Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Weblogs for Representatives I missed this news item a couple of months ago.  I think it's a great step forward for interactive democracy and provides legislators with a great tool to share their ideas and actions with their constituents: The Portuguese parliament has approved the creation of ‘weblogs’ for all its representatives. A weblog (or ‘blog’) is a personal website that uses a dated log format and is updated on a daily or very frequent basis with new information about a particular subject or range of subjects. The information can be written by the site owner, gleaned from other websites or other sources, or contributed by users. From the next parliamentary term onwards, members of the Portuguese Assembly (Assembleia da República – AR) will have the option to create and host blogs as part of AR’s website. The proposal was approved unanimously shortly after Portugal’s State of the Union debate took place on 6/7/03. According to its promoters, the blogging proposal will take advantage of AR’s infrastructure and allows each member of the Assembly to inform the public about their parliamentary activity. Plans are already being mooted for the creation of a style guide for the blogs. 7:02:44 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.