March 2011 – Page 2 – Dave Briggs

Collecting stories of interactive government

March 15, 2011

As mentioned previously, I’m writing a book. The best books, apparently, have good stories – and so I need some good stories.

At the same time, I’m seeing loads of requests for examples of effective use of the web, social media and other related stuff in public services. What’s needed is a nice resource full of good stories…

Back in the day, I ran a little event in Peterborough called ReadWriteGov. It was meant to be one of many, but that didn’t really happen. I’ve been sat on the domain since, wondering what to do with it.

So what I have decided to do is to start collecting stories of interactive government – the most comprehensive description I can come up with for using cool internet stuff in public services.

Right now, there’s not a lot there, except for a link to a survey. If you have a great example of use of digital engagement in public services, please fill it in!

(Yes, I know it’s SurveyMonkey. But it was quick, and easy.)

Maybe you have managed an awesome council FaceBook page. Perhaps your youth service website rocks. It could be that you ran a superbly integrated public safety campaign.

It could be internal or external. One organisation or several in partnership. It could be a time limited project, or ongoing work. You could be a council, central government department, a quango, a police service, a fire and rescue service, part of the health sector or a community group delivering a service.

Whatever it is, as long as it has a connection with public services and online innovation, I want to know about it!

What I will then do is read through what you’ve send, write it up as a case study for publication on the proper site (once it’s done). I’ll send you a copy for checking first, so don’t worry.

This way we will build up a high quality collection of great examples of digital engagement, with the associated learning, all accessible online. All the content will be categorised and tagged, so you can find stuff easily, and we’ll keep the comments turned on, so conversations can take place about the stories.

Also, I’ll take the best of the stories, phone the authors up for a chat, maybe visit them, and then re-write them for inclusion in my book.

Again, here’s the survey link. Please complete it if you can, or if not, pass it on.

Thanks!

Council e-petitions

March 14, 2011

Just after Christmas I wrote a quick post about the prospect of e-petitions for Parliament.

Of course, local councils are also supposed to have their own e-petitions systems and processes.

My own local council, South Holland, has a system in place (the MySociety one) but sadly it doesn’t look like anybody has created a petition on it just yet. We must be a very content lot in south Lincs!

On the Communities of Practice, there’s a dedicated group for e-petitions, ably facilitated by Fraser Henderson. In a recent blog post (sign in required), Fraser notes that quite a few authorities don’t provide an e-petition facility on their website, despite encouragement from central government (it’s no longer a mandated requirement).

He also notes that there is an independent study going on to assess how e-petitioning is being used – it will be interesting to see the results.

In the meantime, Team DavePress (ie me and @davebriggswife) are quickly scanning the web for e-petitioning activity. We’re collating what we are finding in this Google spreadsheet.

At the time of writing, there’s not much data in there yet. However, it’s apparent that e-petitioning hasn’t exactly set the local democracy world alight just yet. Many councils have apparently not had a single petition submitted!

Why might this be?

One reason is that even when councils are providing an e-petitions facility, they aren’t exactly promoting it that heavily. In a number of cases, the e-petitions page is hidden in the website navigation. So people aren’t using the facility because they don’t know it’s there, or they can’t find it.

I suspect though that the bigger issue is that petitions, e- or otherwise, are not not that great a way to do local democracy. It’s a fairly blunt instrument, and of course they tend to identify and problem and provide a solution in one go. What if you agree there’s an issue, but think the proposed idea in a petition sucks?

I’d have thought something a bit more deliberative would be of more use. E-petitions strike me as a bit shouty, and as we all know, the web is all conversational these days.

Gov’s role in local digital ecosystems

March 14, 2011

Many thanks to Will Perrin from Talk About Local, who basically did my job for me in a comment on my last post about local digital communities and economies.

The thrust of my post was that having a lively digital community in a local area is a good thing, which can benefit various bits of society.

Here’s Will’s advice for what public sector organisations should do if they want to help foster this community locally:

don’t host your own platform. this often puts the effort and spend in what is often the wrong bit of the organisation (the IT bit), retains ownership and thus legal liability, layers in cost and medium term hassle and also cramps people’s style
equally don’t present local people with fait accompli site on wordpress.com and expect them to use it – you will be much more successful taking the time to help them make their own site
let people find their own voice – find local people to get involved who have something to say and a burning need to communicate, this keeps them going as they run into problems.
be prepared to take some time over this – there’s no set formula as to who will make a good local site. be prepared to fail quite a few times before you find the right people in the right roles
don’t assume web means young people – the average person we train has grey hair
follow the audience and increasingly thing Facebook first, even though it is inflexible and fiddly. marry a facebook page or group up with an external wordpress.com blog that is linked.

This is great advice, particularly for the community and voluntary sector, where groups with a shared passion for an issue, or a specific location, use the web as a platform for communication and cooperation.

Mandeep Hothi from the Young Foundation, who has been working on the excellent Local 2.0 initiative, also shared his learning on developing thriving local online communities on that previous post:

They [councils] really don’t want to be the ones developing community spaces. They would much rather that communities do it themselves and they are very receptive to outside agencies like TAL doing this. We’ve tried to get People’s Voice Media’s Community Reporters programme going to but couldn’t find funding, however, one of the councils has funded it themselves and another has had discussions about doing it with PVM.
The reasons for this are varied, but by and large they recognise that it is much healthier for communities/residents to own and manage blogs, social networks etc.. Some of the motivation is about risk and responsibility – they don’t want to be liable for anything and they don’t want to moderate (although they are likely to try to intervene if people slag off their service!)
Engaging through hyperlocal sites is still a challenge. Reasons include a fear of changing the tone of online spaces, but also a legitimate fear of misrepresenting (or not knowing) council policy. But we have some great examples of officers engaging online (and some bad ones too…)

So that’s fairly clear. Government struggles at creating new communities online. What they can do is provide support to existing communities to help them make the most of digital – and this best done at arms length, introducing a dedicated third party service like Talk About Local.

But what about the wider point about a digitally focussed online community? As mentioned in previous posts, I’m really interested in how local startups and SMEs can play an active role. Well, just as services like Talk About Local can be introduced by a local authority, so could more local suppliers.

So if there is a training need, or a website that needs creating, local authorities ought to be looking local to develop it. Even better, by being engaged with an active local digital community, those innovative small suppliers could help shape requirements and scope, ensuring that the council, or whoever, gets the best possible solution.

It doesn’t even have to always involve money. Councils have access to other resources, such as meeting rooms, and indeed whole buildings. I love examples of where council owned properties, which for whatever reason are empty, are handed over to communities to use as meeting or co-working spaces.

I’m sure there are plenty of other great examples of how councils can support a local digital community – please do share them in the comments.

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