Digital Engagement Team

"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."

"Improving engagement between citizens, governments and organisations on public issues is our passion. All CiviQ products are based on recent innovations in deliberative democratic theory on which we have consulted with citizens, Councillors and management in Fingal County. "

"OurSpace is an Online Social Network powered by European Youth and Youth Organisations to: Debate, Discuss and Engage on EU topics, National Affairs and Policies. Influence EU and National policy-makers on issues that concern European Youth. Connect and network with peers online, on Facebook and on-the-go. Benefit youth NGOs with a multi-channel and multi-lingual community & tool."

Tools to help with ideas for blog posts.

"In February this year, eight Junior Digital Media Producers from Bristol arts charity Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), were set a challenge to engage their community and encourage community activism. The project was called Data Patchwork and the team's response to the brief was a fascinating exploration of innovative ways to collect and represent data. One of the outcomes was an exhibit called 'The Cardboard Living Room.' As you might glean from the name, the exhibit was a room filled with 3D cardboard furniture, but perhaps less expected is that every piece of furniture was connected to a computer which reacted to movement."

We asked former home secretary David Blunkett and other experts how to involve #peopleinpolitics. Here's what they said

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

"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.

"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."

"A short video that shows how we analysed the community of contributors to the Digital Culture Public Sphere to get some context around the data and ideas contributed. Full video and transcript at http://www.katelundy.com.au/2011/12/15/analysing-the-public-sphere-%E2%80%93-data-and-community/"

Open government is great. At least, it was a few election cycles ago. FOIA requests, open data, seeing how your government works-it's arguably brought light to a lot of not-so-great practices, and in many cases, has spurred citizen-centric innovation not otherwise imagined before the information's release.

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

What does a Social Media Manager do in an average day.

NHS Citizen's idea gathering site on Your Priorities.

" Your Priorities is a powerful eDemocracy web application designed by the non profit Citizens Foundation to help groups of people speak with one voice."

Civic Exchange is a platform for improving public services by showcasing and promoting the reuse of civic software. This includes online tools that support public service delivery, apps/services built on government APIs, or initiatives piloted with a local authority and created by others. The platform is run by Nesta in collaboration with our Code for Europe partners.

Advice on how to write the perfect blog post.