BigShinyThing

Back in May 2003, almost twice as many votes were cast in the Big Brother evictions as in the UK’s local elections. Cue much handwringing from the press and the Hansard Society. Caught in a reflective mood, Peter Bazalgette opined thus:

‘The Commons and the Big Brother set are both ‘televised houses in which a popularity contest takes place’ [...] But parliament is failing to satisfy the demands of a generation raised on text-messaging and email, instead allowing its electorate to express an opinion on the Westminster housemates only once every few years at the ballot box.’

Indeed.

Fast forward to now: outside the slumber and the fury of party politics and its commentators, a number of quirky-but-effective web sites (many developed by Pledge Site creators MySociety and friends) attempt to make the parliamentary process a little more transparent, and to help voters find and engage with their representatives.

Don’t know who represents you in Parliament? Click over to WriteToThem, which can also identify your MEPs and members of the London Assembly. Click on the representative of your choice, and you can compose a letter to them online, which the system will post off automatically. WriteToThem also maintains a league table of if and how promptly representatives reply to such messages: a nice touch.

Want to keep track of what your backbencher has been saying on your behalf in the Commons? Hook into TheyWorkForYou, via which you can search all Debates, Written Answers, Westminster Hall debates, and Written Ministerial Statements since 2001, and even add comments: Hansard-as-blog. The site also tracks voting patterns on major issues. Most searches can be turned into RSS newsfeeds: it is stupidly simple to be kept informed what ‘They’ are doing for (or to) ‘Us’.

These sites concentrate on the parliamentary process itself — other hackers utilise similarly public-domain data to demonstrate the direct consequences of policy. Check out, for example, an experimental map of recent planning permission applications in Tower Hamlets. Scroll the timeline under the map to see the waves of development across the area for the last few years.

The UK political system remains archaic in form, and opaque in process. Official eGov policy is focussed more on access to public services, and the reduction of red tape, than on direct contact between voters and the elected Few. But for those of us with Internet access, there is no longer any excuse not to be informed of and involved with what’s being said and done by them ‘in our name’.