http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/special-mark/

The closing date for signing the petition is 18 March 2008. The period of nine months was chosen so that the petition would close a few weeks before the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition.

The intention of this petition is to provide an idea which could hopefully help in the implementing of the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition. The duration of this petition is nine months so that when the
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition is completed, this petition will already be completed and ready to support the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition.

However, in order to succeed the petitions may need a good number of signatories. Whilst it is possible that the Prime Minister might act upon them upon their merits regardless of the number of signatories, a good number of signatories would help them to become acted upon. Indeed, lots of signatories might lead to government responses before the closing dates of the petitions. At the time of writing this text, the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ has eight signatories, including me and the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/special-mark/
petition has just one signatory, namely me.

I feel that the two petitions have a good possibility of leading to major benefits if they are acted upon by the Prime Minister.

William Overington

20 June 2007

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/eutopia-housing/

The closing date for signing the petition is 15 January 2008. The period of seven months was chosen so that the petition would close early next year and hopefully the Prime Minister will agree to the request in the petition and that the competition can open in the spring of 2008.

However, in order to succeed the petition needs a good number of signatures. If the petition receives one signature each day on average while it is open then over two hundred signatures will be achieved.

However, there are many ifs in the process before the housing estate is built and put into use, though if it is built and put into use, then maybe it will be the first of a number of such housing estates around the country.

William Overington

16 June 2007

The problem is that you put too much text in the main body of the petition, and not enough in the “More details”. Also, you cannot put your own name or any URLs in the “More details” section.

The best thing to do is to resubmit your petitions correcting that.

Francis

The first petition has the following page.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/eutopia/

The “More details cannot be shown” details were as follows.

quote

The initiator of this petition is not an architect and is not
involved in the construction industry. The Design for
Manufacture competition included the following sentence. The
competition will focus on capturing the benefits from modern
construction and on stimulating public discussion about what
Homes for the 21st Century should be like. The idea in this
petition is as a result of the initiator of this petition
thinking about what some homes for the 21st Century could be
like. The Design for Manufacture competition has its own
http://www.designformanufacture.info/ webspace.

William Overington

10 April 2007

end quote

There were no allegations about anything in the petition at either first stage or second stage. Indeed, the “More details” notes were the same at both stages and nothing about allegations was claimed at that stage.

The second petition has the following page.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/interactinglogo/

The “More details cannot be shown” details were as follows.

quote

The intention of this petition is to provide an idea which
could hopefully help in the implementing of the
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition. The duration
of this petition is 11 months so that when the
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition is completed,
this petition will already be completed and ready to support
the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapdrugs/ petition.

end quote

At the first stage, there were no “More details” notes.

My original wording was as follows.

quote

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to initiate a
feasibility study involving expert input from government
departments and from the pharmaceutical industry as to whether
it is feasible to introduce a symbol, a logo, which may be used
on the packaging of a pack of pharmaceuticals such that the
logo conserves all logos and other information related to the
quality of the pharmaceuticals in the pack yet cancels the
licence to sell the pharmaceuticals in that particular pack in
the developed world: the intention being that if this idea is
feasible and becomes implemented then hopefully some
pharmaceutical companies would make and distribute packs of
pharmaceuticals carrying one or more copies of the logo for use
by hospitals and doctors in the poorest countries of the
developing world at the incremental cost of producing them
without on those particular packs seeking to recover the
development costs of the pharmaceuticals in the pack.

end quote

This was rejected with the remarks.

Your petition was classed as being in the following categories:

* Wording that is impossible to understand

So, I reworded it and added some notes.

Yesterday I resubmitted exactly the same stage 2 texts that are published in the government webspace, but this time with no “More details” notes.

I am concerned about the assessment process and that the government webspace is damaging the idea in the first petition by claiming that allegations have been made, when no allegations whatsoever have been made. I am concerned that right-minded people may shun the idea because of the factually wrong claim about allegations which is being made in the government webspace. There is something seriously wrong with the assessment process. Readers of this post are welcome to form their own opinion of the quality of the assessments from reading the above texts of the “More details” sections.

William Overington

2 May 2007

I’ve just posted an exchange with Tom about the road pricing petition on my blog…
http://baconbutty.blogspot.com/2007/02/no-10-road-pricing-petition-beware-what.html

Making five suggestions…

Tom – greetings and congratulations on all the innovations of mySociety including, it seems, the engine in the No 10 petition site.

I agree that a massive discussion board would be impractical and pointless. But I do think the system has some amplifying biases that could be at least attenuated and misses opportunities for more deliberation.

Here’s some suggestions:

1. Allow users to define ‘counter petitions’ or ‘variant petitions’ and make these accessible from the original petition to which they refer. This would create a cluster of proposals around an issue – and reduce search and transactions costs for those wishing to express a different view. Perhaps some threshold of signatures might need to be reached before that system cuts in – with an editorial judgement about what can be added as counter petitions or variant petitions to a popular petition.

2. Without having a free-for-all discussion board, you could allow the petition originators to elaborate and update their case as the petition goes on – or this is too much trouble for the ‘long tale’ of small petitions, allow more editing rights when a petition reaches a threshold of signatures (1,000, 10,000 – depending on the distribution). Editing rights could include posting updates and responding to arguments made in the media or by critics. If it was a sufficiently small number, you could allow the right to make external URL links – I would welcome the opportunity to make a case on road pricing (or many other things) as I have here on the barely read “Bacon Butty” using links to quality assure and add credibility to the and argument.

3. Create an ‘oppose’ option for any petition. I’ve seen the rationale for not doing this on the No 10 web site, but I don’t think stacks up – in fact, the asymmetry in effort required to oppose a popular petition is huge and the experience disempowering and frustrating. Why should saying ‘no’ be made more difficult and saying ‘yes’? I think there is a risk of too much analogy with paper petitions – but that breaks down when the transaction cost of signing and collecting signatures is so low.

4. Have ministerial or PM responses added to the petition while the petition is open, but triggered by passing thresholds of signatures (eg. 1000, 10,000 – whatever would keep these to an acceptable number)… what a pity that the PM didn’t set out the case he eventually e-mailed at an earlier point in the development of the road pricing petition.

5. Not so sure about this one, but should there be a bit more quality control, so that petitioners reflect real world choices and don’t embed falsehoods or misleading statement in their petition? Supposing an editorial standard about equal to the letters page of a local newspaper was applied? The guidelines don’t seem to allow for misleading propositions as long as they are clearly expressed! Would you allow a petition that tells the government to “stop giving free mobile phones to asylum seekers”? So what about the implication in the road pricing petition that the govt would be tracking our every move?

Hope this is useful!

Regards

Clive

Just thought I’d drop you a message to say congratulations. The e-petitions website has now conclusively proven in spectacular fashion (with the road charging petition) that any government just isn’t ever going to listen.

Hope you’re well.

Regards
Rob / MYstIC G

Let me tackle your various questions and arguments.

>Friends are highly dubious about this petition system, and that the support of say the repeal of the Hunting Act is representative.

They are completely entitled to feel that way about this or any other initiative we run. However, I’m afraid that whilst thousands of people per day are making use of it, though, that’s not a good enough reason to persuade me to suggest to the trustees, developers or our volunteer community that we should annul our contract and close down the site.

> Surely you don’t envisage Blur or Broon acting because the highest number counted support the repeal of the Hunting Act?

Speaking personally, I think you’re probably right about the chances of the pro fox-hunting people getting a repeal of this act under this government. However, I hope it is pretty obvious that we didn’t build this petition system because we thought the government would and should do everything that was petitioned for: it is simply a new channel in our multi-layered representative democracy. It does not make the rest of the political universe vanish.

>yes, it would have been possible to build in deliberation. It has been done in relation to Parliamentary Committees, and in departmental consolations. Why not with No10?

Excellent news – please point me to examples. I am especially keen to see ones that can deal with over 1000 parallell discussions on different topics.

> Were you allowed to do so? I don’t know, you should tell us, did you ask?

No, I didn’t ask. I was much more concerned that the process of actually signing and making petitions should be percieved as transparent and trustworthy by most users, as it clearly is. However, we have now added lots of features that I didn’t ask for, and nor did No10 as the site was being designed. This is what it means to run a beta.

> Is moderation too expensive when billions are spent in man+equipment in Iraq

You might have noticed that mySociety hasn’t launched any military action in Iraq recently. This is a question to direct to No10. I am sure your view that this is a good use of money will form part of their considerations on the issue of discussion systems – you can let them know directly by mailing the support address on the petitions homepage.

>I couldn’t see any party political reference, and in any case why should that be a bar?

There is a strict division of powers over rejections or acceptances – this is No10′s business not ours. However you appear to have quoted No10′s justification in your own email, relating to Mrs Thatcher. If you think that they should have allowed her to be mentioned, please drop No10 a mail through the support address on the homepage of the petitions site.

>Is that a likely development? We could see powerful parliamentary committees questioning the government closely on what steps it will be taking?

As Stephen Coleman would doubtless point out now, the executive and the Parliament are different things. I’m not aware of any such plans, but why not ask your MP to raise the idea in the House of Commons? Personally I would be happy to see petitions given some sort of more formal status, although I have not spent much time working out exactly what. Do you have any views?

all the best,

Tom

I’m not familair at all with it, but it appears that in the Scottish system there is some tangible and visible impact – at least some form of public hearing about most(?) petitions.

Is that a likely development? We could see powerful parliamentary committees questioning the government closely on what steps it will be taking?

————————————-
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:28:10 +0100
From: “Matthias Trenel”
To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] Petition Tony Blair, online that is
Hi Ildiko,

> Is this the pilot the Bundestag modelled on the e-petitioning system
of
> the Scottish Parliament?

Yes, that’s right. As far as the technology is concerned: The
Bundestag adopted the e-petitioner system that was developed by the
International Teledemocracy Center and first employed by the Scottish
Parliament (later also by Local Authorities in England: Kingston and
Bristol). But the similarities might stop beyond technology, e.g. the
Bundestag hasn’t had a public hearing for public petitions yet while
that happens with almost all petitions in Scotland, as far as I know.

Best, Matthias

And my last post 2 days ago is awaiting moderation.

Ding! I should petition Blur to do something about this!