Podnosh

Surgeons and patients at February's surgery at thestudio

We’ve just booked up three new dates for the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgeries – April 7, May 6 and June 8 – with the lovely people at thestudio, in Cannon Street, off New Street.

It’s great news, because we’ve been able to extend our original arrangement where we get the space in thestudio for free. It seems that the management at thestudio is quite happy with it, too – as long as we remember to buy a few drinks at the bar and clear off at 7pm, as we’re supposed to. We’ll issue reminders for these events closer to the dates, but if you’re looking for the next surgery it will be on March 9.

Have a look here for more details.

These are my links for February 14th through February 15th:

• Richard Sambrook: Big Thinker | Big Thinkers – Transparency is the new objectivity
  Balance used to be the watchword of the regulated UK news environment
  Now that is not enough. Trust is built through transparency.
  This can be liberating and it means “showing your workings”- as you did when doing maths at school- and admitting mistakes.
• Council newspapers: Revealed – the people who believe what’s written in them « David Higgerson – David Higgerson chewing over the problem of council publishing things that pass as newspapers "the councillors were praising themselves for the way they dealt with the snow – citing evidence from Lambeth Life. That’s a newspaper run by the council."
• The €4 Million Govt website that you never heard of « Damien Mulley – In a single sentence: 4M quid spent, no stats on usage.
• Federal Agency Ideascale Dashboard – Very neat – I especially like the bit which says which departments are short on ideas and could do with a little love. "To satisfy the Open Government Directive agencies are soliciting your ideas on how to make them more transparent, participatory, collaborative and innovative"
• Google Buzz: Not fit for purpose – Really detailed post on the many flaws with Google Buzz: "I have enough problems managing my email already, I don’t need Buzz to add to the cognitive load".

These are my links for September 7th through September 9th:

• DC App Store – Wonderful.
• Birmingham Post – News – West Midlands News – Birmingham City Council website goes live at last – The most disappointing comment I have ever read from a council employee: "How many of our residents are actually interested in council meetings?". I am. This from the man behind Birmingham city council's £2.8 million pound website devamp. The person who said it, Glyn Evans, director of business transformation at the council.
• Newsquest give power to the public with a set of hyper-local blogs, but have they thought out potential problems with the news model? « How to microblog in high heels – Hanah Waldram reflects on the problems of news organisations wanting to use content from hyper local blogs without thinking through either payment or protection.
• Public Strategist » Blog Archive » Innovating innovation – Part 1 – Really useful reflections on innovation in government: "There is little point saying smugly to a hard pressed operational manager that if only they stepped back from the day to day pressures they could switch to a radically better way of doing things. There may well be a radically better way – but the stepping back may be an insuperable obstacle."
• Copyright, enforcement and the creative industries: keeping ahead of the game in the 21st Century Economy | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – Minister David Lammy talking to Americans about copyright: "more than 6 months of consultation showed me the critics are right about one thing. The mechanisms by which copyright operates are too complex. Licensing, rights clearance, getting permission to use works… these are all being challenged by the Internet and consumer expectations."

These are my links for September 4th through September 6th:

•   Google Wave as the future of citizen consultation by Michele Ide-Smith – "At the moment consultation processes in local government are generally still fairly archaic and ‘having your say’ might mean filling out a survey or attending a public meeting, exhibition or focus group."
• Why town and parish councils are important #nalcconf09 #localgovweb – Paul Geraghty sticks his neck out – Great piece from Paul: Town and parish council websites should be the aggregators of all local information "Town and parish councils are neither cash-rich nor tech-savvy, so the only way they are they going to be able to swim in these streams is if they can develop and adopt a shared code base, using the SAAS (Software as a service) model to make a tool which – thanks to "place" (location) – unlocks data feeds from around the web."
• Are you taking the mick? « Talk About Local – Humour in community activity: "next time you’re met with local plans, politics or problems that would be funny if they weren’t so angering, perhaps just try highlighting the funny. Point out the silly and match it."
• Promising Practices in Online Engagement | Public Agenda – "For those who believe that citizens deserve the best possible opportunities to become partners in problem-solving, the public cannot be viewed just as an audience to politics or merely as customers of government. Instead, the public should be treated as a vital resource for effective problem-solving and community-building." via @simonwakeman
• What really needs to change? « Co-creating an open declaration on public services 2.0 – Co creating an European e-government manifesto: "the aim of the above is to pull together a clear focused group of ideas that on the one hand, people can identify with (i.e. be able to say: “yes, I support that!”) and on the other, give a clear message to governments and a clear standard against which their response (and actions) can be judged."

Above is Sarah Lay from Derbyshire County Council talking about her recent experience of using social media to tell the story of  the council elections of 4th June 2009.  As SOCITM the organisations which represents the folk who run council websites, puts it:

County Councils saw their web traffic double last Friday and Saturday thanks to their provision of a sophisticated online election results service coupled with use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and email alerts.

Sarah describes how the council announced the results straight onto twitter (followers trebled), plus offering an election map and a virtual council chamber.  They also used a Facebook fan page (yes 74 people claimed themselves fans of a local election) where people were able to have their own conversation about the results.

In effect they by-passed mainstream media.   This system treats journalists just the same as any other citizen, offering us all the same information at the same time and space to talk about it.   However this is also good news for journalism, because it allows the professionals to spend increasingly precious time checking for truth and getting to the bottom of the implications of the election, rather than simply shoveling fact.

Sarah has written in much more detail on her own blog.  In the first of two posts, on election day itself, she wrote with great passion about preparations:

All of this has been going on for a number of months (not full time) and has been a learning curve and exciting project for this team to get into. For the first time we have had a significant presence internally in promoting and reporting on elections. It’s provided an opportunity for us to raise awareness of our work internally and work with colleagues in other departments to enable everything to happen.
Our results system will hopefully be the jewel in the crown of what we’ve done so far. We won’t know until the dust settles tomorrow and we have some feedback from Derbyshire voters, councillors, other officers and colleagues in the public sector who are kind enough to take the time to have a look.

After the elections she said:

I am still a little emotionally charged from the adrenalin of working at such pressure yesterday and giddy with the joy of how well our team worked together on the day and in the run up. Now we just need to decide what to tackle next!

Simon Wakeman at Medway Council was one of a number of people who gave support and encouragement to Derbyshire and other councils embarking on this path. He has written about how a variety of local authorities used the social web on election night.  Also on Sarah’s list of supporters was Al Smith in Newcastle.

All the above was recorded at the truly wonderful localgovcamp, held here at Fazeley Studios in Brum

These are my links for June 16th through June 19th:

• Helpful Technology – New Ministry new website – From idea to live site took less than 72 hours, including signoffs – a thoroughly enjoyable collaboration between former DIUS and BERR people, led by Neil.
• The Guardian’s tool to crowdsource MPs’ expenses data: time to play | Online Journalism Blog – So here’s The Guardian’s crowdsourcing tool for MPs’ expenses. If you’ve not already, you should have a play: it’s a dream. There are over 77,000 documents to get through – and in less than 24 hours users have gone through over 50,000 of those. You wonder how long it took The Telegraph to get that far.
• Birmingham Social Media Cafe – Flick to page 29 of this month’s copy of Wired UK and you’ll see we got a mention as part of an article looking at free-form workplaces. Which was very nice of them.

  The next meet-up is on 10am to midday, Friday 26 June downstairs at the Coffee Lounge. Feel free to just turn up on the day but it’d be nice if you could sign up on one/all of:

• Councils of the country unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! « Policy and Performance – The essence is that councils challenge and help each other to help them get out of difficulties or ideally prevent it before it happens. We do a lot of that already through peer challenge and review, mentoring and ‘loaning’ staff to authorities in trouble. However, taking this to the next level where it’s not just a ‘nice to do’ but the whole of local government is committed to it, is a major challenge.
• BBC – The Editors: Social media in Iran – What really stands out is the range of sources, voices and angles to be looked into. There's no hierarchy: everything's on merit, and there is of course a new set of challenges for our staff – chiefly editorial challenges, as well as a kind of chase as social media services appear and disappear in what The Times' Judith Evans describes as "an electronic game of cat and mouse".

These are my links for June 9th through June 13th:

• Local Works | Campaigning to implement the Sustainable Communities Act – You can only use the radical new bottom-up powers in the Sustainable Communities Act if your councils (district/borough/city and county) choose to use it too! See the map and list below for those who have. If your councils have not already done so please write to them (and urge others to write too!), this sample letter will help you.
• The Open Rights Group – But with Lord Carter departing, there is a serious question as to whether the government will push the Digital Britain agenda forward at all. Who will pick up the brief; will they support and desire the completion of its recommendations; will they be able to build up the political will to see any proposals through Parliament, especially as its mood darkens?
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Web creator job 'beyond politics' – The inventor of the world wide web has been asked by the prime minister to help open up access to government data.
• I smell a government rat in my news | Online Journalism Blog – To help you measure the amount of government-funded journalism, Nicolas Kayser-Bril built this little app, I smell a government rat in my news. Just type in any query and you’ll see the share of articles produced with state funds.
• Peregrine Falcons – Worcester Webcam – Great work from Worcester City Council to engage public interest and establish broader positive relations with folk.

To find the Digital Britain interim report click on this image

Earlier this week Jon Hickman asked me to say a few things at the Digital Britain unconference in Birmingham.  He wanted me to share some opening thoughts about the interim reports 5th objective:

Developing the infrastructure, skills and take-up to enable the widespread online delivery of public services and business interface with Government.

An overview of the entire mornings conversation is here, but I wanted to share my thoughts.

This objective, “to develop the infrastructure skills and take up to enable the widsespread online delivery of public services and business interface with government” appears to almost entirely about refining ane ecnouraging online transactions.  It suggests that the ambition is to use the net to govern more efficiently. That is unquestionably important but it ignores how the web can and will shift our democratic relationships, allowing self organising citizens to ignore, short circuit, or improve how we govern or  self govern.  Core to this is ensuring that we all are able to effectively publish (rather than simply consume) online, should we wish to do so.  This democratic shift is also being accelerated by the problems being faced by the big cultural and media organisations which Digital Britain as a report appears to be attempting to save.

Digital Britain says very little that seems relevant to this democratic shift. A couple of things that it mentions which are tangental are:

1 Safety: “We want to make the UK the safest place to do business online”.  Who’s going to argue with that? It will make us more likely to use the web to relate to government and take part in civic activity, won’t it?

Well it may not.  The safest place to do business online could also be the most controlled and closed down.  If that is the route we go then democracy baby and democracy bathwater will be scootling down the drain together. (Byron Report )

The report also appears to cling to a shadow of the unworkable idea of a film classification type service (” clear and effective labelling to help people avoid material likely to be harmful or offensive”) and adds “There should be a clearer role for trusted brands that provide a guarantee of the nature of the content that may be accessed through their product (e.g. the approach Apple has taken to making available applications that run on iPhone).”  Apple do this because they have found a funding stream around applications. Which “trusted brands” can make that happen with public content?

2 National Digital Literacy Plan. This is the other directly relevant bit: “We will only reap the benefits of becoming a digital nation if we ensure that everyone has access to the right education, skills and digital media literacy programmes to ensure that being digital is within the grasp of everyone.”

Yes is the simple answer to that.  Please though don’t make this a digital media literacy national curriculum which will date before it’s finished.  For this to work you have to find a mature balance between digital media literacy, learning and safety.

So I found two things in the report relevant to the issue of the net and democracy.  This led me, by way of  starting a conversation, to raise these additional points:

1 Should we stop existing IT projects which could stifle digital media literacy. Anything which is overly safe and overly cautious is likely to hamper our progress as a digitally literate nation. For example learning portals for schools etc – are they going to help or hinder? Do they really encourage rich informal learning and the sort of free flowing collaborations skills which will give us an economic advantage? (answers to this below please!)

2 Transparency isn’t mentioned. Transparent appears only once. Transparency will be the core media virtue in the future, replacing others such as impartiality.  Transparency is how we hold publishers and politicians to account. What does transparency mean?  Could there be principles to describe transparency which can then form the basis for a new set of standards against which online activity can be measured?

3 Talk to the folks next door. Whilst I was ranting on about how the people who wrote Digital britain didn’t seem to have read the Power of Information stuff Dave Harte did a quick search of the document to find no mention of the Power of Information Taskforce.   Unh.

My twoppenorth as an opener.  An overview of the entire mornings conversation is here with recordings of it all from the marvellous Rhubarb Radio.  Aggregations of national conversation on twitter at #dbuc09. Thanks to Nat and Julia at www.aquila-tv.com for organising and BillT for the original idea. Notes form the Manchester Event are here.  BTW Recasting the Net looks like another postive contribution to this conversation.

• Journalism.co.uk :: New Northcliffe hyperlocal sites will combine ’social networking and news’ – The next generation of Northcliffe’s local news sites will combine citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style networking, the publisher has said.
• Journalism.co.uk :: CN Group to trial revenue share with ‘community correspondents’ – The correspondents will receive 25 per cent of any revenue generated by the sites, which varies between properties. Sites carrying at least five adverts will pay around £80 a month, Nick Turner, CN Group’s head of digital content development, told the Digital Editors Network meeting yesterday.
• BBC NEWS | Politics | Peer turns fire on BBC presenter – Transparency is exciting. two public servants argue about what is right – one a journalist, the other a politician
• Government invites bids for a share of £20 million to fund adult learning – Organisations can bid for a share of £20 million in Government cash from today to open up and promote informal learning for adults and young people across the country.
• Carnegie UK Trust – Democracy & Civil Society – Civil Society Commission – The distinctive roles that civil society associations play in creating safe spaces for meaningful deliberation where difference can be articulated and acknowledged.
  The relationships between civil society associations and media.
  The marginalisation of dissent – with a focus on relationships between UK and global civil society.

Screenshot from The Straight Choice website

The Straight Choice website is a place where anyone can upload any election leaflet delivered to them, so we can all keep track of what the parties are saying and whether it is true:

Election leaflets are one of the main weapons in the fight for votes in the UK. They are targeted, effective and sometimes very bitter. We need your help to photograph and map them so we can keep an eye on what the parties are up to, and try to keep them honest.

It has been put together by 3 very fine people:  Julian Todd who wrote Public Whip with Francis Irving, which became the input for mySociety’s TheyWorkForYou.com. In 2007 he made undemocracy.com which applied the same idea to the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. Richard Pope was also behind the Planning Alerts project, Groups Near You and StreetWire. He has a track record on this sort of site from the 2005  Election Memory project to record and publicise manifestos of the different parties in the Lambeth local elections. Francis Irving has also done substantial work on mySociety’s WhatDoTheyKnow.com. Great Job.