IT policy is not exactly the sexiest policy area a few months before an election. However, given IT underpins nearly every aspect of our everyday lives now, it should be on the radar of anyone aspiring to play a role in public policy.
Recently the Government published a draft IT strategy, which was pretty woeful in both its ambition and challenging of the status quo and largely panned by industry experts.
The Conservatives launched the Make IT Better website, attempting to crowd source an element of their own strategy, while the Centre for Technology Policy Research has launched a collaborative wiki to work on the Govt’s draft.
All this activity cannot be a bad thing, but it does raise a question about how much crowd sourcing is healthy - especially as far as Government policy is concerned. There is a need to consult the public and experts in policy formulation, but the formulation of concrete policy is something that cannot be done ‘out in the open’ so to speak - it requires both a degree of political and practical interpretation that most would not concern themselves with.
Especially in contentious areas, and in IT terms no area is more contentious than individual data held by the state, there are pressures to pander to easy political arguments (Labour’s arguments around ID cards and terrorism, for example) when the reality requires a more complex debate.
Hiding poor policy behind a shield of public involvement in its formulation is bad politics and bad for the country. Crowd sourcing needs to be used to bring ideas and innovations previously excluded to the fore, but cannot become a breeding ground for populism and glib discussion.
There’s been a great deal of discussion about the role of new media in the forthcoming election, but if there’s one development that potentially will change the way Governments actually deliver, crowd sourcing could well be it.