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ISSUES: Citizenship
Chapter 3: Politics in the UK
Digital democracy and opportunities for a
21st-century Parliament
D
esigning for Democracy is the
Crick Centre’s major research
and
public
engagement
project,
exploring
the
planned
restoration and renewal of the Palace
of Westminster. In this blog, the latest
in our Designing for Democracy series,
Victoria Boelman examines how the
restoration offers opportunities for a
21st-century Parliament.
With the recommendation this autumn
that the restoration of the Palace
of Westminster should go ahead,
temporarily relocating both Houses
elsewhere in Westminster, a tantalising
prospect has been opened up. The
report by the Restoration and Renewal
Parliamentary Committee declared
that a core objective, alongside fixing
the roof, wiring and plumbing, is to
ensure the Palace is fit for “the needs
of a 21st-century Parliament for (i) the
public, and (ii) Parliamentarians”.
This should be an exciting proposition.
What do we, the citizens of the United
Kingdom want our new and improved
Parliament to be? Obviously we are
working within the constraints of a
UNESCO World Heritage site but that
is not to say we cannot make some
modifications to the design and
layout or, perhaps more significantly,
change the practices of Parliament.
How can this opportunity be used to
improve working practices, increase
citizen engagement, restore trust in
politics, and improve the quality and
legitimacy of decision-making?
At Nesta we are excited about two
opportunities to do this. The first is
to say “What if we just experiment?”.
For several years MPs, Peers, staff
and all those who interact with them
will have no choice but to do things
differently. So rather than just ‘making
do’ or ‘muddling through’, what
would happen if we took the chance
to actively try out some new ways of
working that we might want to take
back into the restored Palace? There
are myriad examples of things we
could try, from less adversarial seating
arrangements (as already modelled
in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish
Parliament) to greater public access
(citizens in Australia have access
to around 20% of their Parliament
building, compared to around 10%
in the UK), to capitalising on the
potential of new technologies to open
up our democratic processes, making
them more transparent and engaging
for everyone. As the plans for the
big move progress, we’ll be talking
more about how the temporary
Houses could become Living Labs for
democracy.
And that leads on to the second
big opportunity – the role of digital
technologies. At the moment, simply
getting WiFi access is an achievement
in some parts of Parliament. With
all that set to change, what can
we do differently? We have been
investigating pioneers of digital
democracy across the globe, trying
to understand what works, the
challenges and opportunities. Two
areas are proving particularly popular
on the international stage – the
crowdsourcing of policy, and greater
collaboration on the development
of legislation. For example, many
countries are experimenting with
ways of enabling citizen-led initiatives
to reach Parliament for debate and
potentially passing into law. One
example is the Rahvaalgatus (Estonian
People’s Assembly) which has seen
three new items of legislation adopted
since 2013, with another four partially
adopted and more under discussion.
In France, Parlement & Citoyens is
designed “to connect deputies and
senators who wish to involve citizens
in the preparation of their legislative
proposals”. These new platforms
encourage debate and deliberation
and voting to determine which
to pursue further. Further afield,
Pol.is, a tool which visualises consensus
and agreement in a debate, has been
used to inform the development of
new regulation of Uber in Taiwan, and
in Brazil the House of Deputies has
its own in-house Hacker Lab which
develops tools for public participation
in the legislative process, via its
e-Democracia portal.
Of course, it is not easy. The UK has
already experimented with a Public
Reading Stage of new Bills, with the
aim of increasing engagement at the
final stage of the legislative process.
It was not a great success. As with all
engagement, the key is to consider
who is being engaged, why and when.
Impenetrable legal jargon and lengthy
documents are all off-putting and
so this may not have been the place
to start. But when the outcomes are
more tangible and the knowledge of
citizens as experts in their lives and that
of their community is more valuable,
then it can be worth the investment.
Which brings me to my last point –
digital must become an integral part
of the way our Parliament works but it
must not be seen as a cheap substitute
for other forms of engagement. It
takes time and effort to make sure
that engagement is inclusive and
representative, and that applies as
much, if not more so, to digital. The
most successful approaches are those
which combine offline and online
methods to encourage participation
from people from all walks of life,
which must surely be the ultimate aim
of any 21st-century Parliament.
24 October 2016
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The
above
information
is
reprinted with kind permission
from The Crick Centre. Please visit
for further
information.
© The Crick Centre 2017
“At the moment, simply
getting WiFi access is
an achievement in some
parts of Parliament”
“As with all engagement,
the key is to consider
who is being engaged,
why and when”
