Nominated websites reviewed by Andrew Stephen and Mary Riddell
Andrew Stephen - http://www.ifnotnow.com
Electronic democracy in action, eh? That is what this fascinating new website (http://www.ifnotnow.com) calls itself: it was started by two brothers, one a cognitive psychologist and the other an electrical engineer. Their aim is nothing if not ambitious: to "create a completely new vehicle for democratic participation" and to "make it easy for busy, progressive people to stay involved".
I went to it, I have to admit, with scepticism. For a relatively small amount of money, any man, woman or child (and their dog, of course) can create a website from a hut at the end of their garden these days; the results tend to be big on personal aggrandisement ("Here is a picture of my dog Rover and this is my girlfriend Mary-Jo") but of strictly limited use.
This one, though, is an exception: you do not see pictures of the brothers or their dogs or girlfriends but instead quickly find your way to a list of 19 generally progressive and/or left-of-centre pressure groups (but also including mainstream organisations such as Oxfam-America) that contribute to the site. You then quickly get to the political issues of the day: on the menu last week the two main subjects were "Stop the bombing in Kosovo!" and the "Safe roads campaign". Clicking on those two subjects (plus plenty of others) takes you to current, up-to-date information - and then, with the minimum of technical difficulty, you can send an e-mail to your local Congressman or woman (whom the website automatically identifies by asking you to enter your postal code).
It is one of the cleverest websites I have come across in years of web-surfing; you are invited to contribute an annual subscription of $21, but even that is voluntary. The key question, though, is this: do elected members of Congress already receiving hundreds or even thousands of e-mails per day bother to read ones asking, say, for a halt to the bombing of Serbia? The brothers even have an answer to that: they can track the amount of e-mail sent to the politicians direct from their website, and then make it easy for you to look up the voting records of the politicians to see if it has made any difference. Electronic democracy it may not yet be, but it is certainly a promising start.
Mary Riddell - http://www.opportunity-links.org.uk
Given its range, this one-stop shop for opportunity-seekers has to be simple and logical. On the whole it is. Subdivided into four sections - jobs, training, benefits and childcare - it currently covers only one pilot region, Cambridgeshire (apart from the excellent benefits guide, which is nationwide).
Inevitably the sits vac listings suffer from a lack of comprehensiveness. For instance, any aspiring Charlie Dimmock seeking horticultural work in Cambridge is pretty much restricted to two posts - a gardener at Clare College or the first assistant greenkeeper at Girton golf course. Should you not have the NVQ2 required for the latter post, the training pages will tell you where to get one (the College of West Anglia). While it's fun trawling through this stuff, the sparsity may frustrate real job-seekers. (Can there be no administrative and secretarial vacancies in Wisbech?)
The more general information is splendid. There is a huge list of training courses and opportunities, and the benefits section is helpful and simple. The childcare advice is OK, although the page on child minders is "temporarily unavailable", and a separate bulletin board of available places doesn't say when it was last updated. As with the jobs section, there is a suspicion of patchy coverage - unless Ely really has no pre-school playgroups.
A request for customer feedback asks how easy it was to use the site. Extremely. It's ambitious, informative, welcoming and well cross-referenced.
One drawback: users won't be able to say so, because missing icons mean you can't answer the questionnaire.
Post this article to
Post your comment
Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website
