As Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole describes it, Political Innovation is:

“…not about political direction, but about what is possible in harnessing the power of the web. About how a more effective participative political culture can bring about a range of subtle changes – to reverse the broken politico/media relationship out of some of the cul-de-sacs that it appears to have stuck in.”

The idea behind the Interactive Charter started out as a list of digital cul-de-sacs that many local authorities have worked themselves into – but has slowly transformed into the current Interactive Charter project – an attempt to find sustainable ways to find ways out of these cul-de-sacs at all levels of government.

Right now the Interactive Charter is still an idea more than a significant programme of action – but all suggestions and offers of support to take if forward are most welcome indeed…

Promises and pledges are getting a lot of attention at the moment, so if the Interactive Charter is going to work as a symbolic and practical statement for organisations, senior leaders and all supporters to sign-up to, we need to get it right.

So – the mixed-ink drawing board is open again. You can head over to mixed-ink and start editing our drafts to create the best possible Interactive Charter statement.

Mixed-ink is a collaborative drafting space designed to get the best out of a document. If you’ve not used it before then you can find a quick overview here.

But then a friend pointed out one argument that for some reason has slipped under the radar: When he doesn’t have access to Facebook, he spends a lot more time on the phone organising his social life. But he also does a lot of his professional communications on the site as well.

Maybe it’s time to establish a Debategraph diagram entitled ‘all of the reasons that Facebook shouldn’t be banned in the workplace’?

Look out for more developments soon on the Social Strategy Wiki where the 50 Barriers to Open Government are online for you to see, edit and add your own ideas to.

And we’ll have more updates soon about how you might be able to get involved in the next stages of the project coming up.

(The one thing that is paused, just for the moment, is drafting the text of the charter itself. We didn’t factor in the Summer Holidays when setting up a deadline for collaborative drafting the Charter online, so we didn’t manage to get as many people involved in that as we wanted – so we’ll be looking at the best ways to bring back the open drafting of the Charter as the project moves forward.)

This seems like a good time to say that the lack of a clear narrative is also a barrier. It’s no good those of us keen on new technologies and conversational governance to feel the world is against us. And we’ll progress more slowly than we could if we limit ourselvea to trying to get technological fixes, and to trying to prompt organisational change through guerilla action.

A case in point is this article about Swansea councillors getting in the soup for daring to tweet during a meeting. How tiring is it going to be dealing with this on a case-by-case basis?

Instead, let’s get the Charter up and running, with a simple, clear statement of principles that leaders, chief execs – in fact, anyone in a public sector leadership position – can sign up to. Better still, a statement that they can’t not sign up to.

It can be easy to see policies and frameworks as putting up barriers to free flowing conversations – and some do. But as Steph Gray perceptively notes, not all frameworks and policies need to do that – in fact, many can be barrier-busters.

Overcoming the many hurdles to being an interactive organisation may well involve introducing new policies. The challenge is to make these policies than enable and guide, rather than policies that block and stiffle.

That’s the balance Neil seems to have struck in his corporate twitter policy, and the sort of thing we need to see more of.

View below, of if reading via RSS, see it here.

And of course, if you can suggest a solution to any of the barriers, or add details to a driver for change – register on the Social Strategy wiki and edit the relevant pages to add your insights.

Take a look at the section on Social Media and you find talk of removing the legal barriers to putting parliamentary proceeding on YouTube, of training for members of the Lords to actually do this, and of removing barriers to Parliamentary video being embedded on other websites.

It’s not about replacing the Lords with a Social Network Sites and online forums – rather the report notes that:

“….social media isn’t the answer to everything, [but] they allow direct communication with members of the public. The House of Lords should use these established tools regularly with, for example, inquiries.”

It’s pretty much this sort of approach – a balance recognition of the value of social media to increase openness and improve policy making – and then taking practical steps to remove the barriers to it’s use – which the Interactive Charter is all about. Perhaps some of the contributors to the House of Lords report would like to dive in and help shape the draft of the Charter on Mixed Ink.

(Hat tip to Hansard Society through whose tweets I saw this had been published – and lots of credit must go to the Parliament Web Team whose innovation and outreach has, I daresay, contribute a lot to the level of understanding of social media apparent in the report.)

Thanks for @stevieflow for getting this handed round at PSFBuzz today.

DOWNLOAD: Interactive Charter Flyer July 2009 (PDF)

1) The Charter

Drafting a statment which local authorities, national government and voluntary agencies can sign up to as a comittment to change; If we get a number of early adopters to commit to the charter then Tom Watson MP has offered to table an Early Day Motion in parliament drawing attention to and supporting the Charter.

backed up by

2) A toolkit for change

Which provide a map for overcoming the practical barriers to online engagement – based on the 50 Barriers Wiki.

The Wiki is already up and running, and I’ve just launched the Charter on Mixed Ink.

Between now and the 25th July you can be part of making this the best possible statement for organisations to sign up to to commit to taking practical steps for enabling open online government.

Using Mixed Ink

You can view current drafts of the Charter here. Using Mixed Ink you can:

• Rate the drafts of the charter you like best;
• Create your own draft;
• Create your own revision based on earlier drafts;

The video below explains all you need to know:

So, come join in.