What do Westminster, Jordan, Hanoi and Edgbaston have in common?

The answer is that they have all been the focus for Yoosk’s approach to online conversations, gathering questions from the public for the UK’s leaders, getting the answers and enabling users to give feedback. It has been used for a variety of purposes ranging from local consultation through to public diplomacy.

During the 8 month's in which the MoJ funded projects were delivered, Yoosk has become a firmly  established player in the e-participation/government engagement space. We have attracted funding from 4IP and started to build a client base in government.

Westminster

At the national level, we have set up the first online conversation platform for Parliament, which has around 20 MPs and Lords currently signed up.

The questions are being posed to a mixture of Select Committee and All Party Parliamentary Group Chairs, as well as targeted MPs who are confident users of social media. The intention is to see where it has most impact: on constituency relations or on increasing access and understanding of the work of MPs and Lords in the Chambers and Committee rooms themselves.

The interest shown by MP's has been encouraging. Typically, it has been the excellent Jo Swinson who has led the way in using Yoosk, uploading answers directly from her webcam (see the video at the bottom of this post).

A number of reviews in the tech and media press covered its launch but it was perplexing to find no national print journalists were interested, apparently because they felt it was too small a venture. The fact that it had never been done before and obviously needed time to establish itself seemed to make no difference.

Brum

Yoosk Birmingham is reviewed in this case study , which details how we worked with the Birmingham Post and Mail to give their audience the chance to put questions directly to Birmingham City Councillors and MPs. 

We think we have hit upon a unique and very effective model that will help local councils engage more effectively with voters and which will at the same time act as an important resource for hard pressed local media.

Further afield

Yoosk FCO was the platform we set up for the Foreign Office and has been used to gather questions for David Miliband from targeted audiences in both the UK and overseas. This provides an excellent example of how dedicated Yoosk channels can be used flexibly for a variety of purposes by central government ministries and departments. More of how it works and the benefits it brings can be found in our own case study and  the FCO Digital Engagement Team's own evaluations of the Wales and Jordan engagement exercises.