Credit: GiveYourVote.org

Here's an intriguingly curious new project from the U.K. It's called Give Your Vote, and the idea is that, given the global impact of British policies, volunteers there are offering to give up their vote in the upcoming election based on the consensus of people around the world. How does the world want Britons to vote? Organizers are putting together an online (and, importantly, mobile) process by which people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Ghana can put questions to local candidates in the U.K., and then direct their volunteer counterparts -- via text message -- how to vote come election day. The project officially launches March 15th.

Why Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Ghana? The war, climate change, and farm subsidies.

While the gut reaction to a project like this might be to be a bit unsettled (and I don't know nearly enough about British election law to know if this runs afoul in anyway), they make a reasonable case for why democracy bounded-by-borders is outdated in a global world:

In today’s world where democracy stops at the border, the people who make these decisions are not accountable to the people they affect.

Of course, that's pretty much exactly as democracy is designed to function. British MPs, at the end of the day, represent the people of Leeds, not the people of Accra. The impact of the policy choices made in the British Parliament on the people of other countries is somewhat less important -- in a procedural sense -- than what the people they represent think about the impact of those policy choices on the result of the world. But the other way to think about this is simply as the Internet facilitating some sort of advisory council for the voters of Britain. If you desire to vote as a citizen of the world, then here's a way for you to actually know how it is the world would care for you to vote.

Intriguing stuff. Thoughts?

You can teach an old country new tricks, it seems. The United Kingdom is in the final stages of releasing Data.gov.uk, shamelessly modeled off of the Data.gov hub built under the leadership of Vivek Kundra, CIO of this former colony we've got going on this side of the pond. Only the U.K.'s portal onto the wide world of public data is being designed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the web. Well played, Great Britain, well played.

In seriousness, the involvement of Berners-Lee raises the possibility that the British data site might be a step beyond its U.S. inspiration, lending itself more readily to use by normal citizens than its American counterpart has thus far proven itself to be.

That's because Berners-Lee has, for many years now, been trying to sell the world on the idea of a web were linkages are based on human language, rather than hard-coded hyperlinks. His vision is of a web that understands the connections between disparate bits of information in a way similar to how the human mind might effortlessly connect an address on London's Whitehall with the events of World War II that Winston Churchill directed from an underground bunker there. Data woven through with more human ways of interpretation might, just might, make the gap between making government information public and making it useful a little smaller. The Beeb reports:

Data.gov.uk is built with semantic web technology, which will enable the data it offers to be drawn together into links and threads as the user searches. "During a typhoid outbreak in the nineteenth century a doctor plotted where outbreaks occurred and traced the disease back to one well," explained [University of Southampton] Prof [Nigel] . "With data.gov.uk we will also be able to look for patterns." Prof Shadbolt also expects that visitors to data.gov.uk will want to make their own mash-ups from the information available.

Of course his name is Professor Shadbolt.

Anyway, back to the tech at hand. The history here is that Berners-Lee, despite his considerable evangelism, hasn't had all that much success selling the world on the idea of the semantic web. After all, how we construct the web day in and day out is baked right into it at this point, after a few decades of regular use by millions of people all over the planet. Converting a global network to a new practice at this point is a tall order. But he might have better luck with a discrete set of data, and a chance to architect out that universe out from scratch. And getting the opportunity publish all of the U.K.'s public data in his image and likeness isn't a bad start.

Data.gov.uk is expected to be released, in beta, next month. (Photo credit: Silvio Tanaka)

Why might the British National Party not exactly be thrilled that its membership list was revealed to all the world on Wikileaks, that online clearinghouse of sneaky bits created by Chinese dissidents and geared towards revealing state secrets in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East? Well, despite the BNP's recent successes in the EU Parliamentary elections, belonging to the party is somewhat outside the mainstream of polite British Society -- the BNP party chief, for example, refers to the "Holohoax;" the official party website maintains a list of leftist "Liars, Buggers, and Thieves;" and its leaders make the case on Facebook that the U.K. should "@#$& Islam." That sort of thing.

But, indeed, just before BNP leader Nick Griffin was set to appear on the hallowed ground that is the BBC's "Question Time," the BNP membership rolls suddenly popped up online (though BNP disputes the list is accurate -- more on that in a bit). The Beeb says that Griffin deserves air time because the BNP is proving itself a political force by traditional measures, a somewhat indisputable reality that has many Britons feeling a queasy. The Guardian news organization, which has been tracking the BNP's rise with a critical eye, promptly pounced on the release of the purported member list. Using the names and addresses in the file, the Guardian produced a map charting out BNP membership across the country; areas of high BNP concentration appear a bloody red color. The Guardian also posted a boiled-down version of the membership file. Quite a demonstration of how transparency can become a political tool when when all the traditional political tactics seem to be failing.

Back to the validity of the list itself. Griffin is saying that the 12,000 names of the list is "a malicious forgery." The list doesn't reflect BNP membership, he says; it includes anyone who has contacted the BNP in anyway -- including to tell them to shove off. On the other hand, his BNP.uk.org website has just posted for sale t-shirts that brag Proud to Be on the List.

The Royal Mail (U.K) is going after ErnestMarples.com, a web service that allows developers use the Royal Mail's postal code database to build job search engines and the like. Problem is, the Royal Mail also claims copyright on that database and sells it, and they don't so much like the competition. ErnestMarples.com, named after the former Postmaster General who introduced postal codes to Britain, has shut down in response.

Two figures who have been at odds of late are in agreement here. Labour Party MP Tom Watson had criticized MySociety founder Tom Steinberg recently for his decision to become an unpaid advisor on technology policy to the conservative party. Here, though, Steinberg says that the Royal Mail is operating on an unproven assumption that selling databases is actually to the government's benefit, while Watson simply calls the Royal Mail's decision "idiocy." (Photo credit: freefotouk)

One of the biggest names in open government you may have never heard up is involved in an intriguing dust-up. Tom Steinberg heads up MySociety, the British organization that runs some of the most online successful participatory democracy projects, like FixMyStreet, 10 Downing Street's e-petition site, and TheyWorkForYou. What is causing some controversy is who Steinberg is now working for -- namely the U.K.'s conservative Tory party. With Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his fellow Labourites are struggling, Steinberg, reported the Guardian, has signed up to help the opposition party set up and run collaborative projects, like one where voters will have a chance to vet legislation in between MP debate and committee consideration, on the model of how MixedInk has been used here in the U.S.

And that has some folks mighty upset, judging that Steinberg, who is working for the Tories in a volunteer capacity, is diminishing the stature of MySociety and opportunistically injecting partisanship into something that should be above all that political unpleasantness. "[I]f you've met me or read anything I've written," explain Steinberg in a blog post defending his decision, "you'll know my passions tend to get raised around things like Freedom of Information, open data, open source and open standards." But Labour MP Tom Watson isn't buying this whole data isn't political! business. For the head of an organization dedicated to freeing democracy in all its forms to align himself with a political party at the very time there's a partisan battle raging is, wrote Watson, "at best naive." Beyond that, "to announce his appointment at the Conservative Party conference...is about as partisan as it gets."

Opinion is mixed between those who think that with a national election likely to take place this spring, Steinberg is smartly striking while the iron is hot in an attempt to execute on his ideas -- as one commenter put it on Watson's post, "what’s wrong with trying to persuade the next lot" -- and those who think that, while Steinberg and MySociety work with the Labour government (see, 10 Downing Street's petition tool, for example), working with an opposition party is excessively political. There's some merit to the latter argument. Helping someone's electoral prospects and working in his or her government can arguably be two very different kinds of participation. After all, that's how we almost ended up with a Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg here in the U.S. We'll keep an eye on how this plays out. (Photo credit: pdcawley)

Mark Hanson is a consultant to the British Labour Party on their web strategy, and we're pleased to have his perspective on what that party is doing on the new media front. -- the editors

Whilst here in the UK we are used to playing catch-up with our American cousins, things have ratcheted up several gears in the past two weeks. Firstly the purchase by Tory Billionaire, Michael Ashcroft , of the blog sites, ConservativeHome and PoliticsHome , for a mind-blowing £1.3 million and then today, the launch of the Tory organising site, MyConservatives.com.

As far as the incumbent Labour Party is concerned, the Tories are catching up on a journey Labour has been on for over 12 months , recognising that success is about the extent to which you can facilitate the members and supporters and help them organise around campaigns and specific areas of interest as well as what parties do centrally. 

So what’s Labour been doing?

a) Producing the right collateral...

Neil Williams, who heads up digital communications for the U.K.'s Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, is just out with a 20-page how-to on government tweeting. (via ComputerWeekly) Sure, Twitter carries risks, writes Williams -- the likelihood that many politicos might not make use of Twitter's two-way style of chatting, the critique that time spent on Twitter is a waste of the public's cash, and more. But there are upsides: Twitter can give government a human voice, establish it as a thought leader, and open up channels through which the public can connect with its overlords. Williams offers some principles useful for any tweeter: make your micro-missives varied, human, frequent, re-tweetable, timely, credible, and inclusive ("signpost relevant content elsewhere").

Williams admits that a 20-page guide to a minimalist medium might be overkill, but the White House's strategy of blocking Twitter for all but a very select few seems to me more rooted in the fact that opening up access isn't a priority, rather than a deep-seated fear of the medium. That's why it actually makes a good deal of sense for advocates to sing the praises of new tools like Twitter -- even beyond their actual impact -- to get them adopted. A more rational approach might not prove to be enough to get over the status quo. (Photo by Walwyn under a Creative Commons license)

Richard Stirling of the British Government's Cabinet Office is musing about what a "UK version of data.gov" might look like. (via The Guardian) What makes the prospect of government-run data hub across the pond somewhat differently intriguing than it is in the U.S. is that Britain has a less robust presumption of information freedom (and legal framework). Free and structured data, then, is potentially a bit more contentious; have a look at how the Guardian introduces its own section on freedom of information: "Britain can sometimes seem like a secret state..." Could be fascinating to watch how they wrestle with both the technological and political implications of open data.

Data.gov may soon be raising the bar on what open government means around the world. NextGov is reporting that CIO Vivek Kundra is planning to use the site to power a system to keep tabs on the progress of federal IT projects.

The U.K.'s Gordon Brown isn't exactly the cuddliest politician on the planet. But even the often gruff and occasionally dour PM has taken to YouTube to solicit questions and comments from the assorted masses. This is serious business, though, not freewheeling tomfoolery. Video questions must stay under a one minute cap. And the musn't descend into "party political content," whatever that might be. CitizenTube has more.

Here's an interesting project out of the U.K., and a noteworthy result. The Straight Choice bills itself as a "Live Election Leaflet Monitoring Project," and serves as a hub for fliers being distributed around elections there. "Election leaflets are one of the main weapons in the fight for votes in the UK," explains the site. "They are targeted, effective and sometimes very bitter. We need your help to photograph and map them so we can keep an eye on what the parties are up to, and try to keep them honest." Mailers are uploaded to the site, and organized by subject matter or as the product of one of more than 300 (!) political parties. The public is then invited to give them a thorough vetting.

And the site has now been used to uncover some awkward stock photo usage by the far-right British National Party. "I’m voting BNP because I see what immigration has done to the NHS," says one doctor in one flier. But rather than being a real live BNP voter, the doctor pictured turns out to be a stock photograph sold on iStockPhoto under the name "Caring Health Care Professional."