WRITTEN ON January 8th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Political engagement

We’re still grinding on towards a Parliamentary epetitions system (see here for earlier stages on the journey) Anyway, if you want to e-petition Parliament get on to Parliament’s online consultation forum about e-petitions and say why (and if not go there anyway and say why not).

Of course we can already do the PM (who gives most petitions short shrift). But Parliament is ours. The techniques and values of the contempory Interweb have a tremendous and different potential among the full panoply of our elected representatives with all their diversity, black rods and committees. (Remember too how scared they are of direct Presidential style and how weirdly this makes them behave). Anyway, the procedures committee rubric says:

The House of Commons has given its support in principle to an e-petitions scheme with the following key elements:

• Members should be engaged with e-petitions as they are with written petitions;
• e-petitions should be open for the addition of e-signatures for a certain period before
formal presentation;
• once presented they should have the same status as written petitions.

The e-consultation will let the public give their views on e-petitioning. The Committee wants to know whether people would use an e-petitioning system and, if so, what they would expect from it.

The forum runs until Friday 18 February 2008.