Category Archives: politics

Bruce of all trades

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I’ve just applied for some digital democracy work. (Yes, that is a hint!) My covering email (slightly adapted below) says I can do some stuff.

I’m passionate about democracy and IT, especially in hyperlocal democracy (community councils, parish councils, and similar).

Professionally, I’m a part-time social informatics researcher at Edinburgh Napier University, concentrating on use of the internet by, and information literacy in, hyperlocal democracy. See more at https://www.napier.ac.uk/people/bruce-ryan

I’m also web-weaver, minutes secretary and general IT supporter for Leith Central, Leith Harbour & Newhaven and New Town & Broughton Community Councils in Edinburgh.

I’m also a member of the £eithChooses participatory budgeting process steering group, concentrating on written communications.

Prior to returning to academia in 2010, I was production manager at a Scottish educational publisher, running a fair proportion of the IT as well as delivering finished projects on time and in budget.

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Practical Democracy Project session 8

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As usual, this post is an edited version of my tweets from the event. My asides are in blockquotes. Most links are to Twitter presences.

Good afternoon Twitter. I’m at the Practical Democracy Project number 8, in Glasgow’s Tron Theatre. It’s organised by Delib, and has hashtag ‪#PracticalDemocracyProject. I hope to live-tweet so long as my laptop’s battery holds out.

Ben Fowkes is opening ‪#PracticalDemocracyProject number 8. The programme is

  1. An introduction to Delib’s work
  2. Niamh Webster (Scottish Government)
  3. Ali Stoddart (Scottish Parliament)
  4. Vilte Vaitkute (Media Co-op) 
  5. panel session.

Lunch is in there somewhere. There will be a round-up of the event emailed to participants. (I’ll share it how I can.)

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13 April: winding up

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So I planned to got to these:

  • Speed Dating: discuss our ideas for a better Europe (10:00 to 10:30)
  • Brexit Breakfast Briefing (10:30 to 11:30)
  • Advanced principles in democracy: let’s challenge basic democracy and find a consensus (12:00 to 2:30)
  • User experience = Supporter engagement: websites for political engagement (13:00 to 14:30)
  • Where to from here? Redesigning democracy (16:00 to 18:00)
  • Festival closing party (20:00 to 22:00)

Here’s how I’ve got on so far! Continue reading →

Join the conversation on Scotland’s performance towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals

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In 2015, the First Minister confirmed that the Scottish Government would be one of the first anywhere in the world to commit to meeting the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, both at home and overseas. Since then, all 193 UN member states have signed up to the 17 goals that seek to end poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change. Continue reading →

A few thoughts on Brexit

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Everyone else is having their say, so why shouldn’t I?

Full disclosure, in case I’ve not made it clear: I think Brexit is a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to do. This doesn’t mean I see myself as superior to those who did vote for Brexit… hang about a bit, yes it does! I sympathise with anyone who believes that the EU has harmed them personally, but this does not give you the right to stuff it up for everyone else.I have slightly more sympathy with those who believe that the EU has harmed a majority of the UK – at least that is altruistic in aim, although it’s harmful in outcome.

I have no sympathy for anyone who believes that any group of foreigners – or even all foreigners – are bad or evil. Anyone who believes that is wrong and evil. And as for those who brought about Brexit thanks to attempts to solve problems in their own party party, may the fleas of a million camels eternally chew on your scrotum!

Rant over for the moment. Having said what I’m against, what am I for? That’s a difficult question to answer just now… Continue reading →

Edinburgh Council budget group challenge

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I’m interested in local government finance mostly because of my interest in participatory budgeting (PB), especially £EITH CHOOSES. This leads to the question ‘where does PB money come from?‘ I’m also interested in how Scottish local government will ‘mainstream’ PB, leading me to consider ‘what budgets will be opened up to citizen input?‘, ‘how will this be done?‘, ‘how will citizen-control be squared with statutory requirements?‘.

On a personal level, I’m curious about how Edinburgh Council (CEC) decides how to spend its (our!) money, not least because it needs to make massive savings in 2019-20 onwards. I’m concerned about the effects this will have on me, on my adopted home city and above all, the many people who absolutely need government services and benefits. So I jumped at the chance to take part in a budget group challenge last Thursday.

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Online Identity Assurance stakeholder meeting: 31 October 2018

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My ‘professional’ side has taken up the reins of Online Identity Assurance. That’s probably because I was wearing my 2018 Napier PRIDE t-shirt at the event.

Bruce Ryan's avatarBruce's IT-ish world

Being involved, no matter how tangentially, with the Scottish Government’s work on online identity assurance (OIA) is important to me for at least five reasons.

  1. I want government to be efficient, and that means using digital techniques when possible and rational.
  2. While pursuing that aim, government must pay great heed to privacy and security. This is mostly because government has (in theory) great power to do good and do harm. (NB I do not believe that the current SG intends to do harm.)
  3. There will always be people who cannot use digital techniques. This may be because  they don’t know how just now. This may be because they will always lack the mental capacity to know how. This may be because they do not wish to learn how: either they see nothing in it for them, or the potential gains are not worth the time and money…

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Answering some questions about e-voting (part 1)

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My most recent post on this subject was constructively challenged by someone I respect highly. This person asked:

  1. What are ‘high logistical and environmental costs’, in £££ and time?
  2. How many people are affected by mobility issues, visual impairments or other things preventing them from going to polling places.
  3. Concerning proxy voting, postal voting and statutory aids for people with visual impairments:
    1. How many people are involved?
    2. How many would benefit from the change?
  4. How often does it happen that polling places become unavailable?
  5. What would success in increasing turnout (due to e-voting) look like?
  6. Concerning ‘facilitating reliable and rapid results (including fewer spoilt ballots)’:
    1. What speed up could be expected?
    2. How many spoiled ballots happen?
    3. And under e-voting, how many errors?
    4. What are the risks & consequences of hacking?
  7. Concerning ‘reducing the costs of paper ballots’:
    1. What does it cost?
    2. How much would it cost to run e-voting instead?
  8. Interesting question is how/whether e-voting helps or hinders a sense of community…

This post attempts some back-of-a-fag-packet answers to questions 1, 2 and 3. The other questions will have to wait for another post.

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More thoughts about Online Identity Assurance and e-voting

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(With thanks to Peter Cruickshank for raising the public money issue, and for suggestions on reading)

On Tuesday 19 June, I was at two events. The first was a meeting of the Scottish Government’s Online Identity Assurance stakeholder group. The second was a seminar on Vote.Scot: Shaping the future of online voting in Scotland. They provided a very interesting set of information and questions. Continue reading →

More thoughts about e-voting – and participatory budgeting

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(with thanks to Liam Bell for feedback on the first draft.)

On Tuesday 12 June, I was at a workshop organised by the Scottish Government (SG) to consider how lessons from e-voting, as used in participatory budgeting (PB), can inform SG’s investigations of how e-voting might be used in Scottish elections. A key theme of the discussion was how a system that would initially be used for PB voting could be set up so that it would ‘naturally’ evolve to be used for other voting ‘use-cases’.

It’s not my aim to describe what others said at the meeting: a scribe took detailed notes and I hope that a transcript will be published soon. However, I hope this post will describe my thinking, and how it’s evolved a bit since I last wrote about e-voting. Continue reading →