For the last few months we’ve supported Birmingham City Council with their Fair Brum social inclusion process. We worked with groups and individuals to show them how they could take conversations they were having with residents of Birmingham about social inclusion over to online places, to try and engage with even more people.
We supported council staff, academics and others interested in using social media to share their stories, experiences and findings of social inclusion in Birmingham. We provided them with the skills that meant they were able to contribute to, or comment on, the process via the FairBrum blog – or on theirownsites – and tweet via their own accounts using the #fairbrum tag. We also helped create content and conversation by social reporting from some of their events.
As of 4th September 2012, we found the #fairbrum tag on Twitter has been used 1,600 times and appeared 1,591,590 times. That’s the gross number of times the #fairbrum tag has appeared in Twitter users’ timelines since the start of the process. (Yes, it’s an enormous number – we know not that many pairs of eyes have clocked it!)
Those numbers continued to rise. When we looked at the figures this morning the tag had been used a total of 2,479 times and appeared 2,170,039 times.
All this interaction, along with the findings of offline interactions, has been looked at to see what Birmingham’s needs are. As a result, a green paper was produced with recommendations on how we can work together across the city to address social inclusion.
They are all available to view, discuss and comment on, online at fairbrum.podnosh.com.
The consultation has been running for a while now. This weekend is the last chance for you to have your say, as the consultation closes on Monday, 5th November.
Follow the links above to view the groups of recommendations and click through to individual posts to add your thoughts. You can also let them know if you work for an organisation already doing what’s being recommended and add yourself to the map.
I love mysociety – their TheyWorkForYou tools have made MP’s far more accountable than before. Now they want to apply this to local fovernment and are looking for unofficial transcribers:
One of the key differences between the UK’s national parliament and its local governments is that Parliament produces a written record of what gets said – Hansard.
This practice – which has no actual legal power – still has a huge impact on successful functioning of Parliament. MPs share their own quotes, they quote things back to one-another, journalists cite questions and answers, and every day TheyWorkForYou sends tens of thousands of email alerts to people who want to know who said what yesterday in Parliament. Without freely available transcripts of Parliamentary debates, it is likely that Parliament would not be anything like as prominent an institution in British public life.
No Local Hansards
Councils, of course, are too poor to have transcribers, and so don’t produce transcripts. Plus, nobody wants to know what’s going on anyway. Those are the twin beliefs that ensure that verbatim transcripts are an exceptional rarity in the local government world.
At mySociety we think the time has come to actively challenge these beliefs. We are going to be building a set of technologies whose aim is to start making the production of written transcripts of local government meetings a normal practice.
These people could be active citizens – hyperlocal bloggers, councillors (perhaps even council officers) or just someone looking for a warm seat of an evening?
Hansard is the record of pretty much everything that gets said in Parliament. This has led to the idea that if you don’t record everything said in every session, your project is a failure. But if Wikipedia has taught us anything, it is that starting small – producing little nuggets of value from the first day – is the right way to get started on hairy, ambitious projects. We’re not looking for people willing to give up their lives to transcribe endlessly and for free – we’re looking for people for whom having a transcript is useful to them anyway, people willing to transcribe at least partly out of self interest. We’re looking for these initial enthusiasts to start building up transcripts that slowly shift the idea of what ‘normal’ conduct in local government is.
Unlike Wikipedia we’re not really talking about a single mega database with community rules. Our current plans are to let you set up a database which you would own – just as you own your blog on Blogger or WordPress, perhaps with collaborators. Maybe you just want to record each annual address of the Lord Mayor – that’s fine. We just want to build something that suits many different people’s needs, and which lifts the veil on so much hidden decision making in this country.
I love it and hope it will also work alongside openlylocal’s fabulous work on transparency in local government.
Earlier this week Max, Nick and I went to the New Optimists Forum - Future Foods, We’re were there in a professional capacity Social reporting from the evening to get and overview of the event online as it happened. This was Max’s first outing as a social reporter and talking to him afterwards reminded me how tiring I found it when I first started live blogging events. So I asked him afterwards what 3 tips we could have given him before we went into the session to make it easier. These were his responses;
1. Don’t be complacent.
Max thought it was going to be easier than it actually was ad didn’t expect to be quite so tired afterwards - It’s not an easy thing trying to record what is going on, keeping track of the sometimes multiple conversation and listening for a perfect sound bite to capture on camera.
2. Make sure your laptop is not too big.
Turning up with all the tools you’d need for a social reporting job as a *mobile” social reporter is easier if you have a lighter laptop. We had audio recorders, flip cameras, a stills camera and our laptops with us – spare batteries, spare chargers and a mi-fi – lugging that around can be tiring.
3. Don’t delete anything.
Max admitted afterwards that the thing he found hardest was listening and picking out the “best” bits. He said he would start writing something and then something else interested would start to be discussed so he’s scrap it and start again. He realised he could have just kept it all. He could have bullet pointed all interesting points and not worried about going into too much detail – if he’d wanted to elaborate further he could have grabbed the attendees for a video clip, getting them to reiterate the relevant points they’d made.
Social reporting is all about getting a flavour of an event, an overview of proceedings not precise minutes - it can be used at all kinds of events from large conferences to smaller neighbourhood meetings and everything in between. It’s a skill we teach in our aptly named “Social Reporter Training” packages where we look at the tools to use and the “how to” of social reporting and while we already teach “Don’t delete anything” I think I’ll be adding the rest of Max’s tips into the next session we host.
The above exchange took place recently between Wv11 a hyperlocal blog in Wednesfield (*disclaimer* I am the co-founder of Wv11 – but this wasn’t me tweeting this time), Wolverhampton Parks and Wolverhampton Homes, the ALMO (Aram Length Management Organisation) that looks after housing for Wolverhampton Council. It was a simple and common complaint involving litter. There wasn’t an immediate solution as someone had to physically get out to the park to deal with it but because the message was not only acknowledged positively but there was also a response given about the planned action, any other residents following this exchange knew something was planned to get the litter cleaned up and later on when it was dealt with they could see that the promise was carried through.
This wasn’t the first conversation of this sort to take part online and it surely wont be the last but to my mind at least this kind of engagement can only improve communities.
It may start as small as getting rubbish collected from the park put just imagine the possibilities. If lots of people can take part in a wider conversations with service providers and local partners, if they are responded to as individuals and if they can see that not only are things are getting done as a result, but also see the processes in place that get them there they are more likely to engage in the future and feel part of the bigger picture that makes their neighbourhood tick.
A simple demand: let us record council meetings « countculture – This is about councillors failing to understand democracy, about the ability to taking the same material and making up your own mind, and critically trying to persuade others of that view.
These are my links for August 4th through August 19th:
Read+Comment | Hassle-free publishing and commenting on your documents – Good for consultation…. ‘Commentable’ online documents are a great way to establish two-way dialogue with the people who care about your organisation. But until now, you’ve had to build them yourself, often from scratch, either hosting your own or working around the limitations of your content management system or free tools.Read+Comment is purpose-built on modern, open source WordPress technology with all the configuration and plugins set up for you. Sign up, put your content in, and make the site your own.
Brave New World | John Popham’s Random Musings – A very fine man is now freelance: “There is a big difference between the last time I was a freelance and now, That is the rise of Social Media.”
Good government is supported by good conversations, that’s the key point I want to stress/explore after last weeks Local Government Communications Conference in Leeds.
I have always enjoyed trips to LGComms events. This time I was the last speaker, in the hangover fueled want-to-get-home-now-please Friday slot. I had been asked to speak on using digital technologies to collaborate with citizens so set out to share the story of much of the digital activism that has blossomed in my home city of Birmingham since the same conference a year ago. I wanted to show how people are trying to use the web to engage with government, but government needs to recognise that and talk back.
Better with More
I argued that if local government can get this conversation right it is not simply in a position of having to do better with less. If government can share in the enthusiasm energy and passion of citizens – together they could do better with more.
This also emerged from the start of a Common Purpose and Be Birmingham programme on leadership and Total Place, where at least one person made the same case. It is also at the root of the government’s ambition for an informed, empowered and active citizens in the Big Society. The continued opening up of government data is fertilising the ground in which such a movement might grow.
The rise of the Git Citizen
My presentation (slides here) began with this rather ugly film of me being a bit of a git citizen:
Our street had been coned over night because of a cricket match and the cars were then ticketed – without warning. The normal comms reaction to something like that is to sigh, put their head in their hands and shake it.
Many eyes makes hypocrisy wither
But in the room of Local Government Communications a good number could see the value of citizens as eyes and ears – people who’s natural sense of right and wrong expose the failings of organisations, the contradiction between what they say and what they do.
This is a natural part of how we govern social relationships. Knowing that you can be seen and that you will be gossiped about tends to help keep us on the straight and narrow. Digital media makes that process easier in larger communities than before – as long as government is willing to see, listen and respond.
In effect to recognise that this is one part of a conversation and join it. The examples I wanted to emphasise from Birmingham were the ones where relatively simple things were being done in an easily accessible way.
The neighbourhood manager telling the story of the work she does and the place and people she serves (for example Hands On Handsworth)
The citizens taking a clunky government service and making it easier to understand, (for example Big City Talk)
In all cases they are lowering the barriers to communication, which encourages conversation. After all one of the reasons we talk so much is that for many of us it’s very easy to do.
Imagine you are Equals
Here were some ideas I suggested would help them nurture such conversations..
Skill up your organisation and neighbourhoods
Get involved
Imagine you are equals
Share infrastructure with your community – keep it open
Simon Wakeman (extensive quoting coming here, thanks Simon) was taken by the presentation of Professor Stephen Coleman – which he outlined as asking communicators to consider:
Where do people find information – much council information is not demand-driven – organisations need to push information to people but this is a greater challenge in times when people have so many competing demands for their attention
The exclusive narrative of public sector communications – many communications “talk” in words or terms that people just don’t understand (and shouldn’t have to understand). Communications need to be framed in a narrative that people can related to – and in the conversations of social media we have a great window into those real-world narratives. We need to learn how to interpret them and fit our communications into those narratives.
The challenge of efficacy – the best single predictor of successful engagement is people’s belief in their ability to influence the world around them. As a belief it’s an entirely subjective measure but is really important – if people think they can make a difference, they will participate, and if they think they can’t make a difference, they won’t.
and suggested they concentrate on
mapping - taking a “from the bottom up” approach to how and what to communicate – rather than building from the current practice – because incremental, creeping growth of a communications landscape will invariably lead to less effective practice than a clean-sheet approach
storying - thinking about how communicators can take the day-to-day life narratives of real people, which are far more influential than council or council people’s narratives, and using them in communications. The next level would then be to connect these narratives together to tell a story of place grounded in people, rather than the physical aspects of place which form many existing communications.
production of meaningful, tangible consequences to feedback – or put simply, we need to be able to tell people what we’ve done with things they’ve told us. From Stephen’s research the lack of this is one of the biggest frustrations among audiences that have participated in public sector research or consultation. Making these links is key to sustaining and developing a culture of participation and engagement
Catherine Howe – the new(ish) chief exec at Public-i also picked up on Tony Quinlan’s analysis of how stortelling helps and hinders communications:
Finally – I was fascinated by the session on storytelling by Tony Quinlin. I have always liked storytelling as a way of getting ideas and knowledge out of groups that are not comfortable with sharing or communicating and Tony really illuminated why this works and gave real substance to the session. I also enjoyed chatting to him afterwards about complexity and narrative and would recommend checking out his blog at http://narrate.typepad.com/. One thing really stuck in my mind: once a narrative gets a critical mass you can’t combat it with facts – you need to tell a different story
And of course, telling new stories is a wonderful way to get conversation going
It was a toilet a bit like this, just without the sign. By Phinphonephotos on Flickr
This weekend I’ve had my head stuck on working out what I can do next on the digital scrutiny project. And then I remembered a toilet.
I used to be a local reporter in north London. Each week, after we’d put the paper to bed, I’d walk round my ‘patch’. It was a picturesque place called Highgate. I’d often need what one might euphemistically refer to as a ‘comfort break’. There was only one public toilet in the middle of Highgate Village, so it became a er, regular calling point.
Sadly for me, it didn’t take all that long before the local council announced its closure as part of a series of budget cuts. This led to a few protests from locals who were unhappy to be losing a treasured local service, but no one seemed to think it was that interesting a local newspaper story.
A bit of a story I and another reporter wrote about the toilet, taken from teh Ham&High website.
Well, that is apart from me. I was enraged. My own personal pit stop had been taken away. Where would I be going to the toilet now? I furiously filed story after story about the loo closure. I think at one stage I got the nickname ‘toilet boy’. I even filed a Freedom of Information request asking for any correspondence about the lost loo.
Splash
The mickey-taking, however, stopped when my toilet-based Freedom of Information request got a reply from the council. Contained in a bundle of papers was a gem: a letter from the councillor in charge of Camden Council‘s environment department pleading with Mr Livingstone to give him the money needed to keep the toilet open, for fear its closure would hurt his chances of being re-elected. It made that week’s splash, if you’ll pardon the appalling pun.
Flushed with pride
I was obviously chuffed: a story I’d chosen to work on that others felt wasn’t important had ended up being quite, well a little bit, important. The councillor did lose the next election – along with quite a few other Labour councillors. The loo earned a reprieve, when the new council was elected and, under the name Pond Squre, is still in the list of Camden Council loos.
But, in truth, I didn’t deserve that much praise. I’d only pursued the story because it mattered to me. Its closure was a pain in the arse and I was annoyed. The moral of the tale, of course, is that it doesn’t take much at all to find out what’s going on, if you care and ask the right questions.
Bog standard
Sadly, local reporters are rarely the people who can do this stuff. They have to worry about deadlines, filling pages of copy and often don’t even live in the area they report on (I didn’t). That doesn’t mean they can’t do important work, but it’s citizens, the people affected, who need to take the lead, because it really matters to them.
So the next bit of the project will be to try to isolate a question – almost certainly about swimming pools on Where Can We Swim? – and pursue it with similar vigour to the toilet issue. I’ll have to care about it, but – importantly – I need to find others who do, too. There are a few that spring to mind – not least whether Birmingham really needs a 50m pool – but I’ll be trying very hard, very soon to work out what it is. Then it’s a matter of applying the skills I’m picking up through the project to see just how well this sort of stuff can work.
Scrutinising scrutiny
I’ve just spent the larger part of my day reading about the scrutiny processes of local councils. Of course, this is the sort of thing I do for fun, but there was a serious purpose at hand. As part of my MA in online journalism, but also as part of my work at Podnosh I’ll be looking at how the web can be used to improve scrutiny processes in local government.
How are you going to start?
There’s a lot to do, but I’ve started by trying to answer a simple question for myself: What is scrutiny? That’s what all the reading is about. As someone who worked as the local government correspondent for a pretty decent local newspaper, I should have a fairly strong knowledge of this, but if I’m being honest I don’t. And if I don’t know then I imagine I’m not alone.
Shut up and tell me what scrutiny is Scrutiny – means ‘to search’ and apparently originally meant to ‘sort rubbish’ (hmm… interesting!). In its local government context scrutiny is the business of examining and holding to account the decision-making process. The Local Government Act of 2000, required all councils to make decisions through an executive group of councillors, or cabinet. It also set up an overview and scrutiny process so councillors outside the executive could overview the council’s decisions to ensure they met the requirements of the budget and the council’s policy framework. I learned all that from Wikipedia and the Centre for Public Scrutiny’s Introduction To Scrutiny. Whoppee!
I’m going to be writing about this a lot, so I won’t dawdle, but I already have a few thoughts:
1. Scrutiny’s bloody important, because it goes to the heart of the democratic process. It’s how decision making (what government does) is overseen and checked and everyone should be interested in it, because it’s the crucial bit of democracy: we elect people, they do stuff. We need to know about it.
2. Scrutiny is difficult to understand and it isn’t, well, sexy. Which is weird, given point one.
3. I’ve singularly failed to answer how it can be made better. But it strikes me it might be a bit early for that!
These are my links for February 20th through February 23rd:
Socitm and LGA prepare open data guidance | Kable – The Society for IT Management and the Local Government Association are preparing advice to help councils make more of their data publicly available
Citizen Ethics Network – There is a widespread concern that the winner takes all mentality of the
banker, and the corrupted values of the politician, have replaced a common
sense ethics of fairness and integrity. Many worry that an emphasis on a
shallow individualism has damaged personal relationships and weakened
important social bonds."
Iceland mulling plan to become ‘haven’ for journalism – The China Post – "Hoping to make Iceland a global home for freedom of speech, lawmakers are asking the government this week to implement a journalist's dream package of legislation — promising a safe haven for reporters who want to dig deep, hit hard, and avoid being sued. "
MASHe » Blog Archive » Twitter powered subtitles for BBC iPlayer – "Whilst in the general populous there is still uncertainty over the benefits of sites like twitter broadcasters are already exploring how this technology can be used. A case in point in the BBC/Open University The Virtual Revolution series which is exploring how 20 years of the web has shaped our lives. Its not surprising that a programme of this ilk is exploring how technology can be used to support the broadcast (including allowing viewers to mash-up and reuse clips from the series), it is also the first programme that I’ve seen broadcast a hashtag within its opening credits. The hashtag is a community driven invention which allows comments and content to be tracked across the web including in comments made as tweets."
