The Wardman Wire

Road Pricing: Mysociety founder Questioned by Parliament

There was a segment on the Radio 4 Programme “Yesterday in Parliament” this morning, of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee interviewing Tom Steinberg, the founder of the MySociety website.

My Society “builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives.” Some of their better known initiatives include FaxYourMap (now They Work For You), PledgeBank, and the petitions section of the 10 Downing Street website - which memorably gave (at last) the Government the excuse to claim that they were more popular than Guido Fawkes.

The interview follows a petition about Road Pricing that obtained 1.8 millions signatures.

This piece also demonstrates how political committees need to ask questions beyond what has been achieved, even when those achievements are magnificent to justify their existence.

The Petitions Service has signed up 3% of the population in a short time - leading the petitions service to be descibed as “exemplary”. This 3% is higher than the 1% of the population who “get involved in politics”.

Listen to the segment, which is about (3:30) here.

The Guardian has a written report, via Steven Clift.

Tags: Democracy, House of Commons, MySociety, Parliament, Petitions Online, Politics, Road Pricing, Tom Steinberg, UK, Matt Wardman

[tags] Democracy, House of Commons, MySociety, Parliament, Petitions Online, Politics, Road Pricing, Tom Steinberg, UK, Matt Wardman [/tags]