Government Urged To Engage Public Digitally

Better services could be provided if the UK government made more use of digital channels and embedded the culture within civil service thinking, claims a report by Econsultancy.

Greater use of crowdsourcing initiatives to engage people more in policy and service design is called for in the “Digital Engagement in the Public Sector” study.

The crowdsourcing trend

The coalition government has been throwing the crowdsourcing word around since being elected and it started to experiment when it asked for opinions on public spending cuts. A “Spending Challenge Channel” on Facebook was mooted but an opposing site was immediately launched on the social network arguing that Facebook was no place for a political referendum.

Crowdsourcing in government is the trendy new phrase for seeking a broader consensus or even for referendum. It involves trying to involve the general public in forming political policies. Critics in the Labour opposition party have suggested that, rather than encouraging interest, it could give the impression that the government is indecisive.

The research, written by independent government adviser Tom Raggett is based on a series of interviews with the directors of communications of 20 major government departments. It makes six recommendations, covering elements of organisational policy and structure, how to deal with new communications channels and ways of working more effectively.

Social media as a tool

The report states that many areas of government have made excellent progress using their own websites as well as social media channels, such as Twitter and YouTube, to broadcast information.

“Fewer Departments are systematically moving to the conversation stage, although there are some examples of good participative engagement,” Raggett wrote. “Most digital engagement is still reactive to events and requests rather than proactive. To some extent this represents a lack of awareness of digital engagement options and a reluctance to use them sufficiently early in policy and communications planning.”

Raggett believes that savings might be possible through the enhanced use of digital media for front line services. He cites the example of university applications which are now online-only. The risk, he said, is that the volume of responses and time taken to consider and respond to them could negate any benefits in putting the consultation online in the first place.

The coalition’s Spending Challenge page on the government website attracted 45,000 ideas and registered over 250,000 votes in just one month.