Make IT Policy

Liberal Democrat IT Online Policy Consultation

The party has now posted a new IT policy paper online in PDF format.

If the people on the working group decide to have an email consultation list or an accessible website that allows comments, I’ll post details here as well.

The Federal Policy Committee is setting up a Policy Working Group on these issues, to be chaired by Dr Julian Huppert MP.

The working group will review all aspects of policy on IT and the internet. It will be necessary to give significant attention to intellectual property issues, with particular attention to their application to the digital economy.

The group will take forward the issues raised by the conference motion Freedom, Creativity and the Internet adopted by the Spring Conference 2010.

Party members interested in joining the group should contact Debbie Enever on d.enever@libdems.org.uk for more details. The final deadline for applications is 6 August 2010.

There’s been quite a lot of activity in the Lib Dem blogosphere over the last couple of days about the decision by the Lib Dem Lords to propose an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill allowing injunctions requiring ISPs to block to particular websites.

You can read Tim Clement-Jones’s argument in favour of the proposals here, a response by Cory Doctorow here and a further response by 25 of the party’s PPCs on Lib Dem Voice.

After quite a few years, a group has set itself up on ACT to discuss Lib Dem IT policy.

The group describes itself as:

Lib Dems for some decent IT Policy – open standards, decent project management, re-skilling local and national government in technology – less throwing cash at EDS et al, fair and good value tendering.

Interested? More at http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/libdemsforsomedecentitpolicy

Interesting article in the Guardian yesterday about

an attempt to map the Isle of Wight’s roads in one weekend for OpenStreetMap.org, a website that helps create maps free for anyone to use for any purpose. If Ordnance Survey and other national agencies will not make their data freely available, then OpenStreetMap, developed over the past two years, will re-collect it from scratch.

It links to the Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens.

So far, this isn’t an area where the Liberal Democrats have policy one way or the other – although given our historical distrust of monopolies, whether state or private, I suspect it’s something we would support. The current situation also puts up a financial barrier to all kinds of party activity which could be helpful to fellow citizens: looking up local councillors and campaigners, creating tools to make it easier for people to report casework etc. etc.

Perhaps a motion to conference?

It’s clear that the threat to ‘net neutrality’ is increasing (as mentioned in this previous post) – and it’s not just a US problem.

Find out more at the SavetheInternet.com coalition website.

You can read more about net neutrality on the BBC website.

Given Tony Blair’s apparent unconditional desire to accept, and even reapply, almost everything done by George Bush and the Republican party, this is one we need to watch carefully.

Richard and I were shooting the breeze and we realised that our former version of this site replicated many of the techniques used by WordPress – although mostly via manual means. So as an experiment, and to provide a model for other party groups wishing to consult on policy, we’ve converted the site to WordPress and created a template that replicated our old site.

The one thing that this will let us easily do is post updates on IT related issues (such as ID cards) and easily allow comments on the site without all the hassle this caused on the old site!

I was reading a transcript of the Politics Conference today where Eli Pariser highlights the serious threat to the internet posed by possible loss of net neutrality – i.e. the current approach of treating all packets the same – no matter what their source.

I don’t know whether the same approach is likely to be applied by UK ISPs, but even if it isn’t, the changes proposed in the US look likely to affect UK internet users as well.

Find out more at the Net Freedom Now website.

Although the policy outlined in this website has now been adopted by the party, we are keen to get input and advice from members, supporters and other interested parties to ensure that it remains up to date and relevant. The Liberal Democrats believe strongly in consulting and campaigning with the communities that we are part of. In this particular case we are interested in hearing from the internet community with policy ideas and reaction to the ideas put forward in our policy paper. There are two primary opportunities for feedback:

1. Joining the discussion in our email group
2. Direct comments on the policy paper

You do not need to be a party member to participate in any part of the process.

If you wish, you can download the consultation paper in Adobe PDF format or access this site via your PDA using Avantgo.com. It is also designed to be easily accessible on talking browsers and can even be viewed on some modern mobile phones.

I look forward to hearing your views.

Following the first round of consultation based on our original consultation paper, the responses generated and the party’s fundamental values, we developed a full Information and Communication Technology policy paper and accompanying policy motion for debate at the party’s Federal Conference in Spring 2003. It was passed by conference overwhelmingly, so the paper now forms the policy of the Liberal Democrats.