Podnosh

I do like the idea behind this new web service from the Department of Communities and Local Government which tells you about your Local Area Agreement.
Local Area Agreements (LAA) are negotiated between a local council (plus the local strategic partnership, like BeBirmingham) and central government. Together they create a list of key improvements and sign a three year deal to hit some key targets – that’s the LAA. Every local authority will have a different set of priorities – Birmingham will include tackling gun crime, Boscombe wont.

This new website uses a map to help us find out what the priorities are for where we live. This is good. In the simple sense information empowers people. If I know what the council or police force’s priorities are I can negotiate with them better. I can improve the way I influence them. I can also decide whether to challenge those priorities and make the case for new priorities. It all helps focus and clarify the conversation between citizen and those who serve the citizen.
So the principal is great but execution has shortcomings. First of all the information isn’t very usable. If I go to the Birmingham part of the site I can’t create a permanent link to this information. Instead I get the link which generates the data from the database:

http://www.localpriorities.communities.gov.uk/LAAResults.aspx

This means that a local newspaper or a local community group can’t link to the Birmingham part of the site to share with others what the targets are for the neighbourhood. Without permanent links the whole web service is based on the assumption that people will come to your site rather than the more realistic idea of letting your information go to where they are on the web.

Next the information lacks detail.

It tells me Birmingham has 35 targeted priorities. I have to presume they are not listed in any order of importance. For example NI (national indicator?) 001 tells me that we have a target called “% of people who believe people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area”. What it doesn’t say is what that percentage is in Birmingham at the moment and or the percentage we’re trying to achieve. Likewise NI 154 tells me nothing more than one of Birmingham’s 35 agreed priorities is called: “Net additional homes provided”. That’s it. No more place specific detail.

Is this a question of time? Will the extra information about specific numbers for Birmingham be added? If not why not? If so how is this happening?
The whole process could be streamlined if individual local authorities have their own login to add the specifics of their targets.
They could further update it when/if those targets have been met. They could add links to evidence of the achievement, whether text, video or audio. Alongside that residents could leave their comments, a little like public comments on parliamentary debates on TheyWorkForYou. Local residents, newspapers, businesses and communities group could also keep track of this and share it if you provided an rss feed for every local authorities set of targets.

The information could also be used to create a game or competition to encourage local authorities to keep the data refreshed. Politicians like to keep track of who’s on top. They might even respond to a widget which rings a bell every time a target is hit – either in their region, or nationally.

One last thing – it isn’t really local enough. Many people don’t know which local authority area they live in. If we want everyone to easily access the LAA priorities then a postcode or map based search system would be better – integrating perhaps google maps with the site. This is something already done by others (notably mysociety with fixmystreet), so technically is now quite straightforward.
The bulk of these things would be relatively easy to do through ning or perhaps wordpress multiuser – all on the same url as now.

To sum up it’s a good idea but I can’t see many people finding it very useful in its current form.

Recruitment for government jobs is a great opportunity to demonstrate how letting data free can improve the quality of government. Why do I start with such a blunt statement. This post pointed me to the growing discussion here on Tom Watson’s site about how recruitment in government might be given the Power of Information (pdf) Task Force treatment.

Some thoughts:

Treat all jobs for public bodies as your data set.

Don’t get distracted by a big recruitment website. A number of comments suggest a single jobs.gov.uk website. The opportunity here comes from allowing information about jobs to flow into all the little cracks of the web, to be placed under the eyeballs of those with the skills, knowledge, passion and ideas to be brilliant at the jobs. This does not mean we necessarily need a single website where all government vacancies are presented. However we would need a mechanism for standardising information about vacancies and attaching that to a myriad of rss feeds. To do that we might require something on the web where jobs are submitted… How about a government jobs equivalent of flickr - where descriptions etc can be reasonably standardised, those submitting the jobs can add them to groups they think are relevant, tag them as they see fit but critically important others can further group and tag the jobs. Obviously all tags, groups etc should have their own rss feeds to allow sites across the web to bring the jobs to the attention of their niches.

Social media requires social objects. Can the culture of writing job ads change so they become more of a social object, encouraging people to share them around the web? With that in mind services which widgetise government jobs and make them embed-able should be encouraged. (Did I just write widgetise a government job! Wince.)

Geotag. Place is also a niche. Almost everybody has a geographical constraint on where they will work so all jobs should be geotagged. (imagine how developers/economic regeneration experts/community advocates etc might use such data. Think of the opportunities for schools/colleges/adult ed to monitor required skills and meet them).

Crowd Source Job Descriptions/Person Specs. Most work cultures suffer from recruiting the type of worker they already understand to fill roles they already recognise. The government jobs version of flickr could also be used to seek suggestions of what skills would be needed to solve particular problems. Before recruiting pop up a description of what needs to be achieved (tagged etc) and ask people what type of person could nail that. Sort of a recruitment sandbox.

Don’t stifle competition for employees. Government departments, NHS trusts, local councils should be encouraged to present jobs on their own websites in their own context. It’s partly there that they begin selling themselves to potential employees and this competition should be encouraged, not hampered.

One final thought is that a single rss feed containing all government jobs would be political dynamite, a satirists Nirvana.

This extract on skating over ideas and invest in some deeper thinking comes from a speech to new graduates at The Pacific Northwest College of Art. Susan S Szenasy , editor of the Metropolis Magazine told the students:

As artists and communication designers you can choose to be the
outriders of society. Like the scouts in the old western films, you can
be in the position of surveying the horizon and alerting the rest of us
to the dangers and surprises ahead. But I worry about you. I worry that
while you have evolved the use of your thumbs to work at phenomenal
speeds, you are not as interested in developing the habits you need to
accumulate knowledge, knowledge that can inform your vision as artists.
I mean knowledge of the world—science, literature, and
history—knowledge of the great contributions others are making or have
made to our rich understanding of humanity and the earth which gives us
life.
It is not enough to find information instantly and use it
opportunistically to support your argument. To be able to analyze and
synthesize you need to delve deeply into a subject, build up your
understanding incrementally, and own that knowledge. Own it, so you can
call it up when you need it, without turning to your PDA, and use your
amazing brain-power to interpret what you know when critical analysis
is needed. What I’m asking of you is what I have always asked of
myself: To be endlessly curious about everything, to search for facts
when you need them, but more importantly, to search for ideas and
meaning. Read a book, look at a building or a landscape, drink it all
in—make it your own.

For more read here. Hat tip to Canufluck.

When I speak to council officers and civil servants about community engagement the conversation often conjures up mental images of docking space stations.

The officers are sincerely trying to picture interesting ways to approach the community, connect with it, create an airlock where they and the community can talk and then back into their own orbiters, reseal the doors, flush out the airlocks and return to business.

The conversation is so often based on the assumption that ’services’ are separate from the people they serve. They have things to get on with regardless of what the folk around them do. The service is in its own orbit and conversation with the community is a nicety, not a necessity.

This mind set is riddled with contradictions which were exposed at last weeks fab Comunities & Local Government meeting to discuss social media and the forthcoming Community Empowerment White Paper.

The reason why this view perpetuates is because services are rarely delivered by the community they are intended to serve. They are rarely delivered by those who are already ‘engaged’. As one of the participants so elegantly put it – the government is trying to retail services when it should step back and structure itself as the wholesale part of the delivery chain. That would create huge opportunities for empowerment in the people led retails sector.

Of course local government has always been part of the retail arm of central government and increasingly local government is looking to create neighbourhood operations to push the retailing closer to the ground.

But these are organisations that still have a very different culture, or perhaps atmosphere from the groups of people they are designed to help. And until that atmosphere is breathable by both the service and served we will continue to dock when we should be engaged.

See Also:

Dan McQuilan’s excellent post on how the social web will make greater empowerment inevitable, the questions for government is how to relate to it.

Dave Briggs explanation of how social media will do this.

A chance to buy cards and support North Birmingham Community Arts biscuit buying. (Contact nbca@blueyonder.co.uk) Reminds me a little of graphiquillan’s Misheard Birmingham badges.

This piece by Stephen Fry in defense of the BBC is well worth a read:

What is the alternative, a ghettoised, balkanised electronic bookshop
of the home, no stations, no network, just a narrowcast provider
spitting out content on channels that fulfil some ghastly and wholly
insulting demographic profile: soccer mum, trailer trash, teenager,
gay, black music lover, Essex girl, sports fan, bored housewife, all
watching programmes made specifically for them with ads targeting them.
Is that what we mean by inclusivity? Is that what we mean by plurality?
God help us, I do hope not.

Part of Ofcoms investigation into public service broadcasting.

After the suspension of a civil servant for blogging Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson has finally got some guidelines up to help civil servants join the online conversation. They are based on the civil service code and a big conversation which was encouraged by Tom on his blog and evolved into Richard Allan’s task force on the Power of Information. I like the simplicity and clarity. For me the advance is number 3 “Be Responsive”. Encourage constructive criticism is good but is also going to exercise some civil service structures and perhaps liberate others:

1 Be credible: Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.

2 Be consistent: Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.

3 Be responsive When you gain insight, share it where appropriate.

4 Be integrated: Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.

5 Be a civil servant: Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.
Other feedback from bits of the web:Brilliant in their simplicity.

It is good.

To be applauded.

Woo Hoo!.

This is a big step indeed.

Some sense of security for those already blogging.

Dave Briggs has done an excellent job of tracking the pending demise of the Lichfield based ICELE: the International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy.

A while ago I wrote about frustrations with organisations who wanted to get people blogging (great) yeh) but always on constrained platforms of their own making (which of course are likely to get switched off when the funding runs out). This included frustrations with ICELE’s VOICE platform. As a model this is not as sustainable as encouraging people to self publish using readily available web tools. Yes blogger could go bump or wordpress run out of steam, typepad might find itself in six stages of separation from a viable business model – but all of them at once?

Dave has done really well to find himself with a full statement as a comment on his blog post from Dylan Jeffrey who’s overseen ICELE for Communities and Local Government. Go here to read the whole thing. Let me quote a key bit.

I recognise that ICELE has taken forward the work of several
components of the local e-Government programme including the Local
e-Democracy National Project and disseminated these through your award
winning website. In addition, ICELE has won some European funding to
enhance understanding and good practice around eParticipation and
ensured that assistance to local authorities has been available on the
complex issue of local e-democracy when required.

However when ICELE was established, CLG gave a commitment of funding
up to 31 March 2008 with a key objective for the Centre to “build a
model for long-term sustainability beyond the programme life-span”.
Regrettably, sustainability has not been demonstrated despite the
successful bids for EU grants.

My Department remains committed to encouraging the use of ICT for
empowerment in partnership with others to facilitate and enhance local
democracy. As part of the Government’s work on the forthcoming
Community Empowerment White Paper, we are actively considering how best
to utilize new technologies to support community empowerment. ICELE has
been very active in responding to recent consultations on a number of
issues linked to the forthcoming White Paper and these have been
gratefully received. However, in looking at this broad agenda, we have
to assess the value, sustainability and potential benefits that other
organisations could also offer in taking forward the work in this area.

So the real criticism of ICELE in the statement is that the model was not sustainable. Paul Canning is cross partly because he thinks closing ICELE is a waste of money already invested:

How many millions has been wasted? On this and countless other now dead and buried ‘resources’?
As I have commented ad nauseum, it’s not like there aren’t numerous overseas models ready to copy.

What next for the web and Community Empowerment?

That process of figuring other ways to use the social web to strengthen communities and strengthen local democracy is already underway. On Thursday a number of us (including Paul Bradshaw, David Wilcox, Dave Briggs, Dominic Campbell and Steve Bridger) are getting together with Simon Berry as part of his secondment to Communities and Local Government to see what steps we think should come next and what that might mean for this summers Community Empowerment White Paper.

So what do you reckon?

• Think 5 years ahead. What tools will be most easily available and how will be people use them to empower themselves, shape their communities, shape the public services in their neighbourhoods?
• What will this mean for government, how can government (mostly local) influence this process, take part in it, encourage it.
• What habits will stifle it and can they be stopped?

Just read this:

http://beamends.typepad.com/simons_blog/2008/06/notes-of-the-fi.html

I love the ways bit of social web are now popping up all over the place. Paul Bradshaw alerted me to this Chicago site which also has this Birmingham site as an off shoot – as a means of describing sister cities. Included are some simple audio portraits of Brummies. Yes!