Cathy pointed me to the LordsoftheBlog.net today. It’s about page describes it as:
“a collaborative blog written by Members of the House of Lords for the purposes of public engagement.”
Last year I discovered David Cameron’s blog, I was skeptical (sk or sc? Seems like it can be spelt both ways) and unsure as to whether or not we would see DC blogging and posting in a years time and although the blog is being updated everyday it’s still updated more then once a week. It could be better, but it’s better then I thought it would be.
Earlier this week, I started trying twittering again to see if I can find any value in the service. One of the reasons why was the fact that Downing Street was twittering and I would be damned if Downing Street was an earlier adopter of something then myself.
Sometime between the discovery of LordsoftheBlog.net and the Downing Street Twitter I watched an address by Obama at the Google offices – sorry to lazy to find it again and link/embed it – in California.
Today it downed on me, all of these things are signs that information is being spread to people on their terms. People can engage or chose to ignore the information, but governments and officials representing government are finally leveraging the ability of the web to truly empower people. At the same time people have more access to information and the thinking behind the decisions made by government then ever before.
With blogs people can comment on posts around decisions and government officials can reply. With Twitter people can follow activities closer and respond with questions and concerns and watch the reaction to feedback. This is a giant step and I think this brings us closer to truly having government for the people and by the people.
