Forum:Empowerment White Paper comment

(This is a draft for posting to the Communities and Local Government discussion forum)

Some fine words in the White Paper but still a tendency toward tokenism. Defensiveness, for example about representative democracy, seems to preclude more holistic vision. As Charles Leadbeater puts it, "The challenge for public services is how to enlist users as co-producers and co-designers ...." Design needs to be open as well as detail. Increasingly citizens interests are less and less one-dimensional in terms of place, time, topic and context. Active citizenry, especially when the wisdom of crowds is realised, will not be content to be treated as an inferior partner in respect of information and skills. I feel we need something like 'Open involvement' as described on the Sustainable Community Action wiki - standards for involvement to rebuild trust amongst citizens and community groups that all contributions will be fairly, adequately, respectfully and transparently valued.

Account requested Philralph @ sca21 17:42, 15 July 2008 (UTC)