Author: Nick Booth

Links: Fake websites, Digital Literacy, Deirdre without the Lol and Membership Organisations

Yoosk Birmingham.  Question some of Birmingham’s political figures including Deirdre without the Lol.
Fake websites used to teach real digital skills in a US school.  “Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.”

Mark McDonald at Gartner “The public sector mission is a powerful tool and reflects the best of what it means to be in public service.  Use the mission as a leadership tool, because it’s never been more important than right now.” (Via Devon Enterprise Architects spotted by Carl).

David Wilcox: “Clay Shirky really pins down what any organisation relying on members or supporters for its life must do if it is to stay in business as people increasing network online. That means change for campaigning charities, trade associations, and membership bodies who may have worked in the past through a mix of newsletters, events and perhaps not very special services. If they don’t offer more value, members and supporters will stop paying their subs. I’ve suggested this before, Clay says it much better.” The interview is by Amy Sample Ward.

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Finally: Obama’s folk say Twitter is a Gimmick: “The problem is that the new tool on the block tends to distract. It’s easy for a lazy and unimaginative campaign flack to sell story of “politician on twitter!”. Case of shiny object moving to shiny object. For organisations that need to invest in deep relationships, new services like twitter are scattershot and dizzying. They burn political capital. Besides, they don’t talk to the people you want to talk to [case of early adopters not being very useful to political campaigns? I’d still consider Twitter to be an early adopter service – won’t change until it has 60 million users, not just 6 million].”

Links: Trust, collaborative planning and google maps

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On Demand Micro Volunteering by mobile phone from the Extraordinares. Hat tip Thriving.

All the News that’s fit to Network. “So if there’s trust to be created, there’s money to be earned. Trust is the foundation for a value proposition. All else equal, it stands to reason that users will pay more for the news in which they have more trust. If so, then it follows that users will pay more for the news they use based on a relationship with creators, in whom they can place more trust than they can in newspapers as brands.”

Michael Grimes on The Big City Plan:  “I truly believe there are lots of people in the council who really want this to work. But the bureaucracy of Birmingham City Council seems incapable of understanding how public engagement works.” Jon Bounds on the same: “The resources needed to produce the Big City Talk site were only time (the domain name cost £2.99, and I used existing hosting), the skills we used would have been readily available within the council structure — and experience if needed is already in the city. The only thing stopping Birmingham City Council running a “social” online consultation was the organisational will. I think there may be more of that now.”

Steven Tuck uses Big City Talk to get tongues wagging in a Social Media Session at Kirklees Council
Google Maps created with a spreadsheet of addresses.

Control Shift – The Conservatives on Local Government

With a name like Control Shift it would be rude not to blog about Conservative plans for local government. You can download the whole document here, this summary is taken from here:

Control Shift’, our decentralisation green paper, outlines a series of policies that will see powers transferred from the central state to local people and local institutions:

  1. Abolishing all regional planning and housing powers exercised by regional government, returning powers and discretion back to local communities
  2. Creating bottom-up incentives for house building, by allowing councils to benefit more from the increase in council tax revenues from new homes, rather than being equalised away by Whitehall
  3. Allowing councils to establish their own local enterprise partnerships to take over the economic development functions and funding of the Regional Development Agencies
  4. Giving local authorities a new discretionary power to levy business rate discounts, allowing them to help local shops and services, such as rural pubs or post offices
  5. Provide citizens in all large cities with the opportunity to choose whether to have an elected mayor, through mayoral referendums
  6. Greater use of direct democracy, including allowing residents to veto high council tax rises, and instigating local referendums on local issues
  7. Requiring councils to publish detailed information online on expenditure by local councils – including the pay and perks of senior staff, and issuing new guidance to stop ‘rewards for failure’ to sacked town hall staff.
    Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said, “It’s not just about empowering local government; we want to empower the people it serves so that they can have more say in how much of their money they want their council to spend on their behalf.”

In the Guardian David Cameron writes:

Many worry that decentralisation is a step backwards. But localism isn’t some romantic attachment to the past. It is absolutely essential to our economic, social and political future. If our local economies are vibrant and strong we are far less vulnerable to global shocks or the failures of a few dominant industries. If people know that their actions can make a real difference to their local communities, they’re far more motivated to get involved – and civic pride is revived. If local government is both more powerful and more accountable, we can start to restore the trust that’s been lost in our political system. It’s for these practical reasons that I am a confirmed localist, committed to turning Britain’s pyramid of power on its head.

To my mind the green paper appears to be suggesting very modest shifts of power towards anything that resembles local. A presumption that local councillors should have money to spend in their patch is about as close to home as it seems to get. It seems to embody the same struggle that the mainstream media is having with understanding what is local. Local radio is rarely what I would consider local – likewise local government. The question remains how can government (rather the people who spend public money)  really get involved in useful conversations at a local level – ones which will improve decision making.

Director of Digital Engagement – Cabinet Office.

I’ve always thought encouraging the active use of social media in government is a patient game. Culture change takes time and asking people to start listening in new ways, joining new conversations, collaborating with new people is a substantial culture change.  What it can lead to is a step change again.

Fortunately the Cabinet Office is quite impatient to see progress. They are looking for a Director of Digital Engagement (salary £81,000 – £160,000) who will take on “a new role charged with getting Government to work differently.

This will require Government and individual departments to change the way they do business – from consulting citizens to collaborating with them on the development of policy and how public services are delivered to them. It will involve supporting Ministers and senior officials in entering conversations in which Government does not control the message or the dialogue.

Within six months the Head of Digital Engagement will have developed a strategy and implementation plan and be able to show concrete signs of momentum in executing the plan.

Within a year the Head of Digital Engagement should be able to point to two departments whose use of digital engagement are recognised in the digital community as being world class

Within two years the use of world class digital engagement techniques should be embedded in the normal work of Government”

Umh. Is Tom Loosemore really ready to leave 4ip or perhaps Richard Allan wants a change from Cisco?  Steph Gray from Dius has already begun thinking about what this “poor soul” should do first and with uservoice has begun voting on just that problem (No 1 appears to be promote the use of small contracts and contractors for govt IT). Even Jeff  Jarvis noted the job. So there’s some names. Who else do you think ought to be sharpening their pencil?

Update: 1 Dominic Campbell fleshes out the role: “the Digi Director must also avoid becoming embedded in government and spend as much time out and about as possible, out with the policy makers, politicians and social innovators. They will also need uber executive back up from somewhere in government to make the change happen, with experiences such as those of the recently ex-civil servant Jeremy Gould highlighting the distance the government still has to travel before it truly gets the web and is willing to invest appropriate amounts of time and attention in it.”

2 I fear that Dave Briggs coinage of blogging tsar might catch on. Twould be a shame.

3 A campaign, begun to get the job for darrenbbc, as already had cold watered poured on it by Tom Watson. Sheesh – the job applications will be crowd sourced, why not teh job itself!

4 Paul Evans toys with the Robin Williams problem, do ‘they’ really want to be that engaging.