[Air-l] e-petitions continued

[Dominic Pinto]

Tom Driberg of mysociety.org has reacted to some of
the various points I relayed from the list, and my own
comments, viz.,
>>>>>>>>>>>
Tom Steinberg says: 

Hello Dominic (and your colleagues by proxy),

Let me tackle your various questions and arguments.

>Friends are highly dubious about this petition
system, and that the support of say the repeal of the
Hunting Act is representative.

They are completely entitled to feel that way about
this or any other initiative we run. However, I’m
afraid that whilst thousands of people per day are
making use of it, though, that’s not a good enough
reason to persuade me to suggest to the trustees,
developers or our volunteer community that we should
annul our contract and close down the site.

> Surely you don’t envisage Blur or Broon acting
because the highest number counted support the repeal
of the Hunting Act? 

Speaking personally, I think you’re probably right
about the chances of the pro fox-hunting people
getting a repeal of this act under this government.
However, I hope it is pretty obvious that we didn’t
build this petition system because we thought the
government would and should do everything that was
petitioned for: it is simply a new channel in our
multi-layered representative democracy. It does not
make the rest of the political universe vanish.

>yes, it would have been possible to build in
deliberation. It has been done in relation to
Parliamentary Committees, and in departmental
consolations. Why not with No10?

Excellent news - please point me to examples. I am
especially keen to see ones that can deal with over
1000 parallell discussions on different topics.

> Were you allowed to do so? I don’t know, you should
tell us, did you ask?

No, I didn’t ask. I was much more concerned that the
process of actually signing and making petitions
should be percieved as transparent and trustworthy by
most users, as it clearly is. However, we have now
added lots of features that I didn’t ask for, and nor
did No10 as the site was being designed. This is what
it means to run a beta.

> Is moderation too expensive when billions are spent
in man+equipment in Iraq 

You might have noticed that mySociety hasn’t launched
any military action in Iraq recently. This is a
question to direct to No10. I am sure your view that
this is a good use of money will form part of their
considerations on the issue of discussion systems -
you can let them know directly by mailing the support
address on the petitions homepage.

>I couldn’t see any party political reference, and in
any case why should that be a bar? 

There is a strict division of powers over rejections
or acceptances - this is No10’s business not ours.
However you appear to have quoted No10’s justification
in your own email, relating to Mrs Thatcher. If you
think that they should have allowed her to be
mentioned, please drop No10 a mail through the support
address on the homepage of the petitions site.

>Is that a likely development? We could see powerful
parliamentary committees questioning the government
closely on what steps it will be taking?

As Stephen Coleman would doubtless point out now, the
executive and the Parliament are different things. I’m
not aware of any such plans, but why not ask your MP
to raise the idea in the House of Commons? Personally
I would be happy to see petitions given some sort of
more formal status, although I have not spent much
time working out exactly what. Do you have any views?

all the best,

Tom 

written on November 30th, 2006 
>>>>>>>>>>>>

Anyone can try the petition system out (well, as long
as you're a citizen of something, an elector of the UK
- form the site: You must be a British citizen or
resident to sign the petition. Or, if you're an
expatriate, you're in an overseas territory, a Crown
dependency or in the Armed Forces without a postcode
....

And contribute directly to these discussions - I'm no
proxy :-)

http://www.mysociety.org/2006/11/14/no10-petitions-system-goes-live

Dominic Pinto BA MIEEE MCMI MRi FRSA
http://www.ecademy.com/user/dominicpinto

e-m: dominic.pinto at ieee.org
M: +44 780 302-8268
Ph: +44 207 379-8341

In the U.S.
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