Website with list of government consultations

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Posted in Proposals 2009

Describe your idea:

A website giving a list of government consultation documents, the starting and closing dates for the consultations, a link to the relevant government webpage and a place where you can optionally record your consultation response (if you wish to make your response public).

Government departments produce various consultation documents to get feedback on proposed policies. Recent examples include:

“Keeping the right people on the DNA database” – consultation on how long we should retain fingerprints and DNA.
“Consultation on Legislation to Address Illicit P2P File-Sharing” – setting out the Government’s legislative approach for addressing the problem of illicit use of P2P file-sharing technology.

What problem does it solve?:

Consultation documents are produced by a variety of government departments. But there seems to be no central registry of these consultations, so it’s difficult to find out if there is a consultation on a subject that is important to you.

What’s more the government does not publish the either content of consultation responses or the number of responses on a given topic. This means it is difficult to know if the government is ignoring responses that are contrary to policy, and it is difficult to know if a particular consultation generated a large number of responses either in favour or against the response.

Type of idea: A brand new project

4 Comments

  2. Martin,

    For the first part of your suggestion, there’s
    http://tellthemwhatyouthink.org/

    It would indeed be nice to extend the site to cater for what happens after the consultations close. It probably would need to fire off some FoI request asking for the info after a reasonable delay, and then link to that. (I’ve asked the HO for the number of responses received for a dozen of recent consultation, and the response is due soon.)

    br -d

  3. David,

    I didn’t know about tellthemwhatyouthink.org. As you say it caters for the first part of my suggestion.

    You’ve slightly misinterpreted the second part. Although it would be nice to get some stats about the consultation after it has closed, this was not what I was suggesting.

    What I was suggesting is that people should be able to volutarily upload their own consultation responses, that that they would be available for viewing by other people who want to make a response, and also as a matter of public record.

    Martin

  4. The original Code of Practice on Government Consultation required that there be a single government website, maintained by the Cabinet Office, of all government Consultations.

    There was a Consultation” about the consultation process in 2007/08 which resulted in the publication in July 2008 of a revised Code of Practice in which the requirement for a single website is missing.

    There are 33 consultation websites listed on directgov although there are 65 organisations listed on the BERR website as having signed up to the Code of Practice

    In the short time that the Cabinet Office maintained the central consultation website, I certainly fould it very helpful. I think it foundered because senior Civil Servants did not like having to put their consultations on a centrally controlled and easily accessed website.

    I think this is a brilliant project – Can we have it soon please and if there is anything I can do to help then please contact me

    Regards
    Andrew Walker