Dogma or Dialogue? The Politics of the Downing Street Website 1

Political or party-political information?

At the relaunch of the Downing Street website Alastair Campbell argued that a ‘distinction’ was to be drawn ‘between political and party political’ information, and that this allowed the website to be publicly funded. ⁵ Thus the Government Annual Report may appear on the website, but verbatim accounts of lobby briefings will not: these can be party political. ⁶ Defining what constitutes party political is notoriously difficult, though, and is open to interpretation. The need to differentiate between political and party-political information was laid out in the Modernising Government White Paper. This refers to the Government Information Service's (GIS) guidelines, and are based on the body of existing practice, conventions and case law. The basic rules are that material:

A specific reference is made to ministerial speeches and statements as these may include material of a party-political nature, or an attack on political opponents. For such texts ‘either the party political passages would need to be omitted from any official press notice, or equivalent publicity, or the text would need to be put out through the party political machine’. ⁸ However, again, there is no definition of what constitutes party political.

The website carries numerous articles and speeches by members of the government. The following quotes are taken from the on-line archive of prime ministerial speeches:

These statements are at least liable to the accusation of being party political, and are arguably tendentious and polemical, too. The Downing Street website can therefore be said to be in breach of the guidelines. However, such judgements are a matter of degree and the distinction between what is, and is not, party political, tendentious or polemical is very difficult to make; is it wrong for the website of the government to carry prime ministerial speeches verbatim? The Labour Party was committed to carrying ministerial speeches on-line before the general election. ¹³

The civil servants working on the Downing Street website face a particular problem when applying the guidelines to their work. Generally, material is generated and passed on to the media. However, in this case they are the media. The website is a direct form of communication with people: there is no filter or mediation. Queries about the position of a particular piece in regards to the guidelines are managed internally. This places even greater pressure on the civil servants. For these reasons I would argue that there should be a separate set of rules – not guidelines – for the operation of government websites by civil servants. The Modernising Government White Paper has distinct rules for website design and maintenance, but the document refers only to the aforementioned GIS guidelines in the area of government publicity.

The discussion thus far has highlighted the difficulties faced when applying government guidelines to website content. Determining what is, and is not, party-political information is a difficult and subjective task. If the guidelines were fully implemented they may actually inhibit the informative capabilities of the website, thus decreasing its effectiveness (criteria 4). As has been shown, the guidelines are occasionally breached. However, I would argue that this is due to the vagueness (and therefore inapplicability) of the guidelines rather than any fault of the civil servants in charge. A separate set of rules is needed to control website content, as this is a direct form of communication. These rules would need to provide a balance between the effectiveness of content for information receivers and the need to guarantee the proper expenditure of public funds. For both these criteria to be met they must, first and foremost, be applicable in practice. This would require specific and detailed definitions for civil servants to follow. If the Official Opposition were given a mirror site, dual (or more) perspectives could be given via site links. Such changes would, however, require changes to the system of political funding and are therefore unlikely to occur.

It is now worth looking at whether or not ‘two-way’ communication occurs. Hence, to determine whether the website represents a ‘two-way link between government and people’ a quantitative analysis of the degree of communication is necessary.

Number-10.gov.uk: a ‘two-way link’?

This section analyses whether or not two-way communication occurs. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines two-way as (a) ‘involving or permitting communication in two directions’ and (b) ‘involving two participants; involving reciprocal action or responsibility’. ¹⁴ Two-way communication involves a significant degree of interactivity and discussion, in which people have a realistic chance to communicate with the government. The degree of two-way communication is important because the site was said to be ‘all about communication: helping to create a two-way link between government and people’. In other words, communication was a central aim. If the degree of two-way communication is measured by counting the number of posts on the Bulletin Boards, one can compare this with the official responses from 10 Downing Street.

The website has a number of mechanisms for feedback, which constantly evolve. Feedback on ways to improve the site is itself welcomed, and this has led to some additions such as the ‘Questions to Ministers’ section. The site has an independent users group, the members of which can suggest improvements directly to the web team. When the site was redesigned the main communicative facilities were in the ‘Your Say’ area of the site, which comprised ‘Speaker's Corner’ and ‘Policy Forum’. Speaker's Corner was, according to the web team, designed ‘to express views more generally, on a much wider range of topics’. Limited resources meant only a selection of posts received Official Responses, though every post was read and summaries were produced for the prime minister. ¹⁵ Policy Forums ‘were set up to feed into the policy-making process. They featured ongoing official responses, and at the end of the discussion an overall official response was provided by a Minister or senior official.’ ¹⁶ Although a degree of interactivity was being facilitated by these mechanisms, it cannot be said to amount to two-way communication, as limited resources made two-way debate as defined here impossible. In other words two-way communication may have been precluded by both design and funding from the outset. Nevertheless, the degree and nature of communication that is occurring must still be measured, and this is where I turn next.

To test the level of communication between government and people each message on Speaker's Corner was counted, and compared with the number of official responses. ¹⁷ There were 2,923 messages and 28 responses: less than 1 per cent of messages received a response. The figures were posted on the Internet Policy Forum questioning whether they constituted a ‘two-way link between government and people’, ¹⁸ to which an official response was received: ‘Thanks for your message. I can tell you that since the re-launch of this site we have had approximately 150,000 user sessions (that's about 8,000 per day). The number of pages viewed since the launch is now about 1.3 million.’ ¹⁹ It is thus possible to generate a response, but not a ‘two-way link between government and people’. The messages chosen for response were generally derogatory to the website itself and, furthermore, it was the web team, rather than the government, which normally made responses. This albeit limited ‘two-way’ communication precludes a one-way monologue, but does not constitute a dialogue. This is communication in only a very limited sense.

In total 110,258 posts were made in the Your Say area of the site by 6,781 registered users – an average of 16.26 each. ²⁰ This is something of a distorted figure though, as one person made 1,450 posts and 163 people made over 100 – suggesting that discussions were dominated by a narrow spectrum of people. Only 393 official responses were made – 0.36 per cent of the total. ²¹ Of these, around 100 were to start new discussions, and were not actually responses. Thus, the real response rate was actually around 0.27 per cent. This does not amount to a significant degree of interactivity and discussion; people did not have a reasonable chance of two-way communication with government.

The figures suggest that a significant amount of discussion was taking place between some users, but not between them and the government. However, to clarify this point an in-depth analysis of the Health Forum was undertaken to see how much discussion was being facilitated. Here, 1,904 posts were made by 533 users – an average of 3.57 per user. Of these, 68 per cent were responses – suggesting that significant discussion was occurring between users. Some people complained in their posts about how a minority was allowed to ‘abuse’ the service; such abuse was widely criticised by other users. Kevin Webster, the chairman of the site's Independent Users' Group, noted that ‘it [the No. 10 Chat Room] has recently become a haven for people to post offensive and meaningless messages’. Perceived abuse is an inherent problem of open access user groups, as banned people can simply reregister with a different username. The minimum requirement for government-run bulletin boards is that they have clearly stated and enforced rules for posting, which disallow defamatory, libellous, racist, sexist or otherwise offensive language. ²²

The problem for Downing Street is drawing the line between ‘abuse’ and legitimate criticism of the government. The site is, after all, designed to make government more transparent and accountable, and to encourage freedom of speech. Initially, the site carried only a warning not to swear, as children may visit the site. However, the warning was strengthened in line with the guidelines. The monitoring of forums has led to claims that Downing Street officials have censored discussions inappropriately. The IR 35 discussion forum was particularly heated, and at one point many of the critical messages ‘magically disappeared overnight’. ²³ Other erased posts have been on subjects such as the Ken Livingstone London mayoral campaign and genetically modified food. ²⁴

Since this research was undertaken, Speaker's Corner and Policy Forum have been transferred to the UK Citizen Portal. This is ‘a site which was set up specifically to join up Government and to provide cross-Government services. This makes it a natural home for Government-wide discussion forums.’ ²⁵ Although this is a logical point, the degree of two-way communication facilitated by the Downing Street website is now negligible at best. Children can ask a set minister or civil servant a question in the 10 out of 10 section, ²⁶ but this, along with site feedback and the ability to deliver e-petitions, is the only communicative facility now available.

Alterations made to the Downing Street website highlight the evolutionary nature of all government websites; they change constantly. This makes monitoring very difficult, and also means that the justification for the use of public funds changes too. The aim of the Downing Street website is now to promote the United Kingdom overseas, communicate government news and information, explain the role and history of Number 10 as a building and an institution, and demonstrate the government's commitment to new technology. ²⁷ This change of aim has received little public scrutiny.

Government and the internet

The internet is fundamentally different to traditional forms of media: it offers direct, cheap and unlimited access to people. The government can communicate with voters directly, helping to ‘build up a personal relationship’. ²⁸ Thus, in theory, the Government can negate access restrictions to the public that journalists hold over it. This access lever operates because limited media space generates competition for coverage. In return for coverage, government allows the interpretation of stories by journalists. The problem is that the government may be tempted to (ab)use the direct access offered by the internet for party-political needs. From this perspective the direct access to voters offered by e-mail and the internet has potentially worrying implications for the functioning of democracy rather than facilitating a strengthening of democracy as many have suggested.

Governments have sought to control the worst excesses of the internet, and actually turn it into a political advantage. According to Brian Winston, the internet has ‘already been targeted in legislation and the courts to suppress [its] radical potential … as effectively as past regimes have suppressed past potentials’. ²⁹ Political choices are made when determining the shape and scope of politics on the internet. For example, the Downing Street website chooses to make a once-weekly, radio-style, monologue. Is reverting to an old format making the best use of a new and fundamentally different technology? According to Dick Morris, an adviser to the Clinton administration, ‘The internet is not an alternative vehicle for the prime minister or the people in power to speak to us. It's a vehicle for us to have a conversation with them’. ³⁰ In limiting the dialogue between ‘government and people’, and pushing the ‘informative’ capabilities to the fore, the government may have made a politically motivated decision. However, it was perhaps a somewhat idealistic notion that the government should partake in two-way communication on a large scale as, though technologically achievable, it simply may not be feasible for government to take on board public opinion on such a large scale. This does not mean that communication should be halted. Rather, new methods for interpreting large amounts of information need to be developed and applied. The interpretation of public opinion itself implies that civil servants and or new technology will act as a filter, barring two-way communication with the government. This creates further problems as civil servants may interpret information according to their own values and experiences, weakening the value of public input.

Conclusion

Number-10.gov.uk was set up with egalitarian aims. It was designed to be ‘all about communication: helping to create a two-way link between government and people’. The website has improved governmental openness and transparency by improving access to documents, manifesto commitments and the like. Similarly, a ‘link between government and people’ was generated, albeit in a very limited sense. However, the link was not two-way as defined here – and, furthermore, these facilities have now been transferred to the UK Citizen Portal. The website can thus be said to have failed to achieve part of its founding rationale. The informative capabilities of the website have been favoured ahead of generating ‘two-way’ communication. However, the information contained on the website does not, on occasion, meet the guidelines laid out for Government Information Officers. The role of the website, and the rules that govern it, need to be clarified. Currently, civil servants have to draw the difficult distinction between political and party-political information. Making such a distinction is inherently subjective. Indeed, the carrying of party-political information may be in the public interest. Giving the official opposition a similar site could alleviate the problems associated with publicly funded party-political information, but this would also require significant changes to the system of political funding. A simpler solution would be to concentrate on communication rather than information. The underlying issue is the effect of new technologies on political communication, and how these will be adopted and regulated. The evidence produced in this article suggests that new means of political communication are already proving popular, even though the full potential of new technology is not being exploited. If political communication is to continue in this direction though, regulation needs to be clarified and strengthened.