Ewan, who rather humbly asks why on earth people would want to subscribe to his blog, muses eloquently on the need for greater online civic engagement. He describes the situation at the moment as a bit of a meatball sundae (good book, by the way) — our leaders are providing the cream topping, but what’s underneath is still very much meatball. The Scottish Government ‘blog’ and the PM Petitions website are good examples of cream topping. OK, in its defence, the petitions site provides some (albeit perhaps not wildly accurate) quantitative data on public opinion, but there’s nothing particularly conversational about demanding that Jeremy Clarkson be made Prime Minister.

The people behind the PM Petitions site, mySociety, are doing some interesting work around civic engagement, however. They also have a fun blog which talks about things like how rubbish the HMRC website is, among other things…

Back to the real stuff, though — mySociety makes tools which help people get information out of or into government in the UK. TheyWorkForYou tells you what your MP’s up to, and WriteToThem lets you give them the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. FixMyStreet lets you tell your local authority about the things which make everyday life that little bit more irritating, like broken streetlights and concrete slabs which trip you up.

This isn’t quite conversation either, but it’s heading in the right direction. By making the pieces of the interaction easier to file in the right place (and we know how much government loves filing), it’s more likely that things will happen. And by getting the information out again, it’s easier for us citizens to find out what’s actually being done.

It’s interesting, too, to look at what goes on in the rest of Europe. Switzerland uses a system of direct democracy, with referenda deciding the minutiae of policy, and Estonians do everything online. Of course, again, these aren’t so much conversations as services, but the principles are the right ones.

I’m not saying that genuine civic dialogue is easy — we’re talking about large numbers of people with micro-different opinions in the most part — but when there are issues where mini-macro agreements can be made (school admissions policy for the local secondary, location of a new supermarket, community policing in the local area) there’s a lot to be said for exploring ways in which we can make better use of the internet. It’s around issues like these where I think conversation at a person-to-person level is possible for a reasonable number of participants — and where that conversation can have a relevant impact.