Local councillors urged to do their bit for e-democracy

Local councillors in the UK are being encouraged to get involved in a pilot project which aims to make it easy for them to build their own websites and hence promote local e-democracy initiatives.

The Local Government Association (LGA) commissioned consultancy Poptel Technology to come up with a tool which allows councillors working for the principal local authorities in England and Wales to build their own easy-to-manage sites.

Poptel managing director Paul Evans told silicon.com that the tool is now ready for use, and that the LGA is looking for pilot councils to get involved in the trials.

He said: "Developing and managing an ordinary website is usually a time-consuming and technically demanding skill. Yet we believe that the public have an increasing expectation that they should be able to access their representatives - 24x7. The CouncillorSite solution aims to make it quick and easy for councillors to develop, manage and improve their own site.

The CouncillorSite project launch comes in response to online research conducted by the LGA and Poptel which showed that 87 per cent of councillors would use an easy-to-manage website to support their work.

Sixty-eight per cent positively want such a solution and nearly 20 per cent said that they had plans to develop their own site - though many were doubtful that it would be ready within the next 12 months.

Forty six per cent indicated that, if their local authority provided an easy-to-manage site for them, they believed that they "would update it enthusiastically" while 24 per cent believed that they would either update it occasionally or "use it to create a profile and 'online contact point' for residents".

For more information, see http://www.www.councillor.info