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Modernising Government: No. 10 Downing Street Petitions

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk

Introduction to e-petitions

There has been a long-established tradition of members of the public presenting petitions at the door of No 10 Downing Street. The No 10 ePetitions service has been designed to offer a modern parallel to this tradition and also provide an opportunity for No 10 to respond to petitioners via email. The service allows anyone who is a UK citizen to create a petition and to collect signatures via the website.

Since the site launched in November 2006 it has been scarcely out of the headlines, capturing the attention and imagination of citizens and ministers alike. The service has so far processed 4,431,417 signatures, orginating from 3,214,070 different email addresses, across 22,336 petitions.

Most encouragingly for a government website, it was built by  mySociety on an  Open_source platform, so other governments or organisations wishing to build a similar service are welcome to copy the source code – providing they, likewise, make their code available to any such projects.

Petitions site is New Statesman award winner