Since I've had a bit of time on my hands on maternity leave (when the baby's asleep but I'm not and the washing machine's loaded) I've spent a bit of time looking at online petitions. Most charities' websites have one on there somewhere and there's a tonne on Facebook.
But my interest was really caught by the number 10 website. Number 10 is effectively a kind of Prime Minister's Department in the UK and the number 10 website is a pretty good resource.
I've posted previously on e-government in the UK which I think is a thoroughly good thing, as long as the demonstrable enthusiasm for the available technology is matched by the quality of the content. http://www.thoughts.com/rose22/blog/government-in-chatrooms- intrusion-or-good-egov-83630/  
So I've signed up to a few e-petitions on the number 10 website. The first few all tended to be about things affecting me at present:
- a call for a Strep B test to be offered to all pregnant women;
- for it to be illegal to park in parent car parking places if you don't have small children with you;
- for all women to get a 20-week pregnancy scan rather than it being a postcode lottery;
- for a universal high-quality health visitor service for the under 5s.
Some of these themes may be familiar if you regularly read my blog.
I then branched out, investigating other categories of petition that were available on the website. Two caught my eye:
- for GPs surgeries to use real rather than non-geographical numbers (eg 0845, 0870) because 0870 etc cost a fortune from a mobile phone, and
- for full passport services to be maintained at the Brussels embassy as the Belgian postal service is appalling and UK citizens in Belgium risk not receiving renewed or new passports that would now be issued in Paris.

The thing is, the responses have been pretty poor. This is not exactly surprising.

But while it is not surprising, I do feel a bit disappointed. I hoped that this new form of inputting into government might actually in some way influence the debate. But in effect sending a petition is just like send any other correspondence to Ministers - you'll get a response drafted by departmental civil servants justifying the decision that the Minister has taken. It's just that that response is going out to lots of people that have all asked the same question rather being teaked for each individual that writes in.

To illustrate my point I am attaching a link to the response to the latest petition I signed, the one on the removal of full passport services from the embassy in Brussels. http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page15394.asp  

I'm not an idiot. I know about Foreign Office restructuring, and that maintaining a Rolls Royce service right across the globe is expensive. The approach being taken, "hub and spoke" kind of makes sense - sharing services with other EU member states worldwide also makes economic sense and I suspect we'll see more of that.
But - whisper it quietly- Brussels is important!  It may be true that there are more British expats on the Costa do whatnot in Portugal than in Belgium, but Brussels is the de facto European capital.
While there may be relatively few Brits there at present (and let's face it Brussels is probably close enough to London to nip back to UKIPS Global House to get a renewal there), a holistic approach to policy might recall that there's an objective of getting more Brits into the EU instutitions where we are drastically under-represented.
Brits in Brussels working for the EU institutions or the assorted industries set up around them tend to fall into two camps: the short-termers (up to 4 years and whom are unlikely to be affected) and the long-termers (for whom Brussels is a kind of home and are affected). As UK government departments focus their resources more tightly, the number of the former type of expat drops.
But the long-termers already feel under-appreciated as they lose their right to vote in UK elections after 8 years (soon to be 5 years) and some feel they have effectively been told by the UK government that they might as well become Belgian if they intend to live there any longer than the 5 year period because they not longer have a connection to a specific UK constituency. This seems a bit at odds with the policy of encouraging more Brits to join the EU institutions...
Now imagine you are one of those people and it's just been made more difficult to get hold of a renewed UK passport. You are dependent on either 1) remembering to take a valid form of ID with you and hopping on a Thalys to Paris or 2) the Belgian postal system.
Notice that the point on the inadequacies of the Belgian postal system was not addressed in the official response - I understand why, but it is a relevant point from the point of view of the users. No wonder they feel a bit disenfranchised.

That may seem like a bit of a detour from my point of departure on e-petitions and e-government. But my point is this: at the moment e-petitions are a bit of a novelty and people like me might well go online and sign up to a few. But unless there's some action as a result, the novelty may well wear off and the gulf between citizen and government continue to grow, unbridged. That would be a shame.
So... idea for a petition...
"This petition makes a Freedom of Information request, calling for the changes to policy resulting directly from e-petitions on the number 10 website to be listed". It would be interesting to see the response to that one.