MPs talking, not hearing online

Heard this on the news and thought it was interesting. The Hansard Society has just published a report on MPs' use of the Internet. The BBC news item offers the following snippet.

"MPs are transmitting and not receiving," said Andy Williamson, director of the Society's eDemocracy programme.

Read the full news item to see what Andy is talking about.

There are encouraging signs in that more MPs are making use of the Internet but they seem to be sticking to the old Web 1.0 transmission model rather than the read/write Web 2.0 model. I suspect MPs are targeted with more comments and more abuse than my blog will ever be so I can understand them wanting to turn off comments but if you don't allow two way communication, you are missing the point of a blog (in my humble opinion).

If MPs don't get it, I suspect local government doesn't get it either. This could partly explain why anything that even smells of social networking is just blocked in most schools. If you don't use it, it's harder to see the value. If you don't see the value, it's easier just to say, "No".