This is the Right Honorable John Prescott, Member of Parliment:
Mr. Prescott is the Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom. You can can learn more about Mr. Prescott at his website:
Chief Dan Carlson and I had the wonderful opportunity to meet with three staffmembers from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) last night to discuss our weblogs. We met with Mr. Dylan Jeffrey, Senior Policy Advisor on Democracy and Local Government for the ODPM; Mr. Julian Bowrey, Local E-Government Programme Manager, Creating Sustainable Communities Division, ODPM; and Ms. Isobel Harding of a Bristish IT services provider called Northlincsnet.
Here we all are.
Hey, they’re Brits. We met in a Pub.
The British government is studying communications techniques that can bring government ministers and citizens closer together. They believe that weblogs might be a good tool to help do just that. They wanted to know why we use the weblogs. What are the benefits. What are the risks. Do we edit them. Are they merely another form of propaganda. Are there subjects we stay away from.
We had a great conversation. It was good for us to answer the questions too, just to remind ourselves why we do this. I’ll let Chief Carlson speak for himself. For me, I do it to provide a more human face to government. I want the citizens of Eden Prairie to understand that the people that operate their city government are indeed humans. We do great things. We make mistakes. Just like they all do. I hope it builds a more empathic citizenry, because I believe a more empathic citizenry will lead us to greater creativity and risk taking in city govenrment, which I believe will eventually result in better, faster, cheaper city services in the future.
The evening was the brainchild of a local e-democracy expert named Steven Clift from Minneapolis. Steven has a consulting company called Publicus.net. He has been working with this group of British officials and he was nice enough to let us join them for the evening. I should also thank my weblog mentor Mr. Griff Wigley of Wigley and Associates. Griff is a friend of mine who is an e-everything whiz. He encouraged me to get into blogging. It was a good idea.
You learn from teaching. No doubt about it. It was, as they say, a jolly good evening.
