In an scathing review of Stephen Carter’s “Digital Britain” interim report – Reporting behind closed doors – technology columnist Bill Thompson noted how difficult it is for the digerati to comment back on the report:
The widespread coverage has certainly provided a rich source of suggestions, comments, ideas and critical reviews to feed into the next stage of the process.
Unfortunately for those who lack access to mainstream media outlets like newspapers and broadcasters or their associated websites, there is no easy way to respond directly to its author. The report website has no information at all on how to make a contribution, and you’ll have to read through 72 pages of the report before you find a suggestion that “organisations or individuals interested in joining the discussion should register their interest at digitalbritain@berr.gsi.gov.uk”
Apparently the Digital Britain team will follow up these expressions of interest, which is nice of them, and we must just hope that Carter and his expert panel will be carefully reviewing every blog post and online comment to ensure they don’t miss anything important.
But it doesn’t have to be this way, as the some of the consultation initiatives coming out of DIUS show (Public Policy Engagement with Commentariat).
So a couple of days ago I posted the following tweet:
And I got this reply…
…which was quickly followed by this one…
And now, two evenings (incl. a rather late night, last night), a lunchbreak and morning coffee later, Joss has writetoreply.org up and running (I got in the way not getting Daily Feeds working;-), a commentpress site for commenting on public documents.
And the first report to be hosted there? Digital Britain – The Interim Report, of course:-)
So if you want to comment on the report, as @billt surely does, head over to http://writetoreply.org/ now and follow the link for the Digital Britain, Interim Report; or go there directly: Digital Britain, Interim Report on writetoreply.org.
We can’t guarantee that anyone who actually produced the report will read the comments, of course, but there is a comment feed for them to subscribe to if they want to;-)
OUseful.Info, the blog... 
That’s a lovely piece of work. It really demonstrates that we in Government really don’t control or even host the discussion these days, particularly on technology and information policy.
Publish something badly, and people will do their own thing to make their voices heard.