Transcript of my email to Francis Maude MP and Michael Fallon MP*: I am writing to you as the Minister responsible for the sale of the Royal Mail business. It appears from the information provided in the public domain that this sale includes the Postcode Address File (PAF). This is a dangerous and flawed move [...]
Economists think of an imperfect market as one where there isn’t full knowledge of what’s going on. Sellers don’t share everything, buyers don’t have the tools or opportunities to find out. That means that it’s difficult for the buyer to make a fully rational decision. It can work the other way around too, sellers don’t [...]
The World Bank’s Striking Poverty project is currently hosting an online conversation on the benefits and challenges of citizen engagement. The discussion is being led by the excellent Tiago Piexoto and the contributions are well worth reading for a deep and thoughtful insight into the powerful transformation potential of involving citizens in the decision that [...]
Our education, health and even policy making is being outsourced to the private sector. This is being done with undue haste and with far too few checks and balances put in place beforehand. There is a clear failure to consider the consequences in both the short and the long term. Plenty has been written by [...]
History can cause us problems in the present. My recent trip to the Ukraine was, like much of my work, about strengthening democracy. In this instance, working with civil society organisations to explore new ways that citizens can feel part of a democratic process that is, largely, lost to them. Easier said than done when [...]
There’s a good summary of the recent Open Government Project’s meeting about open policy and participation up on the OGP-UK site and Tim Davies has summarised his thoughts rather well too. So, since I’m in agreement with what’s been said, I thought I’d summarise what, for me, are the key big issues that we’ve got [...]
