When faced with new technology and innovative communications strategies, senior government officials will naturally be cautious and risk-averse. I’ve discussed this before. The challenge for communications advisors is to slowly shift the mindset of these officials - to open their minds and adapt our strategies to account for risk … and for ridicule.

Most communicators are well prepared to deal with risk, and they know how to account for risk in their communications strategies, preparatory materials, and in their briefings for officials.

The greater challenge is ridicule and its companions, embarrassment, chagrin and schadenfreude. Officials can prepare for opposition, confrontation or happenstance, but they have a hard time dealing with open mockery or a casual disregard for their hard work.

This, naturally, makes officials more cautious to experiment in an environment they don’t understand, and with technologies and communities that have humbled large and small corporations before them.

Which makes the British Government’s E-Petition site an interesting pilot project in the application of concepts like transparency, community participation and stakeholder involvement. (More about the site at the bottom of this post)

It would be very easy for the British Government to weed through the petitions submitted online, removing the obviously sarcastic, the obviously unattainable, or the simply laughable.

Instead, E-Petition seems to be allowing petitions the time to build a following. Even those that are obviously written as a lark or with a jaundiced eye.

• Make Spandau Ballet’s Gold the National Anthem (Youtube)
• Enter ultimate frisbee as a sport in the 2012 Olympics. (an actual goal of the sport)
• Force the government to take these petitions seriously if they have enough support

Those three petitions have been accepted. Here are some that have been rejected:

• Make our MD buy an Aston Martin and make it available as a pool car
• Impose a maximum weight limit for women wearing stiletto heels as they pose a massive threat to other members of the public on dance floors and in crowded bars nationwide
• Declare that the Beatles are better than Metallica
• Officially recognise Pete’s mum an official public resource
• Insist that Mr. Mark Gary Banham of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, wash more frequently than once a year
• Rid Our Streets of Chavs Once and for All

There is a longstanding tradition of delivering petitions to the Prime Minster, so the E-Petitions effort is building on precedent. That most likely made the decision to launch the site slightly easier.

We also have to take into account that there doesn’t seem to be a firm commitment to take action on petitions delivered to the Prime Minister - whether in print or online - and this allows officials some flexibility when reacting to submissions.

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“There is a long-established tradition of members of the public presenting petitions at the door of No 10 Downing Street. The e-Petitions [http://petitions.pm.gov.uk] service has been designed to offer a modern parallel, which is more convenient for the petitioner. Unlike paper-based petitions, this new service also provides an opportunity for No 10 to respond to petitioners via email.

Since its launch in November the ePetitions site has proved to be a highly popular innovation in the way that people communicate with government and with the Prime Minister’s Office in particular.

The service allows anyone (who is a UK citizen) to create a petition and to collect signatures via the website. Petitioners are asked to meet basic criteria, set out in an acceptance policy, but we aim to accept most petitions. The principal reasons for rejecting petitions so far have been obscenity, potential to cause offence, libel or duplication.” (E-Petitions - Facts, Figures and Progress)

Technorati Tags: Egovernment, Online Petition, Civil Society