Mary Reid

I went to the New Statesman New Media Awards 2005 last night, held in a subterranean nightclub with trains rumbling overhead.

As you can see from the logo I got no further than the shortlist - but neither did anyone else in the Elected Representative category. The judges decided not to award a winner.

The New Statesman commented: But it was not because [the judges] felt their sites were lacking in effort, rather that they were lacking support, both from the parties they represent and the government.

They also mentioned that there have been some efforts to redress the balance and quoted ReadMyDay. This is the project on civic leadership blogging that I took part in, which produced some very interesting guidance and evaluation. It was one of the pilots in the Local e-Democracy National Project.

There is an issue underlining all this, which maybe the judges didn't understand. If councillors create websites that are funded (or even hosted) by the local council then they are not allowed to be political on their sites. But that, of course, completely undermines their role as politicians, which is why I chose to run my blog on the independent ReadMyDay platform.

The same applies to MPs - they are only allowed to use public funds for their websites if they avoid being political. It's a bit of a farce, really. Hopefully the New Statesman's stance will wake someone up - how can we connect politicians to the people if such shortsighted rules get in the way?


Colleagues from the National Project at the Awards - on the right is Chris Quigley of DemGames and next to him is Fraser Henderson, the project manager for ReadMy Day and other pilots.

Very pleased that TheyWorkForYou won in the Contribution to Civic Society category - congratulations! Now anyone can scrutinise the performance of their MP.