E-democracy

Introduction

Bristol City Council's Consultation & Research Team has long been involved in using new technology to find innovative ways of consulting and engaging local people. Since 2004, the team's work has been brought together to form a major e-democracy programme, which is aimed at increasing representation from all sections of the community, including those groups who have traditionally been seen as hard to reach as well as those who have difficulty engaging because they are time poor.

This e-democracy work has been brought together under the Ask Bristol brand and comprises the following core elements:

• E-petitioning
• Webcasting of council and committee meetings plus events
• Online discussion - on an easy-to-use site with no sign-up
• Consultation finder - an online database of future, current and past consultations

Over the last few years, Bristol has produced a number of reports into e-democracy including evaluation of the Local eDemocracy National Project during 2005 which are available below.

Key lessons that Bristol has learnt and is trying to improve on include a need to integrate the tools and techniques more; a need to improve partnership working - particularly with other public services within Bristol; and a need to embed support and training into the community.

2010 has started with a new easy-to-use discussion forum which removes the barrier of log-ons and remembering your password to have your say.  This site - powered by the popular wordpress.com platform - has shown good early results and will be developed during the year.  We've done some work in the past with using these tools together, for instance, our work on the EU project Legese used webcasting, online discussions and online surveys.  We'll be developing this integration further, as well as looking at how we can better publicise online ways of getting involved with Bristol City Council through the use of Twitter and viral e-marketing techniques. 

Although designed for Bristol citizens, you may like to follow us on Twitter, where we'll be promoting new initiatives and new ways of getting involved.

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Webcast of e-democracy day

On 31st October 2007, the Consultation Team held an e-democracy day in partnership with ICELE. The e-democracy day had a particular focus on e-petitions but also provided an opportunity to launch the work Bristol is carrying out on one of our European projects, Legese. The event was webcast and will be available on our site for the next few months.

See the webcast of the E-Democracy day

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Contact us

For further information about any of the initiatives mentioned above or to get involved, please contact:

Consultation & Research Team
Room U05
Bristol City Council
Council House
College Green
Bristol BS1 5TR

Tel: 0117 922 2848
Fax: 0117 922 2948
Email: consultation@bristol.gov.uk

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