The power of Mumsnet – for Blog Action Day #PowerOfWe #BAD12
This post is about Mumsnet. We believe that sites like Mumsnet could represent the future of developing public policy. They point to the potential of mass membership online platforms to engage thousands of people in practical consideration of policy issues and so radically widen participation in policy – or as we call it, guerilla policy. [...]
Reflections on New Think Tank – 2. Stephen Bediako and Emily Littlewood
This is a series of posts in which we’ve invited people to give us their reactions to the New Think Tank project. This post is from Stephen Bediako and Emily Littlewood from The Social Innovation Partnership. Thanks to Stephen and Emily for contributing the post, and we welcome your comments. Existentialism holds that the starting point [...]
Why we need a new approach to developing social policy – 9. It’s the future
This is the ninth in a series of posts on why social policy should be developed by and with the people who use and provide public and voluntary services. We’re publishing the last in the series on Monday, and we welcome your comments. According to How Stuff Works, the top five future technology myths are: 5. [...]
What think tanks can learn from experiments in open journalism
No sector or industry is immune from the ‘open revolution’ – from software development, scientific research and publishing, to how businesses innovate more generally. Here are three experiments in ‘open journalism’ which also suggest how think tanks could work more openly. 1. Open sourcing The Guardian newspaper has embarked on a programme of open journalism. As Alan Rusbridger, the paper’s editor, has noted: [...]
The top 40 think tanks by website popularity
Here’s the (updated) top 40 most well-known UK think tanks ranked by the popularity of their websites (according to Alexa.com). The number in brackets is the global popularity ranking of the website. The RSA (115,276) Chatham House (184,918) The Overseas Development Institute (224,804) Adam Smith Institute (245,629) new economics foundation (258,708) Joseph Rowntree Foundation (402,928) The Institute of [...]
Not asking for permission
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, is to act as an unpaid adviser to the UK government to support its “agenda to open up policy-making to the public.” His ideas on how technology could be used to give the public a greater say in policymaking might be very valuable, and government should certainly try to create better platforms for public [...]
Why think tanks aren’t popular
We’re beginning to think about what our website should look like. This development blog – nice and clean though it is (thanks WordPress) – isn’t our proper website of course, just our temporary home. But it’s got us thinking about think tank websites and what they say about think tanks themselves. We’ve noted before that most [...]