Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 25th, 2014

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

So I guess what you're saying is that constituents not only communicate by way of petition but make their views known in many ways.

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

Absolutely. Yes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Okay.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I think we'll end it there. We will suspend just for a couple of minutes while we go to our next panel.

I thank both of our witnesses from the first part.

Dr. Fox, thank you for all you shared with us. It was very good information.

Ms. Hilderman, the same, and please stay tuned. Watch what we're doing here and let us know your thoughts on it, please.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'll call us back to order. We're still here talking about electronic petitions.

We have Catherine Bochel, who is from policy studies at the University of Lincoln, and we have from the Office of the Leader of the House of Commons of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Mr. Winter and Mr. Shaw.

Ms. Bochel, I think we'll have you go first, if you would, please. If you have a bit of an opening statement for us, that would be best. Then we'll do opening statements from the other group, and then the members here will ask questions, if that's all right. So, if you're ready, please go ahead.

[Professor Catherine Bochel, Reader in Policy Studies, University of Lincoln, As an Individual]

That sounds good.

Thank you for inviting me.

This brief presentation draws on my research into petitions systems in the U.K., including in Scotland and Wales.

Having an e-petitions system can be a good thing for representative democratic bodies. Such systems can facilitate citizens’ input and participation in the democratic process, they can inform politicians and policy-makers about public concerns, and they can also be designed to have an educative function, in that they can provide some people with an opportunity to engage with the political system and to learn how it works. They enable people’s voices to be heard and this may help underpin the legitimacy and functioning of representative institutions and the policies they implement.

In terms of outcomes, while e-petitions systems tend to specify exactly what petitioners can achieve by submitting a petition, there are other benefits to petitioners. For example by getting their e-petition published on the petitions’ website they’re getting publicity for their issue and promoting it to a wider audience. They’re automatically getting an outcome even if it is not an issue requested in the petition. In addition there's sometimes media interest in the issues raised and the public in the U.K. can watch any debates on petitions online.

In the U.K.'s e-petitions system there are two thresholds that may take place. If a petition receives 10,000 signatures it should receive a response from the relevant government department. If it reaches the 100,000-signature threshold it becomes eligible for debate.

Scotland and Wales have quite different systems. I can say something about those if you wish.

The e-petitions system introduced in the U.K. by the coalition government is one of direct access, which means that anyone who's a British citizen or resident in the U.K. can submit a petition directly to the e-petitions system. There is no requirement to have a sponsoring member of Parliament.

In the first three years of the U.K. e-petitions system it received approximately 53,500 petitions, of which 28,500 were admissible in that they met the terms and conditions of the system. Out of these, debates have been held on 25 petitions and 145 received a response from the relevant government department.

My research on petition systems in the U.K. illustrates there are a number of features that might usefully be taken into account when designing an e-petitions system. While these vary with the age and scope of the particular system they might include for example a clear statement of purpose. What is the purpose of the system? Is it for people to communicate their views to members of Parliament? Is it for engagement, or something else?

There is a need to manage expectations by making it clear to petitioners what they can and cannot achieve by submitting a petition, and a need to be clear about the possible range of outcomes for petitions. It's also necessary to consider the type of access to the petitions. Will the system have direct access, so that anyone who is eligible to submit a petition is able to do so in a straightforward manner, or indirect access, where a petitioner will need to find an MP to sponsor the petition? It's worth considering what thresholds you might use.

These are a few things you might wish to think about. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. Winter and Mr. Shaw, please, an opening statement, if you have one.

[Mike Winter, Head of Office, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]

Yes, thank you, Chair.

It's a pleasure to be invited to give evidence to the committee today.

If I could start with introductions, I'm Mike Winter, and I'm the head of office for the Leader of the House of Commons, the Right Honourable William Hague, MP. I have overall responsibility for ensuring delivery of parliamentary reform policy, including on e-petitions, for the Leader of the House of Commons on behalf of the U.K. government.

My colleague, Chris Shaw, is a parliamentary adviser providing procedural advice to the U.K. government on secondment from the House of Commons where he serves as a clerk.

We appear before you as officials of the U.K. government with the support of the minister.

We should point out that, following a debate in May of this year, we are currently working with the Procedure Committee of the House of Commons on an e-petitions system, which is jointly owned between the House of Commons and the government. We expect a report from the Procedure Committee within the next few weeks followed by consideration and decisions of the House of Commons. Given we're in the middle of the process of negotiations you will understand if we may not be able to give definitive answers to some of your questions today.

I know you're keen to hear from technical experts. I hope the committee would be willing for us to supplement our evidence with written evidence from the Government Digital Service, who run the technical aspects of the system, should that be necessary.

I'm happy to go into questioning. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Winter, we'll go to Mr. Lukiwski for a seven-minute round to start off with.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all for being with us today.

My question will initially be for Mr. Winter.

Mr. Winter, we have been discussing, at this committee, security and privacy issues regarding e-petitions, specifically how do we ensure that the privacy of the information forwarded to the House of Commons via e-petitions is respected and the privacy of the individuals signing e-petitions is respected. Specifically we want to ensure that no political party would be able to data mine those petitions for use in their own political world.

Could you please give me a breakdown of the protocols that you may have established in the U.K. that could ensure that privacy concerns are addressed and the security and provision of the names are not data mined by political parties? For example, when someone signs an e-petition does his or her name and address and all subsequent information appear on the government website? What would prevent anyone from harvesting that information as petitions are being tabulated? Do you have other security provisions that absolutely prevent any data mining from being able to be used by political parties?

[Mike Winter]

Okay, thank you.

Yes. When we were setting up the system we worked with the Government Digital Service, which is responsible for implementing and overseeing the range of government digital provision to citizens. A decision was made very early on within the standard government protocols that we would store the minimum amount of information on individuals necessary to make the site workable. So the information that we store on the system is people's names, postal codes, email addresses. That's the only information that's stored on an individual.

This is currently stored by the government and it isn't made available to any third parties. So it cannot be mined by political parties or others.

In terms of your secondary question regarding what appears on the website, the author's name would appear for the creator of the website and someone signing a petition. But the email address or contact address is not available on the website, so it is a minimum amount of information and it isn't able to be used by anyone wishing to contact those people.

We store the information for the minimum time possible. At the moment we are storing information for the period of the administration. That's five years. This is largely because with the permission of those creating or signing petitions, we ask them to tick a box if they want to have further information about the progress of that petition. For example, whether it's been debated. Therefore, we store the information necessary for the government to make contact just to update them about the progress of the petition.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Further to how long you store this information and how you dispose of it, when you finally dispose of the information that you've received after a number of years, please explain to me how that is done. Is it just simply hitting the delete button or do you actually try to go down a little further to prevent any breaches? As we all know, just because you delete something off a personal computer it doesn't mean that information is gone forever. What provisions do you put in place to ensure that the absolute privacy of individuals is maintained?

[Mike Winter]

The information is stored on one host computer via the Government Digital Services. So that information isn't transferred onto personal computers or other hard drives.

I would have to ask our technical guys to perhaps write with further information on the exact procedure that is taken to ensure full deletion. With this current system, which has only been in operation since 2010 and is due to finish in 2015, we haven't actually deleted any information from the system as such yet. But I'm sure there is a process in place that we could inform you about.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you for that.

For the remaining time I want to go to a little different route. We heard a representative at committee from the Northwest Territories here in Canada who said when they set up their e-petition program in their government they actually bought a software program from the U.K., right off the shelf, that was able to facilitate what they needed in terms of formulating an e-petition program in their government. Did you develop your own software or did you customize an off-the-shelf software program? Exactly how did you establish the software and hardware that you have to facilitate e-petitions in the U.K.?

[Mike Winter]

The software, again, was put together by the Government Digital Service, but you're quite right, that software is now open-source software and is available for anyone else to use to establish their own petition system. Obviously, they will need some technical expertise to correctly configure it for a new system, but it is open-source software that is available.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Could you give us an estimate at least, if not specific information, as to the total cost of implementation of this program—software, hardware, labour costs, that type of thing—and perhaps the yearly operating cost as well?

[Mike Winter]

I think there are several aspects to it dealing specifically with the technical aspects. I think the initial implementation costs, capital costs, were somewhere around £80,000. The ongoing operating costs are roughly half of that, about £40,000 per annum.

The Government Digital Service, as I've explained, work on a range of government services and sometimes allocate some of their available time to do small changes to the e-petition sites. There are some marginal costs, staff costs, technical staff costs, included there. Those are the technical costs.

There are other aspects of costs of the system, including staff costs for the moderation of e-petitions, which is currently done by individual government departments and is spread—again marginal soft costs are spread throughout the 20 government departments, mainly in their correspondence or parliamentary units.

The House of Commons, as I've explained, is currently considering a joint system, jointly owned with the government. Part of that could be a petitions committee. I think that would be a significant additional cost to the technical costs and moderation costs I've outlined.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Scott for seven minutes.

Thank you.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to direct my first two questions to Professor Bochel, and then I think I'll pass it over to my colleague, Mr. Rankin.

I very much appreciated both your paper and the summary of the speaking notes. It was very helpful that you set out parameters or features, including clearly knowing what the purpose is and needing to manage expectations, especially when we know that when citizens interact with MPs and government, it's often the dashing of expectations about how their interaction is handled that is a problem, and not so much the outcome. So I found this all very useful. I think when we come to perfecting the design that my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas has put in his motion, I honestly think that your reminders will almost serve as a tick list for us, so thank you.

I was just wondering about something that the previous witness from Samara suggested. There are two mechanisms. If we say that engagement is a serious goal or co-goal of the system, not purely two-way communication but engagement, could there be mechanisms to alert MPs, if this is easily programmable, of constituents who have signed any given petition, including updates, reports, etc., that would indicate and help MPs understand where people are at on a range of issues? Do you see that as an engagement? Would that be a beneficial engagement tool, or would you have any concerns?

[Prof. Catherine Bochel]

I think it would be useful. I presume you do it through postal code matching and people's postal codes would be matched with the MP's constituency. It could be used to alert an MP that a petition is being submitted by one of their constituents, but I don't think they should necessarily have to take that on board. They can see whether it's an issue that they believe is relevant or not.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I was actually, too, thinking as far as in terms of the signatories.... So if you had a petition that only got 5,000, versus the 100,000 threshold we seem to be looking at here for triggering some kind of parliamentary debate, if an MP were informed that there were 50 signatories from their riding on this issue, would that be a worthy thing, or would you have any concerns?

[Prof. Catherine Bochel]

If you have only 50 signatories, then that might be an area for concern. You would want to have specific thresholds for your petitioners to meet in order to respond to petitions.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

The other thing that came up in an earlier meeting was how the House reports back on the most successful petitions, the ones that do trigger some reaction, let's say in terms of a debate in the House.

The idea is to send everybody an email with a link, explain what happened, when the debate took place, and alert people in advance, so that if they want to, they can watch. Afterward, send a link to the House of Commons video footage of the debate. Is that a mechanism you've seen done anywhere, and if not or if so, do you think it's a good idea?

[Prof. Catherine Bochel]

I think it's an excellent idea. It shows that the House is keen to engage with the people and is listening to the people.

It enables people to see that the House is not only engaging with their issue but it's participating as well through debates raised on issues they're interested in.

I'm not sure exactly what the U.K. system does, but certainly the U.K. people can watch debates online. There can be a massive interest in them. There was one petition, the Hillsborough petition, and 37 MPs participated in the debate and something like 330,000 viewers watched the BBC Parliament channel that day, in comparison to a daily average of 120,000. I would say that it is a very important mechanism.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you. That's a great example.