Jimmy Leach

NMA (www.nma.co.uk) readers have voted Jimmy Leach, the Head of Digital Communications at 10 Downing Street, as the person who has made the greatest individual contribution to new media over the past year.

Today's front page story highlights the fact that he set up the ePetitions strategy which has “enabled a generation to feel engaged in politics and has given each citizen a voice to talk directly to 10 Downing Street."

His decision to launch a 10 Downing Street YouTube channel has also been praised fro showing “that those in charge are willing to meet young people in their own environment”.

Praise indeed.

Whether young people came to have a look is another matter as is whether people do feel that the ePetitions service is giving them an effective voice in Government.

Nevertheless, this is clear evidence that new media is offering up new channels of communication between politicians and public, which are being used at least to some extent. And hopefully this is playing some small part in strengtheing our democracy

Little Progress

Just a couple of quick updates. I’ve got a couple of
filled in questionnaires this week; one from Kevin
Davey at The Innovatory and the other from Councillor
Chris Kennedy. I’m still waiting to hear back from
Gary Francis at HCVS and the news from Shaun Saunders
is that I should be receiving some material back from
his youth groups next week.

I spent yesterday trying to get hold of more
organisations around Hackney that work with young
people. I think I must have sent off about thirty
e-mails but so far there hasn’t been much of a
response. I’ve got to give a woman from the scout’s a
call this evening though so hopefully that lead will
go somewhere.

Obviously time is really starting to press as there’s
only two months to go now before I have to hand the
dissertation in. I’m basically going to give it
another week and then draw a line. Hopefully there’s
enough material with which to build a good argument.