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For anyone who has ever asked themselves "why is politics still done like this?"
Latest news- It’s not what you play, it’s the way that you play it 16 April 2012
- Politics and Gaming? 29 March 2012
- Latest essays
- Policymaking in the Cloud: Doing Things Differently
- No 8: The broadening inkblot: Self-improvement for people who read newspapers (and blogs…)
- No 7: Breaking the monopolies that control the way schools are designed
- No 6: Citizen-control of personal information
- No 5: Government information? Get the public to provide it!
- No 4: See Change – opening policy research to the public
- No 3: Assertion-flagging: for less partisan, prejudiced blogging
- No 2: The politics of buying stuff
- No 1: Towards Interactive Government
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Author Archives: Andy Williamson
Policymaking in the Cloud: Doing Things Differently
Cloud computing is a popular buzz word. It means that the data and applications we use can be hosted anywhere then distributed to us on any device, wherever we are, whenever we want them. It extends one of the most … Continue reading
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Crowdsourcing policy: First, create a crowd
If there was one sound bite that stood out for me at the last Translation Layer event, it was Steph Gray’s ‘policy is written by those who show up’. If that’s the case (and it’s hard to argue against it) … Continue reading
The problem with think-tanks: An alternative model
I’ve described so far a number of fundamental problems that I believe prevent think-tanks being as effective as they could be, to be blunt, that prevent them being useful (in the big picture sense). There’s always a risk when you … Continue reading
The problem with think-tanks: Transparency
Running alongside issues of quality and independence discussed already here is transparency. This comes in to play at a number of levels for the think-tank but, in a broad sense, is the outside world’s way of establishing the veracity of … Continue reading
The problem with think-tanks: Independence
I’ve talked about the quality of the work produced, I now want to focus on the question of how independent a think-tank is – or isn’t (either in reality or perception). I don’t just mean the blatant ideological instrument of … Continue reading
The problem with think-tanks: Quality
My earlier discussion on the value of and necessity for different types of research brings me to the first problem that the current think-tank situation creates; quality. In academia there is a considerable amount of valueless, low quality research and … Continue reading
The problem with think-tanks: Introduction
I wrote recently in The Guardian about what I perceive to be a crisis in the political think-tanks. This crisis is ostensibly brought on by two factors, the first is the inevitable (but slow) tidal drift of ideology and the … Continue reading