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"So … digital is just about transforming services? No, not in our view, nor in the view of our open policy making colleagues. Yesterday we co-hosted an event with the Open Policy Making (OPM) team in the Cabinet Office that included how digital is being used by policy makers across government."

"On 24 January 70 Heads of Policy Profession and Digital Leaders met to share practical examples and experiences of Open Policy Making and to learn about some of the tools and techniques that can support an open approach to the policy process.

Cristiano Ferri Faria of the Hacker Laboratory in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies writes about how they are involving citizens in making legislation.

'If you are trying to connect with the public, where you go online matters. If you choose to make Facebook your platform for civic activity, you are implicitly suggesting that a specific class of people is more worth your time and attention than others. Of course, splitting your attention can also be costly and doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be reaching everyone anyhow. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. The key to developing a social media strategy is to understand who you're reaching and who you're not and make certain that your perspective is accounting for said choices. Understand your biases and work to counter them.'

The report, entitled " Make or Break: The UK's Digital Future", urges the incoming Government to seize the opportunity to secure the UK's place as a global digital leader by, among other things: making digital literacy a core subject at school, alongside English and Maths; viewing the internet as important as a utility, accessible to all; and putting a single 'Digital Agenda' at the heart of Government.

Article about Finland's crowd sourced policy making and the Open Ministry.

The purpose of this guide to citizen engagement is to strengthen the foundation for participatory governance within the federal government, in particular in agency decision making.

This site is Demsoc's Open Policymaking discussion space and the centre of our project, where we bring together a range of contributions from citizens, campaigning organisations, businesses, academics and officials.

"Puzzled by Policy is a complete solution for engaging people in the policy process. It offers a toolkit to support improved policy-making through a combination of online and offline citizen engagement."

In a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to achieve and direct this emerging world of online collaboration, transparency, and participation.

"The OECD is currently developing an Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) which collects and analyses examples and shared experiences of public sector innovation to provide practical advice to countries on how to make innovations work. "

WIMPS stands for "Where Is My Public Servant?". It is a project run by and for young people. We started (way back in 2004!) with an idea - how do we make politics more relevant to young people? We decided one way of doing this was to remind politicians that they work for us - the citizens. We have created this space for young people like you to discuss and debate issues. We also want to do more - to get organised, to campaign and to bring our views directly to politicians and others, and to influence the decisions that affect our lives.

On 19 May the Open Policy Making (OPM) Team and Government Digital Service (GDS) co-hosted an event where we shared practical examples of how departments are embedding OPM and showcased some of the latest tools and techniques to help the open policy-maker. Below is a snapshot that we hope captures some of the energy and enthusiasm that was apparent on the day

Open Policy Making aims to drive up the quality of civil service advice. It encourages greater collaboration to challenge and innovate beyond conventional thinking.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a global effort to make governments better by promoting transparency, empowering citizens, fighting corruption, and harnessing new technologies to strengthen governance. OGP was launched in 2011 in New York by eight governments, and overseen by a steering committee of governments and civil society organizations.

Loomio is free and open source software for anyone, anywhere, to participate in decisions that affect them

We help governments and public bodies around the world do this by providing awesome digital democracy apps and consultation software to facilitate online policy-making and consultation.

Social media and gov predictions from Oxford Internet Institute include: 'Government will abandon surveys in favour of social media monitoring and engagement' '99% of gov.uk petitions fail to get 10,000 signatures. This is the number needed for the petition to be eligible to be debated in House of Commons...So although the internet gives us tools to help mobilise a community around an issue, it doesn't necessarily make it easy.'

A review of Brazil as a leader in participatory institutions, outline of their successes.