democracy – Dave Briggs

What do we need to be telling councillors about digital?

I’ve done a fair bit of councillor training on digital in the past. Every time it focuses on social media, digital engagement and how members can use the web to interact with the public.

It usually goes away, people have an interesting time and one or two actually start doing new stuff as a result.

However.

Right now I am not convinced that this is the most helpful thing we could be doing with councillors when it comes to digital, the internet, and technology in general.

Just as the work I have been doing recently on capability with civil servants emphasises the importance of understanding the mindset and approaches of digital ways of working, the same is also true of elected members.

After all, members – particularly those with a role on the executive in their authorities – are making decisions with digital implications all the time. They are asked to signed off digital and IT strategies. They might be asked to give their OK to a big spend on the implementation of a new system. They might be signed up to a big transformation programme with a heavy emphasis on digital ways of working.

Do they really have the capability to be making these decisions? Are they asking the right questions of officers? Can they really be held accountable for decisions made which – in al truthfulness – they possibly don’t understand?

I think this is something that needs to be looked at.

The trouble is, as anyone who has been involved in member development knows, providing ‘training’ to councillors is really hard. They are very busy people who operate in a political environment. This means they have little time, and little appetite to admitting weakness or ignorance.

So I think there is something to learn here from the top of the office coaching programme that Stephen and Jason run at DH.

This is where the eight (I think) people right at the top of the organisation get one to one coaching with digital experts once a month – an opportunity to ask questions without fear of looking silly in front of colleagues, and to really dig into what relevance digital has for them and their bit of the organisation.

I’m pretty sure something like this could work very well with councillors – matching them up with digital coaches who could give up an hour a month for (say) six months to provide answers to questions, coaching and mentoring on specific topics and being a sounding board when needed.

It would be great to get people’s thoughts on whether this is a problem that needs a solution, and whether a lightweight volunteer coaching programme would work.

Launching the DigitalCllr survey

survey I’ve been doing work with local councillors for some time now – helping them see how they can use the internet to better engage with citizens, and communicate with them too.

This takes the form of running training workshops usually. There’s probably a better way of doing it, but they are probably a bit tricky to procure.

Anyway, I’m interested in finding out where we are up to with digitally savvy elected local representatives, so I have thrown together a quick survey. The main aim to to find out what councillors are doing on the internet, and try and spread the word to their less keen colleagues about how it’s working.

So, if you are a councillor, or you know one, spread the word about the survey. Here’s the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/digitalcllr – I’ll be blogging about the results, so we can all benefit.

Youth councils – any good examples?

I’m starting to look at youth councils with a local authority, particularly in terms of how digital can improve levels of participation.

I’ve got some ideas, admittedly not youth council-centric, but rather taking stuff I’ve learned from other online engagement projects and hoping it will fit.

So I’m Googling away like mad, looking up different youth councils and some of the things they are doing online. I’ve not turned up much in the way of really innovative ideas just yet.

So, I’m turning to you, faithful readers. Seen anything good? Let me know!

Government Digital Service blog, and e-petitions

The new Government Digital Service, the part of the Cabinet Office tasked with taking forward various elements of the digital agenda in Whitehall (and beyond) has a new blog.

Very nice it is too, and anyone with an interest in online innovation in public services really ought to subscribe. Simon has some background on the blog’s setup.

Simon also refers to the first project coming out of the GDS, with involvement from the Government skunkworks team of under the radar innovators, headed up by Mark O’Neill, is the return of e-petitions to central government.

E-petitions were originally on the Number 10 website, where I used to have an awful lot of fun moderating the damn things during my stint there. Now they are on the DirectGov domain.

Interestingly, the e-petitions system is using a new system, developed in the Ruby on Rails framework, rather than using an existing project like the MySociety system, or indeed WordPress which was used by Kind of Digital’s WP guru Andrew Beeken to build a petitioning system for Lincoln Council.

One issue with the e-petitions system I picked up quickly, as did others was the fact that it now requires the user to select which is the relevant government department to deal with the petition. As Stefan writes:

An eager e-petitioner clicks the button to start the process and finds themselves with a simple form to complete. The first task is to give the petition a title. Pretty straightforward. The second is to identify the ‘Department that looks after your issue’. That’s a poser. There is a drop down list. There is a link to a page which explains which department does what. But the list is of ministerial departments and the help page gives little more than mission statements. Many of the bits of government which people have at least some understanding of don’t appear at all – there is no HMRC, no DVLA, no NHS, no Jobcentre Plus. Might a petition be appropriately directed to the Scotland Office, or should it go to the Scottish Government instead?

It sounds like this is being worked on to fix – but I’d argue this is a major barrier to participation and probably needs to be fixed if e-petitions are to have a significant impact.

I’ve written before about my view of e-petitions – they’re a blunt object and the process questions they raise are far trickier than the technological issues. One of the first petitions to be submitted was by the blogger Guido Fawkes, demanding the return of capital punishment for certain crimes.

As Anthony writes:

What will it tell us, and tell the Parliamentarians who have to then debate the issue?

That lots of people support the death penalty? We know that – most polls (though not all polls, as Guido claims) show that a little over half of people still support the death penalty, though the number has declined over the years.

That a hundred thousand people want hanging back enough to fill in an online form? What does that add to the knowledge that twenty-five million or so want it across the country?

And what if Parliament debates the issue and rejects it by a large margin (as happened in the ’80s and ’90s)? Will signers, and Guido, go away happy that the issue has been given a good airing in the democratic forum of the nation? Or will it just be used as another example of the perfidy of elected politicians in refusing to do what fifteen-hundredths of one percent of the Great British People tell them to do?

In which case, what’s the point?

Crowd sourcing ideas with WordPress

For a customer, we at Kind of Digital have been putting together a prototype system using WordPress to crowdsource ideas from the public.

We’ve done plenty of reading about previous attempts at this sort of thing, and hopefully have avoided a few of the traps that other projects of this type have fallen into.

Our system:

Is completely configurable and customisable in terms of look and feel, branding etc
Can ask for various bits of information in the idea submitting process to help structure the contributions
Allows ideas to be rated and commented on by other visitors
Displays prominent lists of the most popular and latest ideas to be submitted
All content can be pre-moderated before being published
As it’s WordPress, you can publish other content like news or blog posts and static pages with help and other information in
As it’s all open source, you can pull your data out whenever you like and host it somewhere else

Right now, we’re just tidying up the prototype. I’d share the screenshots, but the branding makes it pretty obvious who the client is, so I probably shouldn’t.

However, if anyone is interested, we’re definitely planning on making it a service we can provide to other organisations, and it’ll be pretty keenly priced.

If you’d like to know more, and maybe get a private demonstration of what we have right now, drop me a line at dave@kindofdigital.com.

Micro-participation project

We’re starting an open innovation-y project at Kind of Digital about micro-participation.

Do get involved!

Modern Councillor Webinar, 21 April 2011

With the elections on May 5 just around the corner for both English and Scottish councils, Dave and I’ll will be holding a free webinar to showcase Learning Pool’s relaunched Modern Councillor service. Modern Councillor is the online learning and support destination for councillors, people considering standing for election, or indeed anyone with a passion for local democracy.

The service has been designed with both new and more experienced elected members in mind. A subscription to Modern Councillor provides elected members with full access to a growing course catalogue for a fraction of the cost of classroom based training.

So what’s new and improved with Modern Councillor?

Brand new e-learning modules
A unique online community where councillors can connect, share and learn
Guides and resources on local democracy
Blogs and stories sections keeping you informed of the latest democracy developments

What modules are included?

Learning Pool have created Modern Councillor with help from experts in local government. This means all 14 of our e-learning modules, from Introduction to Local Government to Technology and Change, reflect the latest challenges and transformations facing councillors today. See the full list of modules.

Who does the community involve?

Alongside a suite of e-learning modules, Modern Councillor will now include an online community bringing together councillors, prospective councillors, co-opted members, local government officers, activists, and residents so that they can connect, share and learn together.

The webinar takes place on Thursday, April 21, 2011 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM BST.

With increasing budget cuts and the May elections just around the corner this is going to be an extremely popular event so register now for your free place.