Author: Nick Booth

Big Society on a Small Budget – can more really be done for less. Notes from a Conservative Party Conference session.

Damian Hinds MP and Michelle Smith of Barclays talking about Big Society
Damian Hinds MP and Michelle Smith of Barclays talking about Big Society

I’m trying to cover as many Big Society sessions on the Conservative Party Fringe as I can get too –  not least looking for any clarity on what it might mean.

The first one was run by The Citizens Advice Bureau:  Big Society on a Small Budget – can more really be done for less. Notes from a Conservative Party Conference session.  The Panel Was Gillian Guy – Chief Executive of Citizens Advice Bureau,  Damian Hinds – MP for East Hampshire,  Therese Coffey – the MP for Suffolk Central and Michelle Smith, Head of UK Consumer and Community Affairs for Barclays UK Retail Bank and Barclays Corporate.

Sifting through my notes there were a number of things that struck me:

Gillian Guy from CAB explained the extent to which they use volunteers

12.5 million people helped on the web.   20,000 volunteers, already represent a good start to the big society. We want public services to be simpler and we want to the voluntary sector and communities to be trusted.

Damian Hinds outlined what he thought are the key elements which will underpin the Big Society…

  • Language and the mood is important – as a government we need to show that we are turning to the right people for advice.
  • Programme of devolution to local councils (when you devolve planning to individual councils you can take more interest)
  • Direct empowerment, right to bid taking over a community facility
  • Free schools programme, people now know that they could decide to make their own school
  • Information revolution, open data the web. – there will be enough people in anyone location to hold power to account
  • Big Society bank to provide extra finance
  • Encouraging volunteering – government needs to get its employees out doing volunteering.

Therese Coffey – MP for Suffolk Central key thoughts included:

  • We need to remove the mentality of the civil service culture.
  • We need to ensure that government does get out of the way.    Some aspects of the equalities act will hamper organisations trying to deliver the big society.
  • De-complexify government.  Need to provide some finance. Unemployed should be expected to go out and do some work in the voluntary sector.
  • The National citizens service is over cautious.
  • The other risk is there is a vacuum at the moment –  can the third sector flesh out some of the vision please – don’t wait for the pilot areas.

Michelle Smith seem to catch the mood of the room when she talked with real passion about how the volunteering done by Barclays staff benefits neighbourhoods and the business and the staff.  For example…

Half of our staff are actively involved in their communities on a regular basis.  We match charitable giving and fund raising and provide time off .  This improves staff retention and  performance, staff who volunteer are A third more likely to be rated A performers than those who don’t.

Worth listening to this interview….

Fanning the flames of GovSpark

govspark energy use in government

Very late on Tuesday night I was asked a question on twitter – can you help get a government site up in short order?  The question was prompted by this.

GovSpark is a simply wonderful idea from 16 year old coder Isabell Long that emerged from Emma Mulqueeny’s Young Rewired State.  Isabell wrote last month…

I came up with the idea because the government had just released some live and historical energy consumption data, but it was all held on the respective department websites and not central anywhere. GovSpark aims to be the central website for people to go so that they can see what the energy consumption of a certain department is at that time. The government also have targets to reduce usage by 80% by 2050, so I thought it would be a good tool to show how well one department is doing compared to another department.

Because it was Emma asking we said yes.  Glyn Wintle had already sweated to build an API which ran off live data for energy use in government buildings in Whitehall.  We were given less than a day to help push it across the finishing line by deciding what it ought to look like and making it look that way. Josh Hart coded like a lunatic and the talented and calm Ryan Dean-Corke of Substrakt sorted out some visuals for us.

As the Downing Street website reported this morning…

The Prime Minister has today challenged Whitehall Ministries to compete to slash the energy used in their departmental headquarters over the month of October.

The league table application, called GovSpark, will show data from the 18 Government Real Time Displays. The original prototype for GovSpark was developed by Isabell Long, aged 16, during Young Rewired State 2010, an event run for young developers aged 15-18 working with open government data.

It’s always a pleasure to help something good happen, in fact that’s what we are here for really.  The best bit was a short e-mail from a clearly chuffed Isabell

It looks amazing – I really love it! Everything has finally come together! 🙂

In less than a month in total Isabell’s idea has turned into site which is running a blindingly simple competition to help civil servants use less energy.    It gives civil servants the information and incentive to switch things off, or find way to cut emissions.

We can only take a tiny bit of credit for helping.  The site was sponsored and funded by The Stationery Office and the real work, before our last scramble, came from Glyn and Emma Mulqueeny.  Thanks very much to Sarah Marshall for spotting Emma’s cry for help and asking us to get involved.

Birmingham's new Big City Plan commentable site.

Birmingham city council is making great strides with the way it uses lightweight web tools (like wordpress) to communicate and create space for conversation.

The first round of the Big City Plan consultation led to a group of us (led by Jon Bounds) producing Big City Plan Talk – an independent volunteer built site designed to encourage online conversation about the council’s plans for the city centre.

Now the council is using a similar approach to make it easier for people to comment on the plan as it evolves. Great step forward.

Stuff I've seen September 27th through to September 29th

These are my links for September 27th through September 29th: