP

A newly-elected Conservative MP has refused to receive email from his constituents, according to a leading UK campaign website set up by a former Obama Presidential aide.

The website, 38 Degrees, says Dominic Raab MP, who was elected in May to represent Esher and Walton, even threatened to report them to the Information Commissioner if they did not remove his standard House of Commons email address from their website, despite this being freely available on several other websites including the BBC site.

38 Degrees encourages citizens to email their MPs on issues about which they feel strongly, using an automatically-generated ‘template’ email, which can be tailored. According to the organisation, Raab has only received around 100 such emails from constituents since he was elected. However, he has now asked for both his personal and his House of Commons email addresses to be removed. 38 Degrees has refused to back down, saying advice they have received from the Office of the Information Commissioner last week states that all Parliamentary email addresses are in the public domain.

“His feathers were ruffled,” said Hannah Lownsbrough, 38 Degrees’ Campaigns Director. “He got in touch with my colleague to ask for his email not to be made available from the website. He’s taken his email address off his website – that decision has been made without his constituents,” she said. Raab’s reaction was not typical of the general response from MPs to their service, Lownsbrough said.

“The overwhelming response we have from MPs is that they are delighted to be in touch with constituents more regularly”. However, she said Raab has said he welcomes anyone who feels strongly about an issue to write to him personally – rather than copying an automated template – and they would always received a reply.

In the meantime, Raab, who has his own regularly updated blog, had removed his email address from his own website and from MP information website TheyWorkForYou.com, although it was still available on a BBC web page. He was not available for comment.

Named after the angle of friction necessary for an avalanche to happen, 38 Degrees is a non-partisan organisation developed by former Obama Presidential campaign aide Ben Brandzel and co-founded by Gordon Roddick of The Body Shop.

One tech-savvy Labour MP has cast doubt on the efficacy of Raab’s stand. Alun Michael MP, a former Labour technology minister and chair of the Parliamentary IT Committee, said: “I find it surprising. It’s necessary for MPs to be available to constituents. The point of the House of Commons email address is to make it easy. People can go to the House of Commons website if they are not sure who their MP is, put in postcode and get email address. I think it’s basic.

“It’s a question of what you are trying to do by sending email. I’d say MPs have to be open to constituents communicating with us – it comes with a lot of pressure but that goes with the territory.

“We need a debate on how to make email and general internet communications more effective for sender and recipient. As MPs we have to be as open to constituents as possible. It’s a question of how quick and easy it is for constituents and how manageable it is for MPs. We need a discussion between people from these campaigns and MPs.”

With the threat of a formal complaint against 38 Degrees still looming, the organisation this morning published the entire email exchange with the MP and ran a poll asking all of the 38 Degrees members who live in the constituency of Esher and Walton how they would like to respond and whether the group should remove the MP’s email address from the website.

NOTE: Further to the last post on this topic, this is the more fully written up piece I speculatively wrote up for the Guardian on the premise it would be exclusive to them, a scoop no less! While they were very interested, unfortunately, the news was posted on the 38 Degrees website before they could commission it.

Talk to the hand

Dealing with correspondence from the public – their potential voters – is one of the reasons politicians receive funding money for support staff who can deal with that correspondence. That he threatened to report them to the Information Commissioner seems nuts.

Seems this chap has forgotten that his role is to serve constituents in making society a better, fairer place but before that – listening to their needs. And by listening to issues from the public, which is one of the things we pay him to do, he may even rack up a few votes in the process – remember that old chestnut?

I don’t yet know the nature of the campaign or even the volume of emails this MP received, but I’m waiting for a reply about that from Johnny Chatterton,  the 38 Degrees campaigner and blogger who first flagged this up.

On the other hand, this story just might have opened the can of worms gathering dust on the shelf labelled: ‘why mass email campaigns backfire.’ Dissing the public in this way seems like a really dumb move particularly if those emails were individually written. The good thing is that this makes for an opportune moment to ruminate over whether or not those mass template emails to MPs really work.

And on those mass messages, one member on the E-Campaigning Forum mailing list I subscribe to where I heard about this said: “I can’t help feeling that an MP will just look at it and think, ‘You didn’t write this, you probably didn’t even understand it. Why should I take you seriously?’

Among the flurry from co-mailees responding to Johnny’s original message in my inbox, somone posted this relevant part of a Clay Shirky presentation made at Personal Democracy 2010 (New York City, June 2010). Ooh he’s a clever fella.

When email campaigns backfire, says Shirky, it’s because politicians find it very “difficult to pull the signal from the noise” and “an email campaign looks a lot like spam.” I totally get that but overall. What’s worse in the backfiring stakes is an MP who grumbles about emails – template or otherwise – his constituents send him on about a topic they actually care enough about to bother to send, then threaten to grass them up to Sir.

The entry for Rotherham Central Rail Station in particular makes me chuckle.

Ssh! by Kradlum

Wikileaks. It’s like the Freedom of Information Act turned up to 10. And not surprisingly, right now it’s causing a storm at the Pentagon, across the web and among fans of transparency.

Based on the founder’s premise that ‘if journalism is good, it is controversial by its nature,’ (he says it here), the first major case blown open by Julian Assange’s whistleblowing site, has resulted in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 classified internal records of US military incidents in Afghanistan (AKA ‘warlogs’) over the past six years were published on Sunday.

These include: fine-grained accounts of incidences of intelligence received; Taliban attacks; NATO troop actions; methods employed by the coalition army in Afghanistan to fight insurgents and those on the so-called ‘Kill or capture’ list, all published online — although they are at least seven months old.

WikiLeaks, which allows members of the public to upload any document which unveils dishonourable government action, is groundbreaking. Not in the over-used-washing-powder-advert sense of the word, but truly groundbreaking. I don’t know of anything similar.

As a fan of the use of the web to enhance democracy and as a channel for the greater good of society and more broadly, the world, I am excited about Wikileaks for these reasons:

1. It aims, according to the founders, to create more accountability among governments and other institutions and they want to use technology to leak documents, thus raising the bar globally.

2. The founders say they expect Wikileaks to encourage citizens aware of unethical shenanigans to be the whistleblower, even if this is something they have neverconsidered doing.

3. By collating facts and evidence online and consequently unveiling facts behind actions the government would rather not make too much noise about, the public will gain rare and immediate access to the facts of the war, unglossed and without the airbrushing of a government PR team.

4. It can enable the outing of governments not acting on important or life threatening issues or lift the lid on government corruption.

At the time of writing, the website was coming up with an error message, possibly due to traffic overload but I am so keen to see which story Wikileaks will blast open next.

OK, here goes: it would involve beautiful scenery and quite a lot of sitting still for a while then finding some totally delicious local delicacy to try. It would involve some brilliant architecture and a warm clear sea to swim in. I would have to spend quite a lot of time ogling the flora and/or fauna, then chuck in some quirky local customs and sunshine and I’d be happy as larry.

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What do you think?

Click on the words below to be transported to my poll and have your say. . .

Non-profit sites streaming local issues/problems to councils are transferring responsibility from government

I was at Future Democracy 09, an excellent and well-established event which takes place annually in London organised by Headstar, looking at ways the internet can improve political engagement (‘e-democracy’) and I chatted to a researcher who had come from Italy from the University of Bergamo who had, fortuitously, investigated this very subject. Confirming my suspicions, the UK was found to be the most politically disenfranchised country in Western and Eastern Europe (link to research to follow).

It sounds clichéd, but the basics of government – how it is structured, how it works, why it is important – should start to be conveyed to children at school. I would argue this should happen at primary school.

This is why the panel session I attended on the ways young people are being engaged (and engaging themselves) in politics online at the annual event was of great interest. Also, the line-up was brilliant:

Chair: Shane Greer, Executive Editor, Total Politics
Beccy Allen, Project Manager, Hansard Society
Tom Lodziak, Web and Information Officer, UK Youth Parliament
Jo Woolf, Digital Producer, Battlefront, Channel 4 (Raw Television)
Tom Robbins, Campaigner, Battlefront, Channel 4

Tom set up ‘Random Acts of Kindness‘ (video explanation here) via Battlefront which has gained a massive following after he noticed “a certain difference in behaviour” after moving from Somerset to London. He reckoned using the web to engage young people in politics is just a catalyst, allbeit an extremely powerful one.

His campaign via the Channel 4 initiative aimed to encourage people to do nice things for others – giving a bunch of flowers to a stranger for example or my favourite, persuading over 1000 football fans to hug at MK Dons Stadium – but other young campaigners are lobbying to end homophia support torture victims and to end knife and gun crime.

Users upload their own campaigns and vistors to the Battlefront site can click to ‘agree’ or disagree’ with any of the camapign. And selection of campaigners is rigorous – they are even tested by a psychiatrist to ensure they can sensibly defend their argument.

Robbins also gave some very succinct advice to the audience which included people from councils, MPs, a Lord and government agencies in the UK and beyond: “Just use Facebook – every young person is on there.” But key and repeated messages from this session about engaging teens and young adults in political online initiatives were:

• Don’t overmoderate – if you overmoderate, young people will happily take their conversation elsewhere.But it’s worth bearing in mind this story from UKYP’s Tom Lodziak: ” We were targeted by the BNP. We decided to keep a very close eye on things so if they broke the rules, we’d remove them. Through dialogue with other young people you saw their views change One is now more in favour of UKIP – which is progress of sorts!”
• Don’t use jargon (applicable in any context in my opinion) As Beccy Allen from Heads Up said: “Better to use language everyone uses than language politicians use. It’s very difficult to engage young people if you’re talking to them like they’re ‘policy wonks’.”
• Technology gives young people the opportunity for political engagement which didn’t exist 10-15 years ago
• Politicians need a lot of explanation of how online debates work (“some think they have to actually sit in a physical venue and debate for three weeks there!” said Beccy Allen)
• “Doing an online camapign is incredibly labour intensive – the technology often lets you down” (Jo Woolf)Tom from the UKYP recounted a powerful anecdote of a bullied teenager who used the UKYP website to add anonymous comments and information about her experiences. She later became involved with UKYP and ran for council, gaining a top place.Here’s more on what they do. There are some really inspiring stories including one from the first Gypsy Traveller to have sat in the House of Lords as a member of the UKYP, a gay son of a heroin user who was in care as a child and a Zimbabwean refugee and former child drug dealer.

  This allayed my fears a bit that these schemes, initiatives, sites and tools represented by the panel only reach the privileged ones.

  I hope Government is listening.

What brings me here? Well I am very interested in how governments can use digital technology to enhance democratic particpation especially in the UK but also, I responded to a call out for volunteers from Sussex Community Internet Project (SCIP) to show the community groups and local authority organisation present how social media works and how it might help them.

One of the straplines of the day is “Let’s talk Politics.” In such a democratically apathetic country, I’m not sure if this message is doing the trick in terms of  pulling in the punters, although I really hope this changes. This is why I’m interested in uses of the web to improve engagement with local (and broader) decision making.

Interestingly, Brighton and Hove City Council recently employed it’s first social media officer and I’d like to meet them and talk about what exactly the are doing to improve the council.

As I mooched around the stands, I headed to the one marked ‘scrutiny panel.’ I asked the woman on the stand how they tell the public about this valuable but little-known-about service and encourage them to use it – and unsurprisingly she said how hard this was. I asked if she used technology and she said they put information on the website but scribbled things down frantically when I mentioned Twitter and Facebook.

Now this Scrutiny function could come into its own, in light of the expenses scandal which has made more people than ever focus on the subject of government accountablility. But who knew there was a panel of councillors who will work on their behalf to ensure the people making important decisions can justify them?

Right now, I ‘m now in the Question Time session (live webcast here) with a panel including the Conservative leader of the council Councillor Mary Mears (interesting to see she’s the owner of my local fruit and veg stall) and other local government luminaries from Police, NHS and the voluntary and community sector.

More to come. . .videos from the day have been uploaded on SCIP’s YouTube channel here.

not that kind of spork silly!

To help me gather new examples, I’ve started a hashtag thread on Twitter as part of my hunt for linguistic blends new and old.

A blend is an amalgamation of two words to create a new one. A Classic examples that springs to mind is ‘brunch.’  Others include Peter Andre’s seminal (ahem!) album from the 1990s ‘Insania;’ the more recent ‘Freakonomics‘ from Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt book of the same name (I also heard more recently from the Wall Street Journal ‘Obamanomics’); and the more workaday ‘motel.’

So far I have received several examples including those from @Dan_Jellinek: ‘moobs’ (man + boobs); from @Bigfishysea: ‘spork’ (spoon+fork), my personal bete noir of blends ‘webinar’ (web + seminar) and an original blend, ‘shocks’ – shoes so comfy they feel like socks.

spork

That’s the beauty of language, it’s in constant flux because people have been inventing new words and phrases to suit their needs since time immemorial.

To add to this repository please use the hashtag #blends on Twitter. My ID is @melpoluck.

And for a blendtastic (sorry, couldn’t resist) fable containing 75% blends and rising, come back soon. . .

Spork Family tree by Doug Savage via Adam Bradley