House of Commons wants in on e-Petitions action
Petitions have historically been pen and paper affairs. But the popular uptake of the Prime Minister’s and the Scottish Parliament’s e-Petition systems effectively demonstrate that this kind of political engagement resonates in an e-enabled democracy. Most famously, over 1.7m signed up to the ‘road pricing’ petition in 2007. Now the House of Commons (HoC) wants to put e-Petitions on an equivalent footing with written petitions, guaranteeing the petitioner a written response if not necessarily discussion time in Parliament. Your opinion is sought as part of this process.
The inquiry is run by the HoC Procedure Committee: they will present to Government before Easter and expect a response soon after. Your route to participate is a forum (click here for the forum), open until Friday 18 February. We encourage everyone to weigh in with their perspective. Will opening a new communications channel between the people and their Parliament lead to closer and more rewarding relations?
The forum poses three questions:
- Would you consider signing an e-petition? If so, for what sort of issue?
- How do you think individual MPs should take part in an e-petitions system?
- What result would you expect from submitting or signing an e-petition?
There are valid questions over whether the relevant personnel actually respond in good faith to these petitions. But there are also privacy issues this forum fails to address. Asking the public to express their views on the record will generate much politically-sensitive and personal data. This data, given the State’s appalling information assurance record, will almost certainly leak to both the private (e.g. commercial direct marketing, spammers, fraudsters) and public (e.g. security services) sector. For much more analysis of these systemic concerns, check SpyBlog’s excellent post.
The Committee should as part of its recommendations require Parliament’s e-Petitions mechanism be designed with robust legal, technical and cultural protections to ensure against undue intrusion on users’ privacy. Unless these protections are central to the specification for the system, the potential to contribute to the redevelopment of trust between politicians and the public will inevitably be lost (as will yet more of our data).