The e-Petition system in Bristol City

Bristol City Council and Public-i Group Ltd, with support from Napier University, have launched a new open source e-Petitioning tool specifically designed for Local Government. The new service, which went live in January 2008, has already had over 8000 signatures and 5 new petitions.

The original service was developed by Napier University as part of the UK's eDemocracy National Project. "The original project taught us a great deal about ePetitioning and working with Napier gave us an excellent opportunity to really test whether ePetitions were an effective eDemocracy tool. We believe that this was proven however we wanted to enhance the service further to both support our back office functions more effectively enabling the management of both on line and hard copy petitions. We were keen any system also fitted in with our open source software approach." Carol Hayward, Consultation Manager from Bristol City Council

The new Bristol site has been released initially as a public beta test site to encourage feedback and ongoing improvements. This Public-i petitioning service offers the same citizen functionality as Napier's enabling members of the public to sign and/or create petitions. The council is able to enter background information and also communicate with the petitioners about the progress and impact of the petition.

Uniquely the service now adds some extra features to these core functions:

• There is an integrated workflow within the system that tracks the progress of the petition through all its stages and enables council officers to track and report on petitions at each stage.
• The system can manage both online and offline petitions which means it can provide a single administration interface for officers
• The system is designed to integrate with other eDemocracy tools such as webcasting or discussion forums which means it can be part of a full eDemocracy strategy. The project team involved the consultation and democratic services teams at Bristol and Public-i as well as consultancy advice and support from Napier University. Public-i are making the software available free as an open source licence. The company is currently looking for test sites for the release and implementation process. "we were delighted to have the opportunity to build on the work of Napier and Bristol to create a new ePetitioning tool. Petitioning via the internet is a perfect gateway tool to get citizens re-connected to the democratic process and we see this as a fundamental part of an online engagement strategy.

The system can be found via Bristol's consultation portal www.askbristol.com.

• More  information

Comments

[silagra]

"The original project taught us a great deal about ePetitioning and working with Napier gave us an excellent opportunity to really test whether ePetitions were an effective eDemocracy tool.