Funferal

ePetitioning the UK government

There was an interesting discussion on the AoIR list recently about a new initiative on the Downing Street site, allowing people to host petitions on the site and submit them directly to government. Now an article in the Times of London raises some of the same issues discussed in that debate, as well as some others:

Everyone signing a petition on the site will receive an e-mail detailing the response.
But a response is not the same as action. That is the problem with the whole exercise. By definition, petitions are expressions of opinion by those who feel strongly about a subject. As one blogger has pointed out, there is no chance to say whether you disagree, apart from creating a rival petition.

Some of my own observations:

• On the positive side, this does slightly level the playing field, as noted in the FAQs, though since there are already various free sites for collecting petitions, the benefit is limited.
• Where the difference occurs, for those running petition drives, is in figuring out how to move from “we have a bunch of signatures” to “let’s get it to the government”.
• Significantly, it also simplifies the task for civil servants of dealing with petitions received. I presume that the back-end simplifies the process of getting the standardized email response to all those who have made submissions. Rather than having to type in email addresses (time-consuming), or just sending a response to the organizer, the government can, with minimal effort, appear responsive to citizen concerns [though if you’ve ever seen or drafted such a responsive, you may be a little cynical on this last point].
• Talking of cynicism, by channeling petitions into this process, where once a deadline passes the petition text is simply passed to departments, at most with a note saying “X number of signatures”, the actual lodging of petitions, frequently used as a publicity tool – a separate step from the actual signature collection – is silently dealt with by the bureaucracy. So more petitions are lodged, and they may gain more signatures, but the form of response demanded of civil servants becomes closer to the well-tested “letter of acknowledgment” used for individuals. The power of numbers, which is the source of the moral and strategic leverage of petitions, is rendered in important senses invisible and thus nullified.