Petitions have long been sent to the Prime Minister by paper, but citizens can now create and sign petitions on the Prime Minister's own site and expect to receive a response direct from the UK government addressing those specific issues and spelling out what action the government intends to take.
Policy Context
The Prime Minister's Office for the UK and all the policy context that implies.
Description of target users and groups
Any British citizen can create and sign a petition. There is a core of dedicated users, but the target audience is broader even that the electorate - anyone in the UK or in a UK-dominion can participate.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
We approached a company owned by a charity in order to emphasise propriety issues - that the government doesn't edit petitions, that there are strict rules by which we accept and reject petitions and there are strict rules about the use of data, which is not actually seen by government and is not harvested for any other use. mySociety brought considerable expertise to the project and have been fantastic partners in specc-ing and improving the site
Main results, benefits and impacts
Over 8,000 petitions have been launched and have collected over 4 million signatures, meaning that around 7% of the population have engaged directly with the Prime Minister and have been motivated to join the political process. It is the largest online piece of direct political engagement online. Innovation: Citizens have long been able to petition the Prime Minister. Now they can do so online and also act as their own campaign managers, emailing the url of their campaign across the net. By far the biggest driver of petition signatures is viral, enabling petitioners to canvas like-minded people and gather support. It not only gains support for their campaigns but also for interaction with the political process more generally. The novelty is that these people are dealing directly with the Prime Minister's Office and will receive communication from that, creating within the machinery of government a mission to explain.
Return on investment
Return on investment: Not applicable / Not availableTrack record of sharing
Petitions are now a regular feature of the media landscape with many media organisations in particular using them and many more sending readers to our site. Many other government organisations are looking into them - President Sarkozy was shown the system by Tony Blair at the former's request. The source code for the petitions is also freely avalable for any organisation or government to use.
Lessons learnt
Lesson 1 - That there is an appetite for political engagement and that there is also an appetite within government to explain policy issues. Lesson 2 - There can be a useful two-way exchange between government and the individual which doesn't have to be conducted through the media. Lesson 3 - The biggest lesson perhaps, is that IT projects like this are a process, not a product - that projects such as this can, and must, change as the demands of users influence the nature of the product. Flexibility is key.
Scope: National