Author: Nick Booth

Digital scrutiny: the web’s the tool

While I’ve watched the election drama unfold over the last few days I’ve been busy trying to finish off the first stage of my digital scrutiny project – which is looking into how it might be possible to use the web to help the public scrutinise local government.

My idea has turned into a blog – Where Can We Swim – that I’m busy trying to develop as a sort of laboratory for the scrutiny of swimming pool provision. At the heart of my idea is a basic belief that we – the public – in all our great unwashed glory, might be able to help to run public facilities – not just as volunteers, but because we’re clever and can actually come up with new ways of doing things.

A reappraisal
When I started the project I hoped to develop a kind of tool kit for scrutiny. I even imagined I’d be scraping data in order to provide really good quality information. But my assumptions were totally off. By posting about my swimming pools idea on Podnosh I’ve learned of the work that Plings has done to find out all the local authorities providing free swimming to under 16s.

The Where can I swim for free site

This has made me think about how this provision will continue in the future. I’ve also realised the mines of local information that exist from websites locally, like the Moseley Road Bath’s excellent updates on swimming pool news in Birmingham and are helping to keep an eye on how the city council runs its pools.

Swimming around the web
And, when I first encountered the daftness of the Active Places data set run by Sport England (the store for all the country’s public sporting facilities), I imagined I’d spend my time trying to unlock the data, but it turns out that the folk at Rewired State have already had a crack at it.

What all this is beginning to prove is that my idea of a tool kit makes no sense whatsoever. Instead it’s pretty simple really: the web’s the tool. The real trick – something I’m only beginning to understand – is learning to use it to make connections between you and other people who have the same idea. And, if you do that, then suddenly all sorts of clever things begin to happen.

What happened at the May Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery

May Social Media Surgery

After some very busy surgeries recently, May’s was small, but perfectly formed. Emma Neil and Hannah Severn from The Birmingham Conservation Trust got help from Gavin Wray and Nick Booth with their blogging work for the trust. Both Emma and Hannah are volunteering for the Trust and have been doing some really interesting stuff since coming to the Central Birmingham surgery a couple of months ago.

They’ve both been blogging assiduously for a while now, on a variety of different subjects for the Trust, as you can see here and here. They also write reviews of local history books, which allows the trust to raise small aounts of money through the Amazon affiliate system.

This time they learned, in particular, about Google Analytics because they’d been worried that too few people were commenting on their posts on the site, as this video interview with Hannah (left) and Emma (right) explains.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32uCoQvtxDs]

Emma and Hannha weren’t the only people to come down – even if we happened to pick the moment the UK got its first coalition government in 70 years. Anna Watson, from Localise West Midlands, was down for her first surgery – and seemed to really enjoy it. Heidi Blanton, who was down to help as a surgeon for the second time,  helped Anna to learn about Twitter, WordPress and other forms of social media.

We also had a visit from Dr Monika Metykova – who is a media and communications research associate at Goldsmith’s. Monika is conducting some really interesting research into changes in media consumption and production – and was down to learn about what we’re doing at the Social Media Surgery. She also got a little bit of help from Simon Gray on setting up a Twitter account. Monika said she was particularly surprised how quickly it is possible to make some really significant, useful steps towards understanding social media at a surgery.

In the video she explains a little bit about the context of her research and how her visit to the Social Media Surgery fits into that.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8RxuVrkv8]

London’s Digital Neighbourhoods study published

The talented combo of Hugh Flouch and Kevin Harris from Networked Neighbourhoods have published the beginings of their  research for London Council’s on very local online media.  At this stage (there’s more to come) it comes in two parts:  A list of the types of sites found in London, how they work, who they reach and what they are for .  They offer 8:

  1. Civil Social Networks, such as Haringay Online or Alum Rock Neighbourhood (a bit quiet)
  2. Local Discussion sites, such as forum’s for a neighbourhood, like Balsall Heath Online.
  3. Placeblogs – like Kings Cross Environment or Pit n Pots (these sites are very focused on holding power to account for a place)
  4. Blogazines – are like placeblogs but less focussed on holding power to account – example might include
  5. Public Social Spaces – these are areas created on facebook etc to bring together local material
  6. Local action groups online – specific local pressure orgs using the web, one like Greener Leith are both focussed on an issue and a neighbourhood.
  7. Local Digital News (commercial)
  8. Multiples and listings sites (these are big sites that present information locally too)

Interesting way to divide things up.   As I’m certain Hugh and Kevin know many sites are many things.  Ventnor Blog is a  placeblog, a blogazine and a forum at the very least – probably also Local Digital News.

There are also other forms of local media – most of which come in the shape of tools.  Postcode search on google maps,  fix my street is clearly a local site and often Help Me Investigate is a contributor to the local digital environment in a number of places.

Likewise the combination of a placeblog or two, blogazines, a local listing and the input from local online campaigns forms a more realistic understand of what loal digital media is in any one place.

Of course Hugh and Kevin get this:

As our research review indicates, there have been very few studies of specific local sites and the movement barely registers in the local government world. Many sites are growing and changing rapidly. It follows that any classification has to be subject to ongoing revision.

It is good to see the structure helping people understand that his is not neccesarily a substitute for mainstream media, more a movement with it’s own cahracteristics.  So, as the start of a means for prevailing structures to picture and understand local online activity, this break down is a great help.

Their other report on the research context is a really useful overview of what has already been written avout the net, localness and civic action – reminding us that the web as been at this for as long as we’ve been using the web.  I applus thei conclusion

In our view, the area where we should look for impact is in conversational democracy and the mundane politics of the everyday, and how this is converted into civic action. It would be a mistake to expect impact in terms of conventional political processes.

I find myself repeatedly urging local authorities not to think of the web as a way to get more people to engage with their structures and meetings, but as a new opportunity to find other ways to get involved with the people who care about the places where they live.

Scrutinising sporting facilities – and why it matters

Following my blog post about scrutinising swimming pools I’ve now got myself a website that I hope can act as a place where I can gather information about how good/bad swimming facilities are and how they can get better.

The Where Can We Swim website

I’ve started blogging on the site, but I’ve also put together a wiki – that still needs some work – where anyone can contribute to a debate over the condition of swimming pools in the city. I’m hoping I can also collect some basic information about swimming pools in the city and use this to compare it to other cities.

I’m interested in seeing how these two very simple tools can add to a debate over the provision of swimming in the run up to the 2012 London Olympics. It seems a long time ago now, but when the bid for the games was made its strongest suit was the sporting legacy it would leave behind. That wasn’t just in London; there was a commitment to improve facilities across the UK.

What’s this got to do with scrutiny?

It seems to me that we should all be involved in evaluating the sporting legacy that the Olympic Games in London is providing. In Birmingham, for example, there was a lot of noise about a project to build an Olympic-sized swimming pool for the city that would be in place before the 2012 games. That noise hasn’t amounted to much at the moment, except a lot of people who are unhappy about where it’s going and others, including the Amateur Swimming Association, who are peeved that it has been held up.

What did the Olympics ever do for us?

Imagine, for a moment, what will happen in two years’ time when the Olympics is all over. We’ll be left with a few gold medals and – perhaps – some nice new facilities. But will the legacy, trumpeted by the Olympic Games bid team, have been fulfilled? And who gets to decide whether or not it has been?

Since the facilities have been built for us, I reckon that we should be the ones who get to decide. But how on earth does one go about that? A big survey? A phone vote on Radio 5? And what, exactly, will be the point? If we’ve missed the boat and we don’t get the legacy we think we deserve and were promised who can we blame?

That’s why I think the idea of scrutinising the Olympic legacy ourselves (and when I say ‘ourselves’ I mean anyone who cares) is so crucial. How should the funding we’ve got be spent?  What is wrong with the facilities we have and how would you build new ones?

In a sense, bodies like the Amateur Swimming Association and our own politicians will do this anyway. But surely interested citizens, who care about the facilities they use, could become involved in that kind of scrutiny at a local level. Given that we’re about to get a new government and there’s been a financial crisis, there’s a lot to be vigilant about. That’s what I hope the Where Can We Swim site can start, in a very small way, to be about. It’s really just a very modest exploration of what happens when one person asks a question about one particular aspect of a local service.