IPPR Proposal for a Community Commons

WRITTEN ON November 29th, 2004 BY Simon Banton AND STORED IN Political engagement

The BBC is carrying a story about a proposal from the IPPR that the Government could do well to provide an online community for pre-legislative discussions.

On the surface, this is a good idea – but it goes on to propose that Blunkett’s ID card could be used to provide the secure authorisation credentials, which shows that the IPPR have failed to grasp the point.

In all, the IPPR’s reported comments seem to me to be more in line with casting around for some potential beneficial use of ID cards rather than the grokking the obvious benefit inherent in the discussion space itself.

You don’t need ID cards to foster a workable online community where the two tribes can get together and talk to each other.

3 Responses to “IPPR Proposal for a Community Commons”

W wrote on November 30th, 2004 5:41 pm :

Yes, clearly ther’s loads of potential for doing on line consultation better. The main point we made already is that if you consult on line you might as well expect fedback and treat it with respect, unline the #10 web site, IR35 and Stand/ID cards fiascos which are not merely inept but counterproductive (I complained to Bklunkett at the IPPR event aobut Stand/ID card insult, and he half apologised for the fact that there wasnt a cross-community at the consultation events).

It’s odd to see ID card function creep so early and from an unexpected place…Will! please explain yourself!

Will Davies wrote on December 1st, 2004 1:09 pm :

Yes, some explanation is required…

I made the error of ‘just having a thought’, while in the employment of a Blairite think tank. Sadly we’re not permitted to do that, and all thoughts are also recommendations.

The paper I wrote – available at digitalmanifesto.org – was a fairly abstract muse on whether the mechanisms for governing online communities might be used to help govern society, and whether the mechanisms used for governing society might be used to help govern online communities.

My conclusion, more or less, is – it’s unlikely, *unless* there might be a need for moderation/authentication backed by the law. I can’t really think of such an instance (although Wingham’s NOMs idea is not so far away).

I can quite see that this would have looked like function creep, but it was not a recommendation, more a point that “why assume that authentication is only a one-to-many problem?”