Democratic Deficit workshop - a thank you from the Presiding Officer

I would like to thank all the bloggers and hyperlocal journalists who attended the #DemDef focus group on 5 Feb. You are playing a very important role in the National Assembly for Wales’s campaign to address the democratic deficit in Wales - a democratic deficit that I believe is caused by the failure of the UK media, and large sections of the traditional Welsh media, to properly relay the work of the Assembly to their audiences. The Assembly wants to engage with new media and digital platforms in order to plug this deficit and get information, about the Assembly’s work, to the people of Wales. Last summer I hosted a conference with Welsh digital and community media platforms, to discover how we could work with them. One of the key points that came up was the need for more open data. This focus group is the start of the process of making the Assembly’s data more accessible. We are currently refreshing our website and Senedd TV (our video streaming channel) and we want bloggers, hyperlocal news sites, community radio and TV channels to feed into this process. Lots of interesting and innovative ideas were raised in the focus group and the Assembly’s web and ICT team will now look and developing them further. Some of the key areas that were looked at included:

• Putting the users at the centre of our website provision
• Making Senedd TV more accessible
• Using RSS feeds, and how bloggers can use them to get information from us

This session is not the end of the process. I am aiming to host a bigger event in the summer where we hope to discuss some of the improvements we are planning to make to our website and other online channels, and listen to more ideas about how we could make further improvements. For details about this event and to keep up with all developments in the #DemDef campaign follow @AssemblyWales.