Parliament has been historically very risk-averse and slow to implement technology solutions

Pretty incredible to see it now committing to entirely virtual chamber in a matter of weeks (1/6) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/01/uk-set-up-virtual-parliament-during-coronavirus-shutdown

This is also a great opportuntiy to make Parliament more open: from helping to improve data collection and accessibility of Parliamentary information (e.g. sessional returns) to better, more visual, approaches to presenting and sharing evidence in Select Committees (2/6)

Contrary to what some are saying about massive, chaotic Zooms calls, the move online could also make Parliament more responsive and efficient

Think back to indicative votes by pen and paper last year... (3/6)

With all MPs online, the House should trial approaches to mapping debates visually, in real-time. This would be a much more efficient way of finding key points of division or common ground, and would be a useful supplement to video where only 1 person can talk at a time (4/6)

There are lots of open-source tools @ParliDigital could adopt for this. Wikisurveys offer potential (5/6)

https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/crowdsourcing-democracy-using-wikisurveys/

@allourideas @UsePolis

Finally, and to state the obvious: any tech Parliament adopts should reflect the principles which underpin our democracy.

It should be open to scrutiny and adaptable, as well as privacy-preserving (that is, no quid pro quo for observing or participating). (6/6)

Anything to learn from similar experiments or Parliaments elsewhere @NicoleDNisbett @andy_williamson @andsalexandra ?