In this week's Observer, David Yelland (ex-Sun editor and now Chairman of Weber Shandwick PR) writes about his experiences on David Puttnam's Commission, which was created to look at the future of the UK Parliament. The commission was pretty scathing but the findings weren't very surprising. Basically it found that Parliament...
was poor at communicating with the electorate (particularly the young),
that the web might be useful and that the problem was partly
structural, partly attitudinal. One phrase of Yelland's that I found telling was that...
"To give a specific example mentioned by my fellow-commissioner John Sargeant at our press conference, it is currently not possible to find out what time a parliamentary debate even takes place. That's not just because there isn't a communications team - it is because the entire culture in Parliament is inward-facing, and because Westminster thinks it is of no interest to give such information out."
Time to start thinking Outside-In I would say.
Comments