OpenSpaceDevon

Carl Haggerty has launched a great initiative down in Devon:

Carl writes:

It would be great to get public sector professionals, voluntary organisations and business people involved in these areas all together and working through some of these issues and topics – Basically, i’d imagine the event to involve anyone who has an interest and passion to improve public services in general.

This is an interesting idea, and one I’m totally in agreement with. Take the format used by LocalGovCamp and other unconferences, but make it all about the geographical area. Bring together public, third and private sectors to thrash out new ways of doing things, and hopefully spark the enthusiasm needed for some of the organisational battles required to get stuff moving.

Just the sort of event I was thinking about when I wrote this post after the Lincoln LocalGovCamp.

So if you are in Devon, or just interested, pop along to the network Carl has created and join in the discussions!

LocalGovCamp Lincoln

Last Friday saw LocalGovCamp moving to Lincoln for the first of the follow up days. Learning Pool were happy to help out with some sponsorship of the event, which was marvelously organised and convened by Andrew Beeken of Lincoln City Council.

do councils need websites? #localgovcamp

The day was an enjoyable one, with plenty of interesting sessions, including one facilitated by Fraser Henderson on ePetitions – an issue I have a professional interest in – and commentable consultations by Joss Winn.

@josswinn talks commentable docs at #localgovcamp

Some great write ups of the event have already been posted up by Sarah and Andrew – and I’m sure there will be others.

The day was more obviously web focused than the Birmingham event, with many of the attendees coming from web teams. Nothing wrong with that – although the focus at times was more on making local government websites better, rather than making government better. Perhaps the fact that I have never worked on a web team means I’m a little distant from some of these conversations.

That the web will play an increasingly important role in the way councils and people interact with one another is a no-brainer. But more interesting to me than how that will work technologically is how it will fit within the culture and processes of local government – or how local government must change to fit with the new ways of working.

Another example was the session on hyperlocal blogging and local councils’ relationship with bloggers, which spent quite a bit of time discussing issues of judgements of quality and the need for editing and the relevance of the journalist in a networked society. Again, the real issue for me is the fact that outside the main urban areas, local newspapers are dying out and will continue to do so – and how will this affect the attitude local authorities have towards reputational risk, so much of which is focused not on the needs of the organisation or the people it serves but on what might appear in the local rag the next morning?

ePetitions are a good example. How hard is it to build an ePetitions system? Not very. What’s harder, and more interesting, is how you fit those ePetitions into the democratic and governance arrangements of the local authority.

This kind of ties in with the discussion on OpenSocitm about the future of the council, where I wrote the following:

I attended one of the Council of the Future sessions at the conference and found it a little unambitious. Indeed most of the things discussed were those that councils should be doing now – that many aren’t needs to be fixed, but it was hardly visionary stuff. I’m really thinking here of things like selling buildings, paperless office, EDRMS, business continuity, remote working, etc etc.

In fact, local government will be facing a crisis far worse than the current funding situation, which will be focused on staff and people. Look at the demographics of councillors – where are the next generation of people to take on the role once the current incumbents just get too old? Who will there be left vote for?

The problem is the same with officers, if not quite as bleak. There will be a massive churn in the next two years as expensive managers are pensioned off and younger, cheaper people will replace them – assuming those younger and cheaper people exist!

Perhaps this is a chance to rethink the roles played by councils and councillors – perhaps the reason why nobody is interested is because the roles are just wrong for this day and age – ties into Will Perrin’s point that government faced 21st century problems, has 21st century technology available to tackle them, but is lumbered with 19th century governance processes – and so no progress is ever made.

The things that should be discussed when the future of the council is considered should include:

  • Who delivers services – should the council be the retailer or the wholesaler of services?
  • How can councils work more closely with the private and third sectors, and community groups, in terms of carrying out its functions?
  • How can the council manage its information assets in a more open way, to encourage reuse by the community and the adding of innovative value that local gov isn’t able to provide itself?
  • How can councils become more entrepreneurial themselves to help bridge the funding gap?
  • How can customer service, communications and service design be blended into an iterative process to help make sure services deliver what users want?
  • What will the role of councillors be when nobody has the time to attend meetings in dusty town halls? Do we need to rethink the way our local democracy works?

Perhaps one framework to answer these and other questions might be to consider – if you were to start a council from scratch, right now, how would it work? What would it look like? What would you build first – an office or a website?

Am looking forward to these sorts of conversations at future events – and online, of course!

Upcoming events

I’ve got a few speaking engagements coming up, as well as other events that look like fun…

1. Developing Public Sector Communications through Social Media, 15th September, London

This is an LGC event, spending the whole day talking about how local authorities can be using social media.

My spot is part of a panel session alongside luminaries Dominic Campbell and Carl Haggerty. I’m talking blogs and podcasts.

2. Knowledge Hub Advisory Group, 17th September, London

The IDeA‘s Knowledge Hub is a game-changing project – an attempt to provide local government with some of the focus that central gov has through the Power of Information process. The Advisory Group will act as a sounding board for the project, which should be fun.

3. Learning Pool Summer Party, 23rd September, London

The annual Learning Pool summer bash will be my first, and I’m looking forward to it! If you fancy coming along, the details and the ticket thing is here. Just stick in the comments that you saw the event on here, and all will be well, I’m sure.

4. ProjectCamp, 26th September, Cheltenham

A LocalGovCamp with a project management flavour, as organised by Jon Hyde. All the details are on the dedicated online community, and signup in on a good old Google form.

5. LocalGovCamp Lincoln, 23rd October

Andrew Beekan has organised a LocalGovCamp for Lincoln in tandem with the local university, which should be wicked. Learning Pool are sponsoring this one!

6. Policing 2.0 – the Citizen and Social Media, 22 October, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry

The NPIA‘s Nick Keane has invited me to this event, to give an introductory overview to what this social media thing is, and why it might matter to the police. It should be fun, also speaking will be Sarah Drummond from MyPolice.

Get a job in local gov social media

Brighton and Hove City Council are advertising for a Social Media Officer!

You are a Facebook pro, the fastest Twitter tweeter on the planet? Do you love nothing more but connecting with folks online? Are you one step ahead of the rest of us when it comes to identifying the next Twitter, Facebook or Flickr? Brighton & Hove City Council is seeking a Social Media Officer to join our Marketing team. Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and blogs consistently rank high in search results. This new post recognises the opportunities to increase visibility, build our brand and learn about our audiences by utilising social media.

You must be an active participant in a wide variety of social media activities such as blogging, community development and management, social bookmarking, commenting, etc. and well-connected with the broader social media world. You must also be able to think strategically, but be willing and able to roll up your sleeves to help implement social media programs.

Salary is up to £28,353, closing date 14th September.

LocalGovCamb

LocalGovCamb

LocalGovCamb is the latest regional LocalGovCamp to be arranged. I’m helping put this together with Michele Ide-Smith.

There are hardly any details, really. December this year or January 2010. Somewhere in Cambridge. Theme will be local government innovation.

While the event is obviously targetted at authorities close by to Cambridge, there is no resason why folk from further afar shouldn’t attend.

Visit and bookmark http://localgovcamb.com and keep abreast of the latest information. You can also submit your interest in the event.