Here are my thoughts in the spirit of open debate, as an interested outsider, said the giraffe as he stuck his neck out.
I think that advising a party is OK, and that getting in on the ground floor with ideas and advice must be a good thing - outside experts do that all the time. I don't personally think that an announcement at a party conference was necessarily a good idea, particularly bearing in mind that there is at least another 6 months of this government to go - and we don't know who the next one will be. But that is not my relationship to manage. >Hasn't Tom advised the Labour government as well? I think that the distinction between "party" and "government" is very important. My most important point: I think a key principle may be maintaining (and demonstrating) continuity/appropriate distance, and whether "ideas" are perceived as being "Tory" ideas or "MySociety" ideas. There may already have been one instance of this in that Mr Haig's "reading stage" of a Bill, if I have it right, looks like a sound-bited version of "free our bills" - but I could be wrong. In some places that is being questioned as a Tory policy not a good idea adopted from an outside source. A further aspect should perhaps be to emphasise excellent work done in the *last* 5 years or so, with the support of the Parliament and the last Government. I think that Tom Watson made a good point about Tom's personal identification with MySociety, and the need to manage perceptions of that relationship. Having said all of that, I recognise that I'm not either a volunteer or team member, so I'm happy to be ignored :-) Matt Wardman On 10/6/09, Philip Potter <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/10/6 Francis Davey <[email protected]>: >> 2009/10/6 Matthew Cain <[email protected]>: >>> There's a significant distinction between advising the government of the >>> day (regardless of which party is in power) and advising a political >>> party. >>> >> >> As I said, this must be some political nuance I'm missing because I >> don't see it. Sorry. Surely advising people on IT and having a sane >> policy is a good thing. I'd be happy to advise the Tories on anything >> I knew about because it would mean they were a better and more >> effective political party, that in turn can only be good for everyone. >> I struggle to see how telling people what is a good thing to do can >> ever be bad. > > I can see the argument for eg a civil servant. Civil servants are > supposed to be apolitical; they advise their political masters through > their jobs; they are paid from the public purse to do this job. If > they were to advise an opposition party, they would be seen to be > political in this action, and if they did it on public paid time, it > would surely be wrong and a disciplinary matter. > > However, AFAIK Tom is not a civil servant; he is not being paid by the > Tories (and so has no immediate financial interest in seeing the > Tories win), and frankly, although one can infer that the Tories may > have more influence over Tom than they did before, I think it is more > important that they get good, sane IT advice than it is that Tom be > protected from ever meeting a politician. > >> Surely no-one cares *who* is in power provided they do the right thing? > > Sadly, this is clearly not the case. I know people who would always > hate on a Labour/Tory/Lib dem government no matter what they did. (See > Obama in the US for a prominent example.) > > Phil > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list [email protected] > Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
