So – in response to your points:

re: Policy ownership + framing: I see you’ve now added up a video from Philip Hammond, introducing the crowd-sourcing initiative. This a v.good move + something you didn’t have up live on the site yesterday on launch, so was why I made this point. In fact on launch – the introduction / policy-contextualisation / policy ownership of this initiative was completely missing – so it’s nice to see this has now be addressed.

re: Skepticism: I’m not skeptical about your participative policy making aspirations – I think it’s a great idea, and you should do more of it. What I am skeptical of is the whole “leaked document” thing. It’s got overtones of “trying to get one over on the opposition” and is far too political for my (and I guess the wider public’s) liking.

re: The US: I think you’re way off the mark about how deep participative governance goes throughout US government (from Federal to Local). I’ve actually just shot a documentary on the Open Gov initiative – where i interviewed key players – including Beth Noveck – the White House’s head of Open Gov. We have also been involved working hands on with Obama’s administration for the last 12 months on a whole range of participative policy making projects – most of which aren’t the huge flagship policies like Health, but the nuts and bolts policies that make everyday government move-along. There is a ream of policy crowd-sourcing examples I could list . . .

So – as I mentioned in my original post – I really do think it’s great that you guys (the Conservatives) are embracing participative governance, however I would urge you to be careful with how you go about it so you don’t wreck the opportunity to create a truly effective participative government.

Firstly, it’s being headed up by our Shadow Chief Sec to the Treasury, Philip Hammond, so it does have real policy ownership at the highest level. Also, you seem to immediately take the sceptical view of our motives in doing this… as someone who’s advocated political parties crowdsourcing more, it does seem like a case  of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.

And finally, I think you overplay the US example slightly – yes, they certainly have shinier crowdsourcing websites, but how much actual legislation has been passed as a direct result of online participation? I don’t think they’re as far off the starting gun as we assume they are.

Hope you don’t mind that feedback – at the end of the day, we all want to make politics more open and I hope you agree we’ve got to start somewhere…