Three Months of Britain's e-Petition System

eldavojohn writes "The idea seems simple. Provide feedback for your government via the internet. If enough people sign a petition, address it. That was the idea when an e-Petition site was launched in Nov 06 for Prime Minister Tony Blair. The BBC is reporting on the million or so petitions that the PM has received since the site went live. While most petitions are rejected or ignored, they have a top ten with one petition having 600,000 signers. Is this a valid way to provide feedback to the government or merely an exercise in keeping the populace happy?"

2,400 Petitions, 1 Million SIGNATURES

[IanDanforth]

Please edit original submission for accuracy.

-Ian

My experience

[Bogtha]

I signed a petition to add an exception to copyright law for personal use [pm.gov.uk] a month or two ago. A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from the system notifying me of the government's response [pm.gov.uk]:

As you may be aware, in December 2005 the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced that there would be a review of the intellectual property framework in the UK, led by Andrew Gowers.

The findings of this review have now been published and recommend the introduction of a private copying exception for the purposes of format shifting. This would allow individuals to copy music which they have legally bought on compact disc onto an MP3 player without infringing copyright.

The Government welcomes this recommendation and is currently considering how such an exception should be created in UK law.

Now obviously the petition didn't have a huge effect, but at least they are aware there is public demand for this, and it's helped me keep track of what they are actually doing about it.

Re:Sure

[Bogtha]

Sure it is. Besides, if MPs or Congressmen accept emails but don't respond to them, wouldn't that also be a way of "merely keeping the populace happy"?

Interestingly enough, the same people [mysociety.org] who built this petition system for the government also created WriteToThem [writetothem.com] — write your message in a text box on the site, and they email/fax/post it to your MP. This has the advantage of them being able to spot when an MP is ignoring people and they've published league tables and other statistics [writetothem.com] about how responsive MPs are.

Dr Graffin's "Web-surdities"

[Tiro]

One of my favorite writers posted about this a few years back. After reflecting upon his thoughts, I concluded that assembling mass support for an issue depends on individuals' personal/emotional involvement. That interest and enthusiasm can be multiplied by getting people together in physical proximity, which energizes them. Having a lot of loud, energized people in the capital city is a lot more compelling to the rest of society than an "e-protest".

Here is the link to the article: http://badreligion.com/news/essays.php?id=8 [badreligion.com]. He has since become a Ph.D and a biology instructor at UCLA.

To quote from the first two paragraphs:

Recently, I read an article in the paper that related the growing trend of "Digital Demonstrators" (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 3, 1998). It said that "virtual marches" could be an effective way to bring about social change. It stated that "activists can demonstrate with a mouse click...

This really pissed me off! First of all, it is a gross misrepresentation of what motivates social and political change. Ultimately, social change comes from an emotionally based behavior pattern. The reason people change in unison is because we are united by a similar emotional response. We are not moved to change the laws if we don't have an emotional experience that connects us to the political issue.

Re:How about a breath of fresh air instead?

[Bogtha]

The queen is head of parliament.

People who aren't from the UK often get confused by this. The Queen, for all practical purposes, has no political power. No monarch has entered the House of Commons in well over three centuries.

The last time they tried it was in 1642 — Charles I tried to arrest five MPs for treason, and the House of Commons told him to bugger off. Shortly afterwards he was defeated in civil war, and parliament created a court to put a monarch on trial for the first time in history — he ended up being executed.

These days, the monarch's representatives don't even enter the House of Commons unless they have permission from the Members of Parliament. They rarely even express any political opinions.

Lots of people read history books about how kings and queens used to be dictators, but that's exactly what it is — history. The monarchy is an anachronism; a leftover we use mainly as a tourist attraction. We don't "recall" them because there's no point, not because we can't.

Re:How about a breath of fresh air instead?

[alext]

This is utter nonsense, it was entirely the GG's initiative. He represents the Queen completely, for her even to have been consulted would have been a breach of protocol.

And I've no idea what you mean by "double dissolution" as a cause, perhaps you mean dissolution was the effect?

Re:My experience

[steevc]

There's also a petition to make software patents unenforcible [pm.gov.uk] that people may wish to sign. It would be good to see it get more signatures than some of the sillier ones.

The road pricing petition is doing suspiciously well with 30x the signatures of the next most popular. That's over 1% of the population. Either someone has been marketing it well or there may be invalid signatures. You have to submit your address, but that's not hard to fake.

Re:Validity?

[AGMW]

It would be like banning a drug because the doctors administering it are too poorly trained to administer it safely all the time

Good analogy. If medical trials were undertaken for a new drug and it was found that the Drs couldn't administer it correctly, do you think the powers that be would :-
a) Issue a licence for the drug anyway, because the Drs will get the hang of it eventually
b) Send it back to the drug companies until they can provide a simpler administration system

My guess is they'd send it back to the drug company.

Sure, work to make the technology foolproof, but in the meantime don't foist a half-baked technical solution on the public just because it sounds like a good idea. The fact of the matter is that this kind of technology just isn't foolproof yet and there will be security leaks, and for that reason the tech is simply not ready to be rolled out yet!