WRITTEN ON December 1st, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Political engagement, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

Tags: #idealGITS

Oppositions have always listened better than governments. Labour did up to 1997, and the Tories do now. But this breaks new ground, and on our core theme: government IT strategy:

Granted, we had the idea first, but this latest move makes the whole process altogether more serious. Will the government now have to respond with an official “comment on our proposed ICT strategy” site?

For now, let’s get our best comments on the draft document here.

Beyond that, let’s consider the implications. We may soon have in power an administration that pioneered crowdsourced comment on draft UK policy documents. The lesson from Downing Street petitions and endless half-arsed consultations is you can’t ignore clear feedback without suffering a backlash.

If and when the Conservatives are in power they can hardly denounce such a process without hypocrisy. Let’s hope this is a great leap forward for co-created policy.

What news meanwhile from the government and official side? HMG’s CIO has not yet joined in the fun – John Suffolk’s blog is quiet on this issue (but perhaps he’s writing as I write). Despite headlines about “rows” I don’t see a counterattack from the Labour side: just “no comment on leaked documents”.