01 Oct 2004

The Wired UK Manifesto, October 1996

8 years is a long time ago, especially when measured in ’internet time‘, yet The Wired UK Manifesto, hailing from October 1996, is remarkably prescient:

Transparency is the first duty of government
Freedom of information - in the town hall in Whitehall in Edinburgh, Brussels and Westminster and even in the vehicle licensing centre in Swansea - is not an optional extra. Government is a mechanism for knowing, and all of us should be able to use that machinery. At a minimum, transparency means using technology to provide access to tax services, job advice, welfare payments, local council information, parliamentary proceedings, environmental monitoring, accounts of members’ interests, school performance and all the other information and services that government provides.

But simply putting them online is only a beginning. Technology can, and should, make them truly open. Everyone should have the ability not just automatically to file a tax return, but also to track its progress through the tax system, to see who is working on it when - and why. Freedom of information in government is also freedom of inquiry for its citizens.

New technology requires new politics
Wiring our government processes is only a first step. An online nation is only as good as its citizens make it. Our challenge is to return the public sector to the public.

Privatisation has been used to get the government out of many areas where it wasn’t needed. Now we need to engage in “publicisation” - putting private individuals back into the process of government as interested, active citizens setting their own agendas and reacting to the needs of the people around them.

A civil service ruled by its own ethos, a political class more concerned with election than representation, a government that operates behind the mask of official secrecy: none of these will be acceptable in an era that takes information and participation as universal facts of life.

We must create a new type of democracy. Not an indefinite digital plebiscite on every issue; representation still has a role to play. But why should political parties monopolise the right to represent? Redefining democracy means smashing the cartel of representation they have established and choosing our own voices, as individuals and as groups.

Organise!
Politicians think that people who don’t bother to vote will not shoulder other burdens of state. But not voting is the politicians’ failure, not ours - a sign of alienation, not apathy. The 19th century bequeathed the statistical state - seemingly impervious to influence in its scale and abstraction. The 21st-century state we are building will be the accessible state - personal, anecdotal and open to the individual.

Through technology we can acquire the knowledge, and the freedom, to act. Government cannot stop this. It can hinder - or it can help, and cause alienation to wither. The future belongs to those who build it. Let’s start building it now.

Via Tom Loosemore, also posted on perfect.co.uk

Posted by Robin Grant on 01/10/04 at 3:34pm
Categories · Political engagement · Across the Board · Ideal Goverment - project

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Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

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01 Oct 2004

The Wired UK Manifesto, October 1996

Ideal Government

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01 Oct 2004

The Wired UK Manifesto, October 1996

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