Central government would benefit from a more creative and adventurous approach to communicating with the public over the internet, a new UK report finds.

The ‘Digital Dialogues’ research was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice from the Hansard Society, a not-for-profit body focused on strengthening democratic engagement. The project was aimed at raising awareness within government of the potential for online citizen engagement, and to evaluate user characteristics in 13 examples of blogs or online forums run by government departments [...]

[...] The public shows interest in participating online, the report says. "Citizens welcomed online engagement generally, saying they would take up opportunities in the future and recommend it to others. However, most expressed dissatisfaction with the specific exercise they were involved in."

Reasons for public dissatisfaction include some fairly basic flaws in the way government informs citizens about online consultations and lets them know what they can expect by participating. "In most Digital Dialogues case studies, the long-term influence of participation on policy was unclear to the public. Response management is a crucial component of good engagement," the report says [...]

Full story is published on the Headstar e-Government Blog - 

http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=54