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Using the Web to make government consultations better – TellThemWhatYouThink [BarcampLondon4 notes]

How to make the consultations process that we have now better, without changing it? How  can we have more useful things within the system we have.
Second question is, if we start from nothing, what’s a sensible first step in the process.

Consultation is .. The government needs to do something, they need to go out and ask the public what they think. They’ll publish a document with a bit of explanation and a bunch of questions, and if they feel like it you can answer the questions and tell them what they think. Then the government is going to produce a response which will hopefully summarize the input.

One of the problems with the process is that sometimes the consultations are phrased so narrow, that it’s a complete waste of time.

The Site TellThemWhatYouThink is part of the first step, get all the consultations in one place, and it takes some of the work from you by screen-scraping the pages and make your life a bit easier.

There is a similar site in New Zealand called TheyWorkForYou. The discussion is now how the two sites can work together.