Since it was timely, I added a reference to the Defra wiki experiment to Wired’s communal writing project*, since both are likely going to be put up as THE examples of failed wikis for the near future.
There is a nice analysis on the Defra failure by someone who worked at the Department for Constitutional Affairs. This bit caught my eye:
Many of the issues are not about tools like wikis or blogs, but the preparedness of politicians and civil servants to take risks by opening up and sharing ideas early on. If you try that – as Defra has with the wiki – you run the danger of some classic political media ridicule. The Labour Government has always been pretty controlling in its communications, and in that environment civil servants will be even more risk-averse. It’s no surprise that the Digital Dialogues programme has such a modest public face, and as far as I can find the phase one case studies are internal. Apparently David Miliband’s blog is being evaluated, but was not launched as part of the programme.
The question posed is, who in the UK government is in charge of e-democracy? There are apparently many areas talking the talk and some top-down oversight, but not enough to dictate policy. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
